I Have Hope Because I Have No Choice

This week marks the fifteenth anniversary of my emigration from the Netherlands to the United States. I've been in no mood to celebrate.

Truthfully, I'm not even certain I would still move if I had to make that choice today.

Oh, in some ways, I ooze patriotism like never before. I bought an American flag last year — better late than never, I tell myself — and have been flying it on national holidays with a measure of satisfaction. During the last two July 4th celebrations in my pretty New England town, I listened to the band on the green strike up a slightly discordant, quivering-but-beautiful version of the national anthem, and — fairly astonished at my own reaction — I was overcome with emotion, quietly muttering to myself to pull it together.

My love for America persists, unbroken, unregretted, but it's now often akin to the love one might feel for a family member who, tattered bathrobe and all, slowly slips into Alzheimer's twilight. Tender, filled with good memories, but tinged with an aching sadness.

Still, that metaphor only goes so far. I'd love someone dear to me unconditionally, warts and all. I cannot muster that much for my adopted nation. Not anymore.

Too much has happened to this country. Too much has changed. And too much is changing still.

Fifteen years on these shores — and two days before that anniversary hit, America officially joined the ranks of foul two-bit dictatorships by embracing a torture bill that I'd call the final fucking straw if it wasn't for the fact that more final fucking straws are almost sure to follow.

If future historians are still by law allowed to write an honest assessment of our times, they'll say this: America wasn't brought to its knees by ululating jihadists with box cutters, but by brazen traitors in bespoke suits who, with compunction nor restraint, doodled hateful little black mustaches on the Capitol's portraits of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and George Washington — laughing.

And now? I have hope because I have no choice. Because my life is here. Because I want my two girls to know and love their country as I do, only with less trepidation and less fear for the future. I want them to feel what I felt a decade and a half ago when, employing bluster and bravado, I might have gently mocked the notion of America being the "shining city on the hill" with my mouth, but never with my heart.

Now, like Garrison Keillor, I mark the names of my enemies.

The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, has decided that an "enemy combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother or your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter. If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok or Cairo, suspected of "crimes against the state" and held in prison, you'd assume that an American foreign service officer would be able to speak to your kid and arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true anymore. [...]

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Idea. Mark their names. Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these people forfeits its honor. Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, Warner.

Comments

[Jeff the Poustman]

I'm a Canadian, but I've loved the America-that-might-have-been for as long as I can remember. I mourn with you, sir.

[Dave]

Well said sir.

[Paul]

I listened to the band on the green strike up a slightly discordant, quivering-but-beautiful version of the national anthem

The National Anthem can't be anything but discordant. Which is why we with a smattering of musical taste think that the National Anthem should be changed to America the Beautiful. A truly moving, and epic song that doesn't sound like a Jr. High rendition even when played by the Boston Philharmonic.

[Paul]

In all seriousness, though, it's time for opposition leaders (that means you, Congressmen, Democrats, natch) to take a stand and start filibustering this stuff. If you get called an enabler and get run out of office, then you can at least die with honor knowing that you took one for the team. I guess I'm just not impressed.

[Dan Hill]

I too chose to live in America. You've described my feelings exactly. I still love the America described in the constitution, but more and more I hate the America that the fascists in Washington are building...

[Northman]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092906J.shtml

[John Venlet]

Love your country, condemn the evils within it.

A third generation AMERICAN, of Vriesland descent.

[Martin Owens]

Take heart everybody! A setback, to be sure, but the country is far from lost.

There have been excesses and stupidities before. But always, the essential decency and common sense in the American heart has prevailed, sooner or later.

What about the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by John Adams? What about the institution of slavery lingering almost 100 years after the founding of the country? What about the various Jim Crow laws? The squall of anti-German bigotry and violence that surfaced during the First World War? Interning Japanese Americans during the Second World War? I could extend the list for hours, for America is made up of human beings, fallible and sinful, and there are many places where it shows through. But the point to remember here is that all of these inequalities, these wrongs, these excesses, were sooner or later stopped, and as much as possible put to rights.

It is wrong to give the government unchecked power, for however well meant the gift, it sooner or later leads to abuses. But it is equally wrong to despair, to say that decency and honor and liberty are lost forever. Sooner or later, it will be once again proved that the American government, and America itself, are wiser than any of the people in them.

The only ones who are lost, are the ones who give themselves up for lost.