How to Love America

 

By David K. Shipler 

                Americans who want to love their country have to do it unconditionally, the way a parent loves a wayward child. Not to overlook flaws but to believe that correcting them is possible. Not to ignore the racial hatred, the murderous wars, and the impoverished children, but to cultivate the opposites that coexist with the injustices: the embrace of pluralism, the repugnance to violence, the passion for opportunity. This requires clear eyes to see what is and clear vision to see what can be.

                America needs a Carl Sandburg, who in the poem “Chicago” could honor struggle alongside raw virtue:

On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger 

. . . Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong  and cunning.

                America needs a Langston Hughes, who could embed within a verse both grievance and desire:

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be! . . .

We, the people must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

America needs a Martin Luther King, Jr., who could lament and challenge and believe within a single sentence: “I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.”

America does have Rep. Jamie Raskin, the lead House Manager prosecuting Donald Trump’s impeachment, who said this in his closing statement:

“In the history of humanity, democracy is an extremely rare and fragile and transitory thing. . . .  For most of history, the norm has been dictators, autocrats, bullies, despots, tyrants, cowards who take over our governments. For most of the history of the world, and that's why America is such a miracle.”

How do we love a miracle betrayed? How do we love a nation tarnished? This is now a task for all citizens from the left to the right, from the depths of deprivation to the heights of wealth, from sea to shining sea.

The acquittal of Trump does not teach us how to love a broken country. Nor would conviction have done so, no matter how warranted. Either path would have turned millions of Americans of one persuasion away from millions of others. Justice could not be done in the Senate chamber. Justice has to be done in the hearts of the people. Justice has to arise naturally from whatever inner values have been sown in every citizen, whatever affection we hold for the cacophony of democracy, whatever beauty we can see in the messy differences among us.

 Love of country is the energy of reform. The Republican Party has made sure that Trump will continue to use his perfect pitch for propaganda. He will fix his marksman’s eye on whites who are alienated and outraged and frightened—and violent. He will not be vanquished from America any more easily than Voldemort from the world of Harry Potter.

The remedy to Trump’s toxic spell is a disapproving, combative love for an America wounded but capable of recovery—in short, an unconditional love full of contradictions. It is a pragmatic, persistent idealism and realism. It is a love not for a leader, not for a party, not for one policy or another, but a love for that miracle of self-government that has been, as Raskin noted, such an aberration in the course of human history.

This is not an easy prescription. The Republican Party has become a gateway through which an authoritarian, far-right insurgency has entered the halls of democracy. The party does not seem poised to remake itself or to collapse, contrary to political reporting that might better be called wishful reporting. Even with sharp internal disagreements and looming battles, the party is not in upheaval. Instead, it shows signs of purging itself as moderates depart, leaving more openings for radicalism.

Whatever secret affections for democratic norms lurk buried in the minds of Republican politicians, few are willing to reveal them to their voters if that means repudiating Trump. All but ten of the Republican House members and all but seven of its senators voted to exonerate the former president after his years of cultivating distrust and fury against the pillars and institutions of liberty. Some who voted to impeach or convict have been censured by their Republican state committees—the latest being Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

Imagine what would have happened—what could very well happen next time—with radical, right-wing extremists as secretaries of state, election committee members, and other officials ready to throw wrenches into the works of voting and counting. This was just a dry run. The Republican Party has cased the joint and knows the points of vulnerability.

There is plenty of cause for gloom. We are in an era of political cannibalism, where our leaders devour one another. It should be no surprise, then, that the United States does not elect its best people to high office, with rare exceptions. We are often governed as a kakocracy, a system run by the least qualified and most unscrupulous. Some exceptions were on view during the impeachment trial, as Raskin and other principled Democratic managers led a brilliant prosecution. They summoned up the finest political morality.

Americans who watched and were proud—proud of the historic idealism, proud of the open system that allowed a former president to be tried, proud that democracy had survived Trump’s multiple assaults—Americans who felt redeemed despite the acquittal have every reason to love their country.

In dark times, the light of decency looks brighter. Watching good people rally to democracy here reminded me of Israel in September 1982, after the Israeli army in Lebanon stood by and allowed Lebanese Christian Phalangists to massacre hundreds of Palestinian women, children, and men in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Israel’s shame ran deep, and some 400,000 people, one out of every ten Israelis, took to the streets to demand an accounting. I witnessed the outpouring with wonder at the well of moral decency that had been tapped. Oddly, the moment brought euphoria. And the demonstrations worked: A commission was formed that held then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon indirectly responsible for the massacre. He was forced out of office.

The American outcome has not been as pure, of course. And its ambiguous result comes amid a global surge toward authoritarianism, as Anne Applebaum documents in her book Twilight of Democracy.

“The appeal of authoritarianism is eternal,” she writes. She cites the research of Karen Stenner, a political psychologist, in describing an “authoritarian predisposition” among people who “are bothered by complexity. They dislike divisiveness. They prefer unity. A sudden onslaught of diversity—diversity of opinions, diversity of experiences—therefore makes them angry. They seek solutions in new political language that makes them feel safer and more secure.”

American society is certainly diverse and divided. That’s the reality. To love America, you have to love that raucous pluralism. “Liberal democracies never guaranteed stability,” Applebaum concludes. “Liberal democracies always demanded things from citizens: participation, argument, effort, struggle.” Note that she uses the past tense. Hopefully, years from now, the past tense will look like a typographical error.