Is America more than geography, 3.8 million square miles in land and approximately 342.8 million people? Surely, it is more a place to live, a people with common beliefs, common culture, and a lifestyle. As a nation we have a complicated history. Our forefathers arrived at a land occupied by others. We simply decided this land was ours. The native people we call Indians, because of a historical geographical error made by Christopher Columbus in 1492. Columbus wanted to find a fast, western water route from Europe to Asia to trade for valuable spices and goods. We were the immigrants then. Since then, Irish, Chinese, Italian, people of a Spanish orientation and others have passed through Ellis Island or found their way across the Rio Grande. These people were viewed unfavorably by those who were here and essentially assimilated although more recently immigrants are viewed quite negatively. This amalgamation, E Pluribus Unum, became the greatest country ever in power and in its economy. Is that the meaning of America?
After World War II this nation of immigrants created the most successful middle class ever. The period between 1950 and 1970 saw a people with decent paying jobs, housing, automobiles, enough money for family vacations and college tuition. After this period as a nation, we began changing. Corporations began shipping jobs overseas over and eliminating jobs due to technology. Cities and towns that thrived based on certain companies that employed fathers and brothers closed their doors leaving an economically distressed community. People who spent their lives at certain jobs, considered these jobs part of who they were, now found themselves unemployed. Companies offered little or no help with retraining, finding other jobs for people who during their careers may have offered suggestions for improving ways of producing company products. Just as the buildings housing these companies were disposable, these corporations viewed these people, these Americans, as disposable.
By the 1980’s the direction for working people shifted to a lower priority. The idea of companies making lots of money and that wealth then will “trickle down” to the undeserving masses. Poor people were described as welfare queens, people without work were viewed as unambitious. Jobs with wages, benefits etc were replaced by contract workers freeing companies from paying benefits, social security, insurance, and taxes. Our workers began to see jobs as just that, a way to make some money but never a part of who we are. This witnessed the decline of the middle class.
The fall of the Berlin Wall was next chapter and the opening act of America the superpower. Our diplomats, our military, our economy, and our way of life was transferred to a global world with America as the linchpin.
Can we regain that sense of we are America; is it part of our being? A time when a job was not simply a job but a place where we gained satisfaction as America transformed to a global world power. Unfortunately for the American worker that linchpin was not the worker but the corporation. Many of our leaders glorified this new order as great for all but it was better for the few. Thus began the slide downward that became the road chosen for us, the Americans who worked for a living. We Americans still claim superlatives the best, the greatest, the World Series, the Super Bowl but accept a mediocre life.
Can we reclaim that sense of America, a time when a job was not simply a job but a place where we gained satisfaction. Wendell Berry, who passed away recently, was an educator, a writer, a farmer, who drew no distinction between the land and himself. He considered as the most fundamental crisis of the modern era: the disintegration of persons and communities. “Knowledge is rooted in imagination, he argued and imagination is rooted in affection. We can only come to really know a person, a community, a plot of land, when we have come to love that person or place beyond its utility or efficiency.” Many of us, in fact most, are not farmers. We may not sense the land but still we know this place called America. It is around us and in us, her beliefs, our history, prejudices, and love. “Home—the place, the countryside—was still there, still pretty much as I left it, and there was not a reason in the world I could not go back to it if I wanted to,” Berry wrote in an autobiographical essay. Is there any reason for us as Americans not stand in his shoes. The greatness of America may have lost some of its glitter, its recognition by the world in recent years. At a time like this I am reminded of a classic American poem.
“And now the pitcher holds the ball and now he lets it go and now the air is shattered by the force of Casey’s blow.” The game ends on this tragic note of defeat, and the fans go home disappointed: “But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.” Have we as Americans struck out? Is there no batter in the line up who can get us back where we need to be? I believe there are many among the 342 million plus people living in this great land. We only need a few to stand up. I believe there are millions of us, of Americans, who love this land with all its flaws. Millions who believe and understand, we are America.
Phil's Personal Perspectives 