On Patriotism

 

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass

I recently read an essay from Patricia Hampl’s book, Memory and Imagination which was essentially about being young in the 1960s, reading Whitman, having patriotism and hope.  Just now I reread Whitman’s preface and I have to say, the idea of American patriotism is strange to me; it’s theatrical, naive, safe, communal–something like Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village (Ford’s collection of buildings he tore down and reconstructed in Dearborn, Michigan so as to confuse generations of children into believing he grew up next to the Wright Brothers and down the street from George Washington Carver’s one room schoolhouse).  As a kid, we had this June Day celebration in our neighborhood that consisted of a parade with a calliope, a few contests, beanbag tosses, hotdogs, a musical performance at night.  In the morning on that day, a man would go through our streets sharpening knives on a cart he pushed, clanking for our attention.  For some reason, this memory is the closest thing I can invoke when it comes to my own sense of patriotism.  It seemed so American to me, as a kid, that this guy would sharpen knives for people.  I’m not even sure if I ever saw him; I probably just heard him.  I have no idea whether or not he charged money for his service or if he just did it for free.  I am also uncertain as to whether he sharpened knives on June Day Saturdays or if he sharpened them on the Fourth of July.  Or maybe it was both.  I have no idea, but for some reason, he sticks out to me as indicative of Good, perhaps because he’s indicative of Old, America.

This is not to say that I don’t have pride for a place–I have more pride about coming from Detroit than I have about anything else, I’m sure of it. I sometimes wear a Detroit D around my neck.  But is this patriotism?  I left Detroit, so it’s hard to imagine what I feel for the place fits for the American Heritage definition: love and devotion to one’s country.  Detroit is not a country; or is Detroit is its own country, abandoned by its country?  And I hate the place viscerally just as much as I love it viscerally.  I am Detroit-haunted.  It shows up every time I sit down to write, even if I don’t write about it, it’s there.  I don’t know if this is devotion and love or if this is just a psychological condition I have no control over.  I have no idea whether Detroit will improve or worsen, but Whitman’s patriotism seems to be rooted in possibility as well as what’s in front of him.  He’s devoted to the complexity of America; he’s compelled to make something beautiful from its complexity.

In Thailand, my boss had this Chinese television station interview him about Thai teenagers–he’d just ran a poll about them–and he called me into his office to find out what I thought about Thai teenagers.  I’d only been there for a few weeks and  told him, as far as I could tell,  Thai teenagers were materialistic and patriotic.  I was living in Bangkok, which I learned after two years of living in Thailand is the most materialistic place in the country, perhaps the world.  People cared much more there about brand names than any other place I’ve lived; Asians come from all over to walk around the Paragon Shopping Center; commercials for the Thai version of Sunny D play on the sky train, and billboards–Good God the billboards were as tall as a six-story building.  I left for America with an iPod, a new camera, and four bags of clothes (two of which I donated to charities, one of them being Mother Theresa’s mission in Kolkata) as a testament to the way Bangkok’s materialism rubbed off on me.  The materialism was definitely a Bangkok thing, not a Thai teenager thing.

Two years later, I also understood that the second part of my impression of Thai teenagers–the patriotism, was not necessarily a Thai thing but more a developing nation thing. We hang not nearly the amount of flags I saw on street corners, porches, fences in Thailand, Vietnam, India. Everyone is proud of their country in these places, it seems.  It seems.  Hell if I really know.  In America, where we’re divided in our fear of government abandoning us or intervening too much with us, we’re also divided over how patriotic we want to appear.  Why is it that those who want more government also distort American flags in their protests, replacing stars with corporation symbols, while those who want less government are the ones who wear more red white and blue?

I’m thinking that when Whitman says the united states make the best poem, he’s referring to the diversity of experience (which makes sense when thinking about how he celebrates that diversity in his poetry).  The best poems are complex.  Not shy. To be an American poet is to claim it all in the poetry, conquer the ugly in the name of beauty, etc.  This might have been an easier idea to stomach before we started playing with atom bombs and occupations–before we were an imperial force to be reckoned with and before we reckoned with halfsie states like Guam and Puerto Rico.  And maybe this is why I think of patriotism as nostalgic; it’s easier to be proud of a place that hasn’t done much damage to the world.  Whitman wrote those words when Americans were on the brink of destroying each other and each other’s towns, but it was still a developing nation.

But then we have James Baldwin’s quote about patriotism in his “Autobiographical Notes”:

I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

In this sense, if the Occupiers and Tea Party Folks share not a common solution to the common problems, they at least share a common right to criticize.  And if patriotism in America allows for critique, then I suppose I can get behind that.