This (Was) A Great Country
I just watched Philip Seymour Hoffman try to be a blond Michael Moore in the documentary The Party’s Over, about the 2000 presidential campaign. Very nostalgic.
The documentary was interesting and fresh only because it covered a side of the campaign that I previously hadn’t seen: the protesters.
I have masochistically relived many times the trauma of Gore’s “defeat” and even worse, his and his party’s unwillingness to fight for their base which was disenfranchised in that election. But every time I’ve revisited this topic, it’s been from the Democratic perspective.
Hoffman’s documentary is more representing those lefties who have been boycotting our political system — Gore and Bush were the same to them and they protested during both the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention. Watching these radicals — mostly young, often white — was both infuriating and inspiring. They are boycotting the only system through which we can work some change. But they are also standing up for higher principles than our current systems can deliver on.
I have sympathy for both sides.
It’s partly because of those protesters that I love this country. I’m having a difficult time giving up on the political systems which I’ve admired from afar for so long. This was a great country. The Constitution used to have the power to make me weep with sentimental admiration. Now it just makes me wistful.
We are no longer a democracy. Our leaders, the best among them, don’t do a very good job of representing our values. Half of them are in power to prevent government from actually doing anything useful — on principle, because dammit! they believe in “small government.”
I keep coming back to the people. I think it’s unfair to keep on blaming the people for the mess we’re in. The people come out on the streets. The people give generously to charities for services the government should be providing. The people vote. The people fight. It’s not their fault that they are being systematically disenfranchised and it’s not their fault they don’t have the time, between holding down two jobs and taking care of their kids and doing the housework, to look up “the issues” on candidates’ websites. Yet they do their best and many of them vote. Last couple of times, that hasn’t mattered. Their votes didn’t count.
If it wasn’t clear in 2000, it’s pretty clear now. The people have ceased to matter. But it’s the people that make me go on loving America. “Freedom” rings hollow when one examines America’s recent crimes against human rights at home and abroad. But freedom nevertheless is part of every American’s upbringing and it gives them an arrogant sense of entitlement to their rights that is infinitely encouraging. You don’t have to have a college education or any kind of authority to have faith in your humanity in this country — as an American, you are free.
I hope this spirit prevails over the impending disasters and Americans, when it comes down to it, fight to keep their freedom. They’ve lost it already on the books. But I doubt they’ll tolerate the jackboot in their own homes.
P.S. Yes, Larry and I are buying guns if the jackboots do come. Larry’s always been an anti-gun liberal, whereas I can’t get away from the coolness of firearms and killing unpleasant people. We finally see eye to eye on this bone of contention in our marriage. Woo!
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