I've returned from a long a lovely train trip to Denver, one of adopted hometowns (and what a stunning job they've done with Union Station and LoDo). So I was blessedly off the grid during the latest culture-war battle, over standing or kneeling for the national anthem. At the risk of losing friends among right-thinking people, I am torn about this.
On the one hand, protest has a long history in sports and if one or many of the pro-football millionaires wants to kneel to protest racism, that's his prerogative. Jehovah's Witnesses don't stand. For the players, I'm not sure it's a First Amendment right. I can't write anything I want as a Seattle Times columnist. To be sure, my masters give me wide latitude but there is an invisible fence. I am an employee. Nobody thought my First Amendment Rights were being trampled when the Arizona Republic took away my column because my writings offended the boosters and Real Estate Industrial Complex. Let's also state at the outset that the quisling in the Oval Office has no standing to lecture on anyone's patriotism.
Yet I also couldn't shake two other impressions. First, beyond the symbolism, can anything make amends? What would it take? Even on police shootings of unarmed black men, I have yet to see journalism to tell me whether this is worse now than in, say, the 1960s. It's bad no matter what, but are things getting better as President Obama, who may be remembered as the last American president, said? Or not? This question is beyond my aim today. Second, can't we have any modest civic above politic war, such as standing for the national anthem? We once had a common culture that assumed such things, for all our flaws. I won't even ask if it's a given to stand during the "Hallelujah" chorus. On the anthem, the answer is apparently, no.
On Facebook, my friend Tom Zoellner, one of the smartest people I know, wrote:
Historical reminder: "The Star-Spangled Banner" was a baroque nationalist poem written by a lawyer who helped slaveowners recapture their escaped property. In the third verse (almost always unsung) a line celebrates the murder of African-Americans slaves who had been recruited to fight for their freedom on the British side in the War of 1812. Here's the line: "No refuge could save the hireling and slave/From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave"
We don't just need to take a knee. We need to look honestly at our history, make hard amends for our national sin of racism, stop trying to pretend this festering wound doesn't exist, and make the USA live up to the sacred ideals implicit in its founding, even though their implementation has been messy, imperfect and painful over the course of 241 years.
OK. I guess. Another sin, in the eyes of an honest historian, is "presentism": Viewing and assessing everything from the past through the lens of present-day mores and views. Many on the left (and I'm not putting Zoellner in this camp) take the position that little of virtue happened in this Republic of Oppression until they arrived on the scene with Correct Knowledge.
The problem is that much of the Correct Knowledge is misleading or incorrect, cloaked in academic cant. Presentism gets in the way of understanding the past. For example, I recently finished Simon Sebag Montefiore's magisterial biography, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. Seeing the world through Stalin's eyes and time didn't make me approve of one of the world's worst mass murders, but it was fascinating and illuminating. Stalin was in his way every bit as formidable as FDR or Churchill. And he was a genuine intellectual. Caveat lector.
Also, in our democracy the other side gets a vote, too. And they do vote, even if they don't protest often, can't muster thousands on the streets, lie to pollsters, or seem so well-armed with weaponized language. If we've reached the point where we're going to simply label 63 million of our fellow citizens — and anyone else who is other-thinking — a "racist" or "white supremacist," and think that solves the problem, see the first sentence of this paragraph.
Oh, and don't think we can solve any problems by making America the Beautiful the national anthem (which is supposed to sound, well, nationalistic). The music was composed by an Episcopal choirmaster and organist, and we know how much oppression is committed by Christians. Katherine Lee Bates, the lyricist, went to Wellesley and Oxford, so had privilege. She may get points as a possibly closeted lesbian, but what did she do, under our presentism blinders, to advance gay rights or stop racism?
And those lyrics! There's God — that's gotta go, offensive to non-believers. "O beautiful for pilgrim feet / Whose stern impassioned stress / A thoroughfare for freedom beat / Across the wilderness." No way. This glorifies the imperialist European closed-minded conquerers who carried out genocide against indigenous peoples. Plus the way even New England was enriched by the lashed bondsman. "Thine alabaster cities gleam / Undimmed by human tears." Except for every minority that was persecuted by white people with unearned privilege. The final version of the song was published in 1910, when segregation was the law of the land and lynchings were common. Gay marriage? Get a rope.
Such is the blind alley of presentism.
Finally, American football is a gladiatorial sport, regularly equated with war, and a deeply corrupt big business. If it's better not to play the national anthem at all — or even have one, given our multifarious national evils — why should we we allow this "sport" at all? Women's soccer, maybe, maybe, would pass the left's purity test today.
We do need to learn the good, noble, exceptional, bad, hypocritical, conflicted, debated, and ugly of our past. Now, in this age of lies ("fake news"), more than ever. "The only new thing in the world is the history you do not know," as Harry Truman said. Yes! He ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What's not discussed is the much greater cost in lives had the United States carried out Operation Downfall, the conventional invasion of Japan. History is complicated and an argument without end. Today's problem is that Americans are more ignorant of their history than anytime in, well, history. This makes self-governance impossible. So, too, is selective history used by political extremes. It may be politically successful (although, again, voting — and the success or defeat of vote suppression and gerrymandering carry the day), but it makes any national unity or future improbable.
The extremes want subtractive history. As in, branding the Civil War a crusade against slavery (it wasn't, at least for most white Americans) and the Confederates as all evil white supremacists (almost all white Americans of that era would fit this definition through today's lens), and taking down statues is more important than building a coalition that can win elections and stop vote suppression. As in, America was "great" before the social safety net, minority rights, LGBTQ acceptance, reproductive rights, environmental regulations, and the income tax.
I would argue instead for additive history. Learn more, teach more rigorous and factual history. Erect monuments to more people. Tell their stories. And always give context. The idea that America is uniquely evil in building a continental empire through conquest or slavery or a class system is simply untrue. If you don't understand that, you need to read more history.
But this being the United States, where according to a survey nearly half don't know Puerto Ricans are American citizens, it's likely hopeless however much a few of us learn more about the past. We're not uniquely stupid among nations of the world — it's just that the consequences of our stupidity are so enormous.
I am conflicted less about historical illiteracy than a political party reflexively picking the scab of our national comity. Trump's war on modernity is sublimely absurd given his own personal history, which his followers celebrate for its sybaritic cruelty. I doubt they love anything so quaint as "history" (or confusing references to someone named Caligula). They want history simplified to its most comprehesnible elements: tribe, skin color, and "culture".
For most of us in this forum, it's the management of our modern chaos that demands most of our attention. How do we advance the common good in ways that actually makes life fairer and, for some of us, even possible? The murk of history and its endless arguments are less salient than the necessity of dealing with economic dislocation along with climate change.
Black people occupy an extraordinary position in our national discourse because of a history replete with cruelty and malevolence. To paraphrase Faulkner, that history is not even over. History is not merely something we search for in books or Confederate statuary. It's alive in the faces of people still carrying the psychic burdens of homegrown terrorism (see: lynching). Historical literacy might, at the margins, make us more circumspect. But you can't delve too deeply without touching the raw nerves that still define the inner lives of so many people of color.
Last night, the Sons of the Confederacy selected one Roy Moore to represent them in the US Senate. I doubt these good people are steeped in historical nuance anymore than Donald Trump is. For them, it's enough to know white people still have power and should continue to rule for the indefinite future. History may have many uses but it can't absolve America of its own checkered past. We either look for it in our own hearts or continue to find refuge in excuses, some of which are high-toned and scholarly.
Posted by: soleri | September 27, 2017 at 04:46 AM
My choice for the anthem is Woody Gutherie's This Land Is My Land. Probably too Commie for it to come to pass.
US History is a long litany of greed. Greed for land, money, cheap labor, the right kind of religion, demigods, privilege, laws that benefit specific interests, and the ever elusive freedom. Good things have happened unintentionally, but then are undone by our national psychosis.
Posted by: Jerry | September 27, 2017 at 10:06 PM
How about Bob Dylan's "Masters of War".
Trump sees his survival and further domination in starting a Race War and a War with North Korea.
Martial Law and suspension of Elections.
Bannon as Trumps Road Warrior. Bring on the Hunger Games.
Posted by: Cal Lash | September 27, 2017 at 10:20 PM
This country was built for the most part on stolen land, and quite often by slave labor.
That's our history, and until we acknowledge that, and somehow come to grips with it, we will never be able to get past the tribal state we find ourselves in.
Posted by: B. Franklin | September 28, 2017 at 06:41 PM
I usually stay out of the comments string. But B. Franklin's glib toss-off, with which most here no doubt will agree, compels a response.
I'm particularly interested in specifics about how we "acknowledge" and "come to grips." None of America's dark side is new to me; I was taught about its outlines in grade-school. American historians have produced enormous quantities of scholarship on it, with additions coming all the time. I'm all for teaching much more history, but outside of some specific instances, it's not as if these issues have been suppressed. Indeed, many were fiercely debated at the time.
As for stolen land and slave labor, this is the doleful history of humanity in every corner of the globe. It doesn't mean you have to like it or approve or not seek to create a more just world. But every country is built on "stolen" land. The indigenous nations of pre-Columbian America were constantly fighting over territory, often taking slaves.
We also get some credit, for the Enlightenment and (trigger warning) Western ideas that ultimately led to the American experiment, which has expanded the bounds of liberty further than any nation. The left needs to get a grip on that.
But I would welcome some specifics. And if it's the usual bromides, then we will stay divided — because at least half the nation is not going to accept that stolen-land-slave-labor is all there is to America. So our divisions will increase.
Posted by: Rogue Columnist | September 28, 2017 at 09:04 PM
I'm not happy to say this but Rogue's parsing of history is itself the problem here. "Western ideas" are liberal, not conservative. They are emphatically not those of the Neo-Confederates and culture warriors who compulsively divide Americans against one another. White nationalists elected one of their own president who pledged to weaponize virtually every aspect of our discourse, from immigration to race relations. We have not been more divided as a nation since the actual Civil War. Compulsory patriotism is one aspect of this divide where people who gladly believed Barack Obama was a Kenyan anti-colonialist socialist insist everyone think as they do. They are thugs.
America is a work in progress and that work will never be done. If you think black people are the problem, you won't be prompted to compromise for the common good so much as insist that until we restore cultural ideals of the 1950s, the entire enterprise of politics and government is tainted. The toxicity of this belief system should be as obvious as Donald Trump's complete inadequacy as a national leader. If you need a historical gloss to this phenomenon, Google "southern strategy".
I am a liberal who detests the smug political correctness that shows up in academe and social media. But the political correctness on the right is a dead end because of its own ahistoricism. We don't have to celebrate and memorialize anti-American traitors to this nation's ideals. We don't have to dress Jesus in the camouflage of white identity and Americanism. Tribalism on the right is about one predominant thing: skin color. If you don't see that, you are either asleep or infected by it.
I beg Rogue to step back from this precipice. The study of history should not be used to suggest a moral equivalence between combatants in an ongoing civil war that goes back to the birth of this nation. It's time to move on.
Posted by: soleri | September 29, 2017 at 05:04 AM
I'm not sure where Rogue went to primary and secondary school, but I went to Washington Elementary and Cortez High School and I never heard a word about "stolen land" and very little about slavery--other than while it was bad, it was over a long time ago, so let's not dwell on it.
Also nothing about about Woodrow Wilson's love of Birth of a Nation and the KKK, nothing about Jim Crow and the undermining of Reconstruction, nothing about any of the contributions that black Americans made to our country--other than as sports or entertainment figures. Nothing about the black Buffalo Soldiers who went up San Juan Hill with TR. "The bravest men he ever saw" according to their white commander. Nothing about the black women, the human computers, who played such an important role in the early days of the space program. Not a word about lynchings.
And let's not forget about the "no Irish or dogs" signs, the repeated, violent crushing of labor movements, the importation of disposable Chinese and Mexican labor, every broken treaty with the Indian tribes, all the illegal activities of the CIA, oh hell, it's a long list, the list of things we weren't taught.
We became an empire and in doing so, we acted like many empires before us. Are we 'better' than them? Ok, sure. We're better than them. I don't think we can take much credit for the Enlightenment, though.
However, to not acknowledge the evil things that were done in our name, to pretend that our Founders were somehow inspired by God, that our statesmen always did the 'right' thing, that our wars were always just, well, that's the kind of willful ignorance that leads to the dead end we find ourselves in.
Unfortunately, we have many states that are quite comfortable perpetuating that sort of ignorance in their schools.
Like the song says, "just gimme some truth."
And if we can't handle it, well, that's on us.
Posted by: B. Franklin | September 29, 2017 at 04:47 PM
Thanks to Soleri for his wise comment and kind warning. It is all about tribalism and skin color.....especially in places where there are no people of color, or only those who know how to be invisible like the Hispanic workers who are the backbone of the entire dairy industry in rural Wisconsin where I live. I would only add one word to Soleri's perfect summation, and that word is fear. The Republicans have preyed on people's fears so they could pick all our pockets and destroy our Democracy. Greed destroys everything.
Posted by: Mary Tooley | September 29, 2017 at 06:33 PM
One of the completely hypocritical things I've noticed in the NFL kneeling debate is how the "flag wavers" self-servingly try to say the protesters are "disrespecting" the military. These flag wavers deliberately forget what Colin Kaepernick said at the beginning about police misconduct and killer cops. Another fact that makes the flag wavers argument disingenuous is that the military (as evidenced by the Air Force's denunciation of racism this week) has had NO comments on the "kneelers." Finally, this story might give one an idea how the military thinks about equality and racism--which is exactly what BLM and the NFL "kneelers" are protesting because racism informs the criminal police terrorizing the Black communities. Really, what does "one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" mean? I'm guessing it DOESN'T mean a "just us" kind of justice....
Posted by: Bradley Dranka | September 30, 2017 at 07:20 PM
And, for you police-lovers, by "criminal police," I mean the "criminal terrorist element" within the majority good-intentioned police officers stationed in Black communities. It's these rogues causing the problems. And they need to be weeded OUT.
Posted by: Bradley Dranka | September 30, 2017 at 07:25 PM