'Merica Two Fitty

We are who we are. Might as well celebrate!

I got back to DC from Europe yesterday, just in time for ‘Merica Two Fitty. It was a brief journey overseas, but a beautiful one. We attended a gorgeous wedding in Switzerland and visited the remnants of pagan Rome in France. We trekked up to the mountaintop castles of Cathar country, subsisting on fresh bread, fine wine, and wheels of stinky goat cheese bought from a farm in the middle of nowhere. We wandered around Versailles and explored a fashion district in Paris.

We ended our last night there under the Eiffel Tower, where enterprising Indian migrants crisscrossed the grass carrying buckets of cheap booze and chanting “beerandwine, beerandwine, champagne, cigarettes” with thick bup-bup-bup accents.

Returning to DC feels like coming home. That’s a strange thing to say, because for years the city was so distasteful to me. I saw our nation’s capital as a fetid swamp crawling with subhuman predators and political parasites—a muggy cesspool of rats, cockroaches, and mosquitoes. This is still true, of course, but life is all about perception, and perception is all about attitude. What I needed was an attitude adjustment! Sure enough, that changed my perception.

When I walk around town today, I see DC’s ideal form beneath the cluttered layer of global diversity. The city’s soul lies in its architectural beauty and esoteric geometry. The Washington Monument captures the solar spirit of ancient Egypt; the Supreme Court, the elegance of ancient Greece; and the Capitol, the republic of ancient Rome. The presidential memorials certainly have that Roman feel, housing the deified Deists of the original founding—George Washington in Alexandria and Thomas Jefferson south of the Mall.

At the west end of the Mall is the secular martyr of the postbellum Reconstruction. “In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union,” reads the inscription above the Honest Abe’s marble head, “the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”

Such idolatry seems very pagan to the Christian purist and there’s justification for that. In truth, the implicit spirit of DC is like a pyramid—a shifting hierarchy built on a pagan foundation, with intermediate Christian blocks supporting a secular capstone pointed toward freedom.

The eye atop that imagined pyramid originally represented the all-seeing God who watches over the human comedies and tragedies below. These days, that sublime image is occluded by the mendacious eye of digital surveillance. Even so, the original intent has not been lost so much as perverted.

“God who gave us life, gave us liberty,” we read on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial. “Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed the conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his Justice cannot sleep forever.”

Centuries after Jefferson composed those words, I also tremble as I ponder the wages of America’s imperial invasions, the global appeal of our lurid Hollywood fantasies, the memetic replication of corporate machines, and the resulting cultural degradation. All of this converges on the soul of artificial intelligence, a vacant nonhuman mind born out of data centers humming from sea to shining sea.

The implications get dark if you linger in the psychic shadows, which I’m certainly wont to do. But today is Independence Day, so there’s no room for gloom. As in every age, there’s always hope for redemption. Plenty of time for nightmares tomorrow. Tonight, the fireworks go BOOM!

One of my favorite DC landmarks is Union Station, a few blocks north of the Capitol. Six colossal statues stand guard out front, symbolizing “The Progress of Railroading.” Among these figures are Prometheus, bearer of fire; Thales, bearer of electricity; and Archimedes, bearer of mechanics. The whole structure serves both as a train station and as a monument to technological ingenuity. Perhaps because it was built over a century ago, it inspires awe rather than triggering my usual Luddite reflex.

“Fire – greatest of discoveries,” reads the inscription between Prometheus and Thales, “enabling man to live in various climates, use many foods, and compel the forces of Nature to do his work.”

Was this written by an engineer or a wizard?

“Electricity,” the inscription goes on, “carrier of light and power, devourer of time and space, bearer of human speech over land and sea – greatest servant of man, itself unknown.”

By such materialist mysticism, my words reach you now.

Inside Union Station, stern statues of Roman centurions line the main hall. They mirror the US national guardsmen who patrol the floor below. Whatever disagreements I have with the current administration’s approach to tech, war, and aesthetics, President Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard was a wise one. I’ve come and gone on these trains many times over the years, so the impact of this policy is quite obvious to me. The mere presence of competent men and women in uniform make the city safer and cleaner.

If you prefer litter and urinating vagrants, go visit the Paris Nord or Brussels Midi train stations. They’ve got a gangs of armed soldiers on patrol, too, but those stations look worse than Philadelphia’s, which is saying a lot. Not to be too hard on the Old Country. Their trains are nicer than ours, their wine is better, and their bread is served fresh out of the oven. All that deep culture has attracted migrants by the millions, though, so it’s unclear how long they’ll get to keep it.

As it happens, I became a proud American on my first trip to Europe in 2007. This was nearly twenty years ago, in the middle of George Dubya’s second term. The Euros were high on self-righteousness at the time, just oozing with condescension toward my home country. In response, some American backpackers were claiming to be “Canadian” and wearing maple leaf insignias. Their self-hate was as repellent to me then as it is now. It reminded me of fellow Southerners who move to cities up north or out west, then pretend to be rootless cosmopolitans.

You might say I became a proud American out of spite. The more I had random Euros chastize me as if I were the mastermind behind the debauched War on Terror, the more I embraced my ‘Merican roots. I remember one Frenchie sipping Coca-Cola from a Homer Simpson cup as he poo-pooed our lack of culture. It was laughable.

America unleashed wanton violence and corporate retardation on the globe, but the Euros were arguably worse because they were mere consumers of our pop culture, munching McDonald’s behind the iron ring of America’s war machine. Tribal defensiveness may be a petty reason for patriotism, but I wasn’t Ben fucking Franklin. I was a redneck with a chip on my shoulder.

Two decades later I still love America, and more than ever, I love being an American. My reasoning may have matured, but I can’t say my motives are any nobler. I don’t love my country because it’s superior to another, any more than I love my own race or religious tradition due to some crazed superiority complex. No, I have a special love for America because I am American.

There are many reasons to feel love as we celebrate ‘Merica Two Fitty. For the crowd, it’s the fireworks, the barbecue, the air shows, the pop concerts, and the primal attraction to tribal identity. These are all well and good in their own way, but my reason is simpler.

I love this country and its rightful inhabitants because they are mine and I am theirs. For better or worse, we’re stuck with each other. Faced with the choice between shame and celebration, I say we celebrate!

Happy Fourth of July!!

‘MERICA TWO FITTY!!!!

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My latest at Chronicles magazine.

Read it HERE