“O beautiful for spacious skies…”
If I have gained one perspective about my homeland from a quarter abroad in London, it has been the staggering and unparalleled majesty of our purple mountains, amber waves, and sheer vast expanse. After two and a half months of black snot and post-nasal drip, I realized just how much I’d taken for granted the fresh air and clean water of home. Part of this is the reality of living in any city, European or otherwise, but living in London is not living in New York.
When my mom came to visit for a week, I found myself vacillating between embarrassment and admiration as she made eye contact, smiled, and made conversation with people—on the street, on the tube, on the bus—standing out like a sore thumb amidst the detached British politeness. But whenever I was annoyed, a larger part of me always reminded myself, “This is my mother’s humanity. This is someone unafraid to connect with the people around her.” Put any middle American in her place and I think the behavior would be the same. We are loud; we are obtrusive; we are blunt. Perhaps part of having all that space makes us need to project ourselves further; in London the people live on top of each other, so maybe the need to create personal space is justified.
Within the cushy protection of the world’s two largest oceans and the cradle of our eastern and western mountain ranges, we take for granted our geographic enormity the same way we take for granted our influence throughout the world. I’ve come to believe that much of our patriotism, independence, and yes, ignorance is simply because we are so big and so far from the rest of the world. In London, visiting the rest of the Western (or North African, or Middle Eastern) world is as easy as island hopping in the Florida Keys. Foreign policy and its ramifications are not so far away, and global events aren’t quite as easy to ignore when they’re only a short flight from home. We’ve managed to perpetuate, I generalize, the mythical tranquility of peacetime when we are very much at war, actively engaged in economic and political changes throughout the world, and obliviously teetering on the edge of a global energy crisis. We argue about who can marry whom and where to draw the line between religion and science, when we’ve already made a god of capitalism, a god of reckless consumerism, and a god of “democracy.” Perhaps our inability to understand or empathize with the Muslim extremists that continue to terrorize our military is because they attack us for what we refuse to admit to ourselves: We are a polytheistic society; our ignorance is our liturgy.
“America, America,
God shed his grace on thee
‘Til selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!”
I came home from London asking myself, what do we do? How do we become a more enlightened force in the world? I think it begins with honesty.
I believe there is plenty of reason for the average American to be upset. A very large portion of the world is in chaos and we continue to be directly responsible, while our administration hides behind ideological and religious issues like gay marriage, abortion, and teaching evolution, instead of honestly addressing the real and impending problems we face. If it’s too far away to think about the suffering of civilians in the Middle East, what about our own Hurricane Katrina survivors, still living out of trailers or worse, in New Orleans? As we continue to recklessly produce and purchase SUVs, when will the price of gas become unavoidably crippling—before or after we’ve developed alternative fuel sources, before or after global temperatures and ocean levels have risen beyond repair?
As the babies of complete and total media-saturation, dishonesty and corruption are something we inherently understand and expect in a way our parents do not. We question, we discredit, and then we ignore. We understand what’s wrong, to some extent, and we may even have an opinion about it, but we don’t honestly believe anything will change.
“Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!”
When America itself is a war-state, when our own idleness or apathy allows our leaders to run unchecked, we must call ourselves to action. It is our job to ring the alarum bell. If all we can offer is a hollow affirmation of the attributes that perpetuate our paralysis, if we continue to watch events unfold from behind our computer and television screens, then we are members of a cowardly, compliant, and dead nation. That is not this country’s legacy.
Our generation not only has the responsibility, but also the privilege of coming of age in an era of revolution. Now is not a time for idealism; now is the time for honesty. •
Manda Martin is the president of Up In Arms.
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