Independence Day and the Notion of Pride

We can do better than this.

Curmie has posted here not infrequently on the 4th of July, usually with some commentary on the significance of Independence Day.  One of his personal favorites of the genre comes from 2020, when he riffed on the opening sequence of the Aaron Sorkin series “The Newsroom.”  Our hero, Will McEvoy (Jeff Daniels) is on a three-person panel in some sort of academic setting.  They are asked by “Jenny,” a sophomore at whatever university is hosting the event, to “say what makes America the greatest country in the world.” 

After the other two panelists respond with slogans—“diversity and opportunity” and “freedom and freedom, so let’s keep it that way”—McEvoy responds, “The New York Jets.”  Even a Jets fan like Curmie laughed at the absurdity of that one.  (At least back when that show was filmed, the Jets didn’t completely suck, which they have for most of Curmie’s adult life.) After another evasion, the camera cuts to a woman near the back of the auditorium.  We don’t know who she is yet, but it’s MacKenzie McHale, McEvoy’s ex-girlfriend and soon to be his new executive producer.  She holds up a sign that says, “It’s not.”  She then flips the sign over and writes something else: “But it can be.”

There are 11 seconds of silence, at least in terms of diegetic sound.  There’s another roundabout response, and the moderator demands “a human moment.”  The camera cuts back to McHale, holding the “It’s not” sign.  A moment later, McEvoy blurts out, “It’s not the greatest country in the world, professor.  That’s my answer.”  The follow-up goes on for three minutes.  You can check out the link above or read the transcript, but there are two things Curmie wants to highlight.  There’s the litany of rankings, addressed to “sorority girl”:

... there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re seventh in literacy, twenty-seventh in math, twenty-second in science, forty-ninth in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies.

There are a couple of exaggerations in there, but no more than in the average political speech.  More importantly, this isn’t an indictment of America, simply a warning about allowing patriotism to morph into jingoism and what might now be called hallucinatory rhetoric.  

The other thing to point out is that the sign is both an insistence on truth and a symbol of hope.  “But it can be” is a rallying cry, a call to arms (in the metaphorical sense, at least).  

At the risk of sounding like a Monty Python routine, Curmie adds a third point: in the opening moments of a left-leaning series that aired during the Obama administration, the central character yearns for the days when “We sure used to be” the greatest country in the world.  True, the litany of attributes—“We waged wars on poverty, not poor people,” for example—bespeaks a liberal mindset.  But the desire to return to the glories of the past sure sounds a lot like a desire to “Make America Great Again.”

How sadly ironic, then, that the slogan is most associated with an octogenarian toddler with no impulse control, a pathological inability to accept responsibility for his own actions, and a track record that includes stealing from a charity, sexual assault, and wholesale financial shenanigans ranging from garden variety grift to de facto selling pardons to people who really are “the worst of the worst.”  All the things that any normal President from either party would have orchestrated for the country’s 250th anniversary celebration are gone, replaced by ultra-partisan posturing and a level of ego-centrism that would make Narcissus himself blush. 

Plus, of course, there’s the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, the paving over of the Rose Garden, the vulgar and frankly embarrassing UFC extravaganza that destroyed even more of the White House lawn, the totally botched reflecting pool project, that ridiculous “state fair” farce… Curmie would go on, but he’s trying to keep this essay shorter than the Mahābhārata.

None of what Curmie is discussing here comes under the heading of actual policy decisions.  Curmie has disagreed with virtually everything this POTUS has done, but he had plenty of reservations about the policies of a lot of 47’s predecessors, too.  Curmie grants, however, that all of those guys were at least trying to do the best thing for the country, however much he would have preferred a different approach.  Not so, Dear Leader.  He has never cared about anyone or anything but himself and perhaps a small circle of sycophantic admirers or fellow billionaire hucksters.  If saying any of this makes Curmie “deranged,” then so fucking be it. 

Curmie is angry that a celebration he’d been looking forward to—let’s face it, I’m not going to be around for #300—has been derailed by the hubristic and incompetent machinations of the worst President in the history of the country.  Yes, angry.  Curmie is not a nationalist, but he does think he qualifies as a patriot.  Having spent at least three months in each of three other countries, he’s still going to consider himself lucky to be from the US.  That would be, of course the real US, the one that countless World Cup fans have encountered to their amazement: the place where foreigners are welcomed by the overwhelming majority of the locals; where neighbors help each other out; where the question isn’t whether to give to charities, but to which ones. 

This is not the America inhabited by Donald Trump or Stephen Miller or Mike Johnson.  But it’s where most of us live, irrespective of where (or if) we worship, who our favorite basketball team is, or even who we voted for last time out.  There are those who want to take that America away from us, and they think they have defeated us, or soon will.  Curmie responds (with a tip of the hat to Johnny Carson): Not so fast, Semiquincentennial-Breath.  We are not our government.  The real America is out there, embodied in people like Major Jason Watson, like Leen Hijaz, like the citizens of Curmie’s much-beloved former hometown of Lawrence, Kansas, whose embrace of the Algerian World Cup team using their city as a home base made international headlines.

But that takes us to another point.  Curmie is proud of Lawrence, not because of the notoriety, but because they, my former neighbors, did something right.  Curmie was legitimately sad that Algerian team lost their elimination round game on the west coast Thursday night.  He may not be in Lawrence anymore, but Les Fennecs were his team, too (after the US). 

That notion of pride is intriguing, however.  Another video clip came across Curmie’s path this week.  It was of the late, great, George Carlin talking about, among other things, his problem with the slogan “proud to be an American.”  He suggests that “pride should be reserved for something you achieve or attain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth…. You wouldn’t say I’m proud to be 5’11”.  I’m proud to have a predisposition for colon cancer…. If you’re happy with it, that’s fine: put that on your car.”

Speaking of pride: the first Pride events happened in the early 1970s, but Curmie wasn’t aware of them, or especially of their designation as “Pride” until later: after, in fact, the release of the Tom Robinson Band’s “Power in the Darkness” LP, which featured a song called “Sing If You’re Glad to Be Gay.”  Chances are, you’ve never heard it, Gentle Reader, because the TRB never had much influence west of the Atlantic; Curmie was working on his Master’s in England when the song came out in 1978.  Whether the TRB consciously rejected the notion of “pride,” or whether they’d never heard it (as Curmie hadn’t at the time), the result was to center on being “glad” or “happy” rather than “proud” of one’s sexual orientation, which of course is another of those accidents of birth that Carlin was talking about.

Pride in one’s own accomplishments is perfectly reasonable, of course, at least in moderation.  That extends, in Curmie’s world, to pride in the achievements of his former students, because in some small way he helped prepare them for that success.  And there is the crux.  George Carlin notwithstanding, pride in the good things that one’s nation has done makes some sense.  (So too, of course, is embarrassment at its transgressions.)  Indeed, taking pride in literally anyone’s honest attainments makes some sense; we’re all fellow travelers here, after all.  But that emotion is usually only a variation on happiness.  Curmie is happy the Knicks won the NBA title this year, but he’s not proud of them except to the extent that they manifested admirable qualities along the way: teamwork, refusal to give up, etc.  A player who simply has a good jump shot: cause for celebration, but not for pride.

For pride to truly manifest, however, there needs to be a personal connection.  Curmie is proud of the two former students who are off to grad school in the fall, but their perhaps equally qualified friends who never took my classes, not so much.  It would be nice to actually be proud to be an American.  The solution is obvious, and it isn’t capitulation.  We, all of us, need to become personally invested in creating a nation worthy of our pride.  That will take resolve, work, perhaps even sacrifice.  But we must, we can, we will, do this.  Roll up your sleeves, Gentle Reader.  We’ve got work to do.