I, American

But what kind?

Start with this. You’re looking down on a tiny blue dot in a vast expanse of blackness. Zoom in, you see the Earth. Zoom in again to the North American continent. Then again to the continental United States. One more time to the center of that to the state of Nebraska. Then again to the right edge, and there I am. In the middle of the country. The heartland. Real, rural, conservative, America.

But such a simple view is misleading. And incomplete. Look honestly at the heartland of America and, much like the country at large, we’re at odds.

Welcome to “Anytown, USA”

I live in a country in turmoil. With much division and anger, suspicion and disgust. Americans not only disagree about most things with other Americans not like them but find the Americans they’re disagreeing with to be packing sinister motives. When is the last time you’ve heard about one American giving another who was of a different tribe the benefit of the doubt? Since November 8, 2016, thinking of an example is tough.

I live in the middle of America, where things are “real,” rural, conservative. I have a hard time relating to those words, even though my grandfather was a farmer, my father a truck driver, and my mother raised me Catholic. These days I identify with none of that.

I’m unable to understand how the truck driver supports tax cuts for the filthy rich. I haven’t been to church since well before the institutional coverup of pedophile priests was exposed by the press. And in large part because of my intense childhood allergies, I just didn’t take to being a farm kid.

Now I live in a city. A good-size city, but not huge. On the continuum of red to blue, it’s a safe bet to consider it purple. Divided starkly by a center line that keeps the tribes in their respective corners: liberal or conservative, black or white, small yards or really big ones. Like any place, plenty of our local issues coincide with matters nationally, and plenty others don’t. “Anytown, USA” really can be anywhere.

But if I’m looking for an individual narrative to hold onto, something that I can call my own, an identity to go along with my nation, what does that look like exactly?

Today, Americans look at a country that seems too fragmented to fully grasp a complete picture of.

We all have different ideas of what it means to be an American, so how can we work together as a nation, to move it forward in any way? Am I really a (straight white) man without a country? Or is the confusion I’ve been feeling so often these days just a phase, like grunge music or skinny jeans?

If it’s a phase or not, I feel like I lack knowing fully where my place is. Maybe you do as well, and I do think that matters.

Trying to figure out what we stand for as individual Americans is a worthy exercise. The question is, deep down, do we already know where we stand, this person behind their racism, that person behind their excessive tolerance? Maybe we all need to work a little harder at gaining a fuller understanding of ourselves before being at odds with those of another tribe.

Questioning the Answers

Am I a “real” American? Or am I fake? As a man, am I a sexist pig? How racist am I? How biased? When I’m abroad, have I told people I’m from Canada? Am I a consumer or a citizen? You can’t be both equally. Which one wins out?

Am I a victim? Have I ever been victimized in the American sense? Discriminated against? Not given the benefit of the doubt? What do I hide behind? My privilege, my job, my education? How do I choose to use my power? For good or for ill? How much power do I even have?

So many questions are swirling around us with few answers being offered. If answers do get offered, they often seem compromised, wrong, or both.

There are the questions surrounding the economy, productivity, wages, and taxes. Should I be paying more of those? As a worker, do I contribute enough? Am I paid what I’m worth? Am I a good business person? Is it good business to be a good person?

There are the questions surrounding knowledge, expertise, and science. Have you ever thought about how difficult it is to be a scientist? All the education, the studying, and the need to be publishing. The scientific method, that’s a serious way to get to the bottom of anything. But nowadays, Americans can come along and say they’ll just believe whatever the hell they want, the facts don’t matter. And that is considered more than okay.

When it comes to the truth, am I someone who really seeks it? Or do I just want to find information and data and anecdotes that support what I believe already?

If I was standing in line somewhere, and the media came over to interview me, the man on the street, what would I say? What would I stand for? Would I revert to talking point regurgitation? In March of 2003, it would be “this is a war based on lies, NO BLOOD FOR OIL!” Now it might be “our president is racist, sexist, a bigot, and a fucking criminal! #RESIST!” Or would I go high level with a good soundbite: “land of the fee, home of the slave!” How would Rage Against the Machine handle all of this?

And then there are the questions surrounding who gets what and how much. Fairness and responsibility, liberty and justice. For everyone, or just for some?

When I think about America today, there’s a lot that must be defended, most of which falls into FDR’s Second Bill of Rights—the right to a decent home, the right to adequate medical care, the right to a good education. Even that list is incomplete, but right now America is at a place where our fundamental assertion of liberty and justice for all isn’t something we’re able to count on, despite having pledged to uphold it since we were in grade school, hand over our hearts and all. What gives?

The “I” is for Identity Politics

With liberty and justice, FOR ALL. America doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t mean that. If we’re not going to pledge to stand up for those principles, than we need to chisel it off all our monuments and erase it from the pages of our history books. It’s so baseline.

And yet in today’s America that needs to be defended like never before. Black, brown, immigrants, kids, people with pre-existing conditions, disabled folks, poor people, homeless people, the unemployed, the uneducated, the forgotten, and on and on and on. If we can’t stand behind liberty and justice for all in this twenty-first century world of untold wealth and resources, then we don’t stand for anything that really matters.

Is justice blind? Universally? Yes, probably. But justice in America? I’d say it’s in the dark more than anything.

When zoomed in, we each have something to offer. It would seem we can all be good if we really want to. But does it hold when we go the other direction? If we zoom out and look at the big collective of everyone working together as one nation, are we still good?

Everything is converging. Social media is politics, standup comedy is politics, professional sport is politics, business strategy is politics. Zoom in, and you see that there is no way to avoid the blending of everything in our daily lives; where do I get my groceries, how many miles do I commute, what news outlets do I watch, and, if I do, where do I go to church? Everything is political. What you eat to what you wear to what bourbon you buy.

Identity is politics, politics is identity. Yours and mine. My race, my gender, my sexual orientation. And every single status that follows, however personally important or seemingly insignificant.

Now zoom back out. From the heartland to the big picture view of America. Look at us from above one more time.

We are a country of gaps, with an increasing distance between a life of achievement, economic prosperity, career accomplishment, and enriching relationships for some and a life of suffering, squalor, degradation, and loneliness for others. We have chosen to allow these gaps to happen and we let them persist.

The full picture of America is fragmentation. Full of individuals more than willing to be at odds with each other and not interested in being part of any kind of union. Which is why the gaps have become so glaring. And until we lessen those gaps, we will continue to be, where I think we are, without a country. Instead, we’ll go on being a collection of haves and have-nots.

What kind of people are we? What kind of American are you? And what kind am I?

Answering this seems like it would go a long way toward figuring out how we’ll eventually move forward together. Because we will. We’re going some place together, we just don’t know where quite yet.