National Gazette

This is what we used to be.

John Winthrop talked about the City on the Hill when he settled in Massachusetts Bay Colony. He thought his followers had a unique opportunity. He wanted to make his city a shining example to the rest of the world. “This is the way life should be. This will the best place in the world to live. Other nations will strive to be what we are.”

That is exactly what we became. We have seen that the oppressed people of the world flock to America knowing America only through clouds of myth and story. They have heard that America is the land of opportunity: You can do anything you want; You will find immediate success; You can walk the streets and people will throw money at you and clothe you in robes, proclaiming you their king. Clearly this is not entirely true and it is without question that people have come to America with misguided ideas. Especially around the turn of the century, thousands of immigrants found life in America to be filled with much more hardship than the myths they had been led to this land by.

But the fact is they survived. As hard as life had been, in a way, many of the myths of America are not entirely unfounded. Consider the Irish population. They were forced out of Ireland by over-crowded cities, famine, or poverty. Thousands of families left their homes and risked their livelihoods because they expected a higher standard of living. They got it. There is a reason why there has never been a mass exodus in the other direction. People have historically found their higher standard of living here.

We have welcomed the world’s tired and poor with open arms. That initial idea of the city on the hill has come to fruition and is something we can be proud of. We always have prided ourselves on how great we are, and why not. John Winthrop was only talking about the Massachusetts Bay Colony but once his dream came true, we were put into another unique situation: to spread our idea of the city on the hill to a world on a hill.

That is what we used to be.

September 11th.

This is what we are now.

We stop every suspicious looking person as they try to board an airplane or enter into our country, and it is our country. What do they want to do here anyway? What are their intentions? This is a perfect opportunity for a random search. If you leave the country, you stop being an American for a time. If you try to re-enter, you will do so only after a barrage of questions.

Mexicans in America? Illegally? Get them out. Build a wall. Have the Mexicans do it.

Wait a tick. What’s all this about oil? Saddam? We can sell this. Remember that stuff before 9/11? Remember 9/11? That’s all we need, and this is how we do it. The people in Iraq are oppressed. They are sick and poor. We used to save them. They are not boarding boats and pleading for jobs like past groups, but the fundamental principle is the same: they deserve a higher standard of living according to the American philosophy.

In assessing the state of America in a post-9/11 world, it is of the utmost importance to consider the facts. We are afraid. We are at war in two nations, Afghanistan and Iraq. Only one can war can reasonably be connected to the September 11th attacks. We have seen an outbreak of patriotism. We’ve bankrupted our local supermarkets in response to a color-coding system created by a government that reminds most of a 1st grade art class. We have a trade deficit that increases, on average, about 20 million dollars every half hour. We’ve had a presidential election where a man received more votes than any president in history and then two years later received the lowest approval rating by any president in history. This is a popular, though vastly general, summation of the current political and world progress report as it relates to the United States in the post-9/11 world. Does the aforementioned satirical quote have any validity?

President Bush. The name seems to cut through people’s minds like acid to jelly. The very mention of it to a standard liberal makes them either cringe or giggle. It’s no secret that the man is not a poet. There is a collective “Smack!” heard around the country created by the unified connection of hands to foreheads when he starts to go off the script and employ his infectious wit. His inability to string together a coherent sentence is reminiscent of the southern stereotype that will undoubtedly plague him for the rest of his life by the liberal and northern masses. It is his legacy. He fails to move people with his unimpressive stage presence. He is a far cry from FDR’s fireside chats.

But who is this country’s last great speaker? In the modern media era, where the clarity of the television has taken away all mythical power of the president created by static laden radios, who has really moved this country with their words? John Fitzgerald Kennedy certainly had the substance and delivery to inspire the public and raise their consciousness. But since then, only weak arguments may be made to justify anyone else’s induction to such a category. President Bush’s unimpressive public speaking ability is nothing more than good material for Jon Stewart and Jay Leno as they fill their daily quotas with humorous political commentary. However, an assault on his intelligence is ignorant, easy, and a complete insult to the intelligence of a people that re-elected him. President Bush is a smart man surrounded by brilliant men. If you can be elected president, clearly no small feat, you at least are smart enough to do that.

It is equally easy to be critical of the American government for the war in Iraq. In 2003, 52 percent of Americans favored the war. Where are those people now? They see what the war has become and second-guess their intentions. They forget about the oppressed people. They forget about the brutal dictator. They forget about the shady goings-on with the weapons inspectors. It is perfectly reasonable to take the other side as well. We didn’t have other supporters. We did not have any conclusive evidence of the weapons. War is a last resort. But if everyone is so hell bent on blaming Bush, then why wasn’t there a greater cry for prevention such as what occurred in Great Britain? 52 percent is hardly opposition. In fact, you might say it’s a majority.

That is because the American public does not know what they want or need anymore. This is a different world. Compare this America to the nationalism this country saw during World War II. They were fighting for a unified cause. They were behind their president. They wanted to protect a country they all so dearly cared for and loved. Our theatrical display of red, white, and blue after September 11th was uplifting, but where are those flags now? Was it all a show for the terrorists? Did we just want them to know that they didn’t win? And where were the arguments for war as a last resort when we entered into Afghanistan? Only a single congressional vote came out against that war, and it was from a meek old woman so her opinions of war were seen as null and void. We are confused. We are inconsistent. Nobody knew what it would mean to “win” this war. People were behind Bush when he proclaimed, “Mission Accomplished!” But we disown him afterwards. Which is it? We now see that this war is not the solution so we pretend that we were never in favor of it in the first place. We’ve always based our democracy on the rule of the majority. But this requires a definitive decision. It seems that we are now making decisions based on the current mood of the majority. The greatest criticisms of John Kerry during his 2004 presidential campaign were his “flip-flopping” tendencies. But he only echoes the characteristics of the general public. It is a wonder how he didn’t win the election going away.

September 11th exposed a weakness in America that our outpouring of patriotism could not hide: We can’t decide what America is anymore.

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