In 1845, American writer Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) published a piece titled “Fourth of July” in the New York Daily Tribune. Fuller follows–probably not consciously–the trajectory of Thomas Jefferson’s thinking when he wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia (1782), “From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. . . . [T]he people . . . will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money. . . .” Fuller writes:
Those who have obtained their selfish objects will not take especial pleasure in thinking of them to-day, while to unbiased minds must come sad thoughts of National Honor soiled in the eyes of other nations, of a great inheritance, risked, if not forfeited.
While Fuller admires the values with which the United States of America began in the late 18th century, she recognizes that the presence of slavery in the land, the nation’s genocidal acts of Indian removal, the looming Mexican-American War, and other situations betray and mock those values.
. . . the noble sentiment which she [the U.S.A.] expressed in her early youth is tarnished; she has shown that righteousness is not her chief desire, and her name is no longer a watchword for the highest hopes to the rest of the world. She knows this, but takes it very easily; she feels that she is growing richer and more powerful, and that seems to suffice her.
What Fuller recognizes is that many–even most–who cry “Freedom” are really not interested in freedom as a right for all. Instead, their definition of freedom is selfish. They want freedom to do what benefits them, what makes them feel good, what feeds their arrogance. They cry “Freedom,” but what they really want–without thought of consequences even to themselves–is to win elections and beat the other side. Once that’s done, it’s enough. They have no policy platform to try and move forward.
Fuller again.
For what is Independence if it do not lead to Freedom?–Freedom from fraud and meanness, from selfishness, from public opinion so far as it does not consent with the still small voice of one’s better self?
I don’t think many of us remain able to hear that “still small voice.” Our lives are too noisy with what passes for news, too cluttered with our pointless, meandering desires. Our brains are muddled. We have become mean, and we revel in our meanness. We’re bullies. We’re following Xians–that is, Christians without Christ–to the altar of our Baal.
It used to be–in the Civil War, in the Great Depression, in the Civil Rights Movement–that factions within the U.S. could bicker and fight without threatening the nation itself. The idea of the United States of America was transcendent, stretched above our mean pettiness and selfishness. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. The idea of the U.S.A.–“who we are, what we’ll do, and what we won’t,” as Springsteen sings in “Long Walk Home”–seems no longer transcendent, no longer cohesive enough to remain untouchable above the fray.
Even if our better selves prevail today (and I understand that many will have a different understanding of what that might mean), I don’t think it will matter in the long run. We have, I’m afraid, grown too ignorant and lazy to recover. The devaluing of our minds and of education in general is too far gone to be turned around–mostly because we’re now too lazy-minded to do so.
Yesterday, I posted a poem and a few comments about my dad on the 26th anniversary of his walking on from this life. A cousin responded with thanks for Dad’s service. I appreciate that. I really do. But I question whether Dad would even recognize this country–that eats up its poor, that elevates its celebrities to gods, that begrudges and generally rejects every request for fair treatment from the denigrated and powerless–as the country he served.
The Idiocracy looms ahead. I give us twenty-five years. Fifty tops.