Independence Day Contemplations on the Mythic, the Hallucinatory, and the Real

Independence Day posts have become something of a tradition for Curmie: not every year of late, but more often than not in the last few years.  In 2018 Curmie emerged from a writing hiatus to think of the day through Bruce Springsteen songs, especially “Independence Day,” which of course has nothing to do with the Fourth of July but does offer us this lyric: “Because there’s just different people coming down here now / And they see things in different ways / And soon everything we've known will just be swept away.”

Two years later, Curmie based his Independence Day musings on a line from the Aaron Sorkin TV series “The Newsroom”: the US is not “the greatest country in the world,” “but it can be.”  Two years later still, in 2022, Curmie headed his post with a quote from James Baldwin, “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.”

Last year’s “contemplations” included some stark observations about the state of the nation and the world, but ultimately expressed some hope that on this day at least we might start thinking of ourselves as Americans first and members of other taxonomies—political perspective, race, gender, religion, etc.—secondarily.

All of these posts revolve around the same theme: that our collective failure to achieve our aspirational goals for the country should lead not to despair but to resolve.  There was too much right about the USA to allow ourselves to be sucked into petty bickering and fear-mongering.

Curmie still believes in resolve, in fighting the good fight, but he despairs, nonetheless.  The two presumptive nominees for the presidency are both old men.  One is already an octogenarian, the other will be before the next presidential term expires.  Both spew incomprehensible word salads on a regular basis.  Neither is as sharp as he was even a couple of years ago, and neither was ever an intellectual giant.  Both are narcissistic, totalitarian, mentally suspect, and mendacious.  They manifest these traits in different ways and to different degrees, but all of them are strikingly obvious in both men.  In that 2020 piece, Curmie wrote that there are three fundamental criteria by which politicians ought to be judged: intelligence, integrity, and sanity.  Neither of these guys is even average at any of those standards.

We are left with fear, and perhaps a little whataboutism.  Seriously, Gentle Reader, what is the case for either of these candidates other than protecting the nation from the other guy… an other guy who threatens the very freedoms this fledgling nation sought to guarantee?  The problem is that both candidates are right about one thing if nothing else: the other guy is unfit for office.

Does Curmie think one of these guys is even worse than the other?  Sure, but that’s hardly the way things ought to work.  Eightyish years ago this country cast its lot with Josef Stalin in opposition to Adolf Hitler: not a happy choice, and one whose downside manifested itself for decades… but it was nonetheless the right call.  An alliance with Winston Churchill, whatever his faults, was still a lot more palatable.

Seventeen months ago Curmie surveyed the political field in the light of a then-recent poll showing that the majority of Democrats didn’t want Joe Biden to seek re-election.  The fact that Curmie titled his piece “2024 Election Preview: Be Afraid; Be Very Afraid” should tell you all you need to know.  As Curmie said at the time, “The problem here is not that the Democrats might lose the next election; it’s that the Republicans might win. And, alas, vice versa.”

Had Biden chosen to do what’s best for the country, he’d have dropped out of the race a year ago.  He might have even moved closer to securing the southern border, as Trump’s minions would have have less incentive to scuttle a bipartisan bill lest it give Biden a victory.  Much better, in their minds, to have a campaign issue than to solve a problem, after all.

Had Trump chosen to do what’s best for the country, he’d have accepted the rather resounding defeat he suffered in 2020 and faded away.  (Yeah, like that could have happened!)  Oh, and the Republican Party would have chosen someone at least a little less offensive to sane people.

Those rich white Christian guys who adopted the Declaration of Independence 248 years ago today did not succumb to either the negativity or the cowardice we see today.  They saw a vision of a glorious new nation, and they were ready to take on the greatest military power in the world to get it.  They knew that the fight, literal and figurative, would be long and intense.  And they were ready to take up the challenge.  We need to be the same. 

But how to do that?  By rallying behind a mentally declining old man because he may be less than honest but at least not malicious or evil?  “Our candidate sucks less than yours does” is less than an ideal rallying cry.  Communication theory suggests two kinds of persuasion: positive connections (X will lead to a good Y, and we therefore need to seek X) and negative connections (X will lead to a bad Y, and we therefore need to prevent X).  The campaigns so far are 90% (or more) negative on both sides.  We fear the consequences if “our side” loses rather than looking forward to the brighter future if we win.  This is both unsurprising and disturbing.  Alas, it’s also inevitable, as there isn’t a lot positive to say.

One of Curmie’s favorite new (in this context) terms is “hallucinatory,” referring to AI programs’ willingness, when the alternative is to admit that they don’t have an answer, to just make shit up.  It’s not exactly intentionally false; the program would have told the truth if it could have; it’s just that, like a politician, it doesn’t know how to shut up when it’s got nothing relevant to say.  Nor are all the untrue statements currently being hurled around by the pols and the pundits mendacious; some, perhaps many, are merely hallucinatory.  This is small consolation.

There is, as the title of a course Curmie taught as a grad student 40 years ago suggests, such a thing as the “American myth.”  The term as applied in that context uses “myth” in an anthropological sense: not as a fiction, necessarily, but as that which is believed on the basis of faith rather than evidence. To say that there is a lot of myth masquerading as reality on both sides of the political aisle is merely tautological.

Today, Independence Day, is the time to nevertheless celebrate the myth, and to pledge to seek to merge it with reality.  If we could keep the hallucinations at bay, that would be a good thing, too.

Please forgive the wonkiness of the formatting if you’re on a computer (it looked OK on my phone).  Blogspot being Blogspot.  Curmie spent 20 minutes trying to fix it, to no avail.