American Mythology, Reality and Immigration

This is not an anti-Trump post for a change, but it was inspired by Trump’s illegal immigrant family separation fiasco and the widespread backlash that forced Trump to at least partly back down. I do find it very gratifying that so many people in so many cities came out on June 30 to protest Trump’s policy, specifically related to family separation. But while listening to Senator Kamala Harris admonish the crowd about the disturbing circumstances related to family separation with the refrain “we are better than that”, I couldn’t help but wonder, ARE we REALLY better than that?

Of course there is no doubt about the exceptional, actually unique nature of the founding and history of this country. And there is no doubt that the ideals upon which our founders based their grand experiment in democracy were truly remarkable and continue to be a source of inspiration and admiration, both in this country and worldwide.  However, despite countless admirable acts of kindness, generosity and selflessness by individual Americans, it is also true that throughout most of our history, we have failed miserably as a country to live up to these ideals. Remember what we (both individuals and government) did to Native Americans, many of the descendants of whom continue to suffer the consequences of those actions? And what we did to Japanese Americans, many of whom were American citizens, during World War II?  Not to mention a couple of hundred years of enslaved Africans!  The sentiments of The New Colossus inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty are stirring and inspirational, but have rarely if ever reflected the reality of this country. In fact, throughout our history, most groups of non-English immigrants have been met with variably violent opposition, hostility, denigration and discrimination, and have often been exploited as cheap labor and otherwise. There have also been previous successful movements in the 20th century to limit legal immigration as well as rejection of asylum seekers, e.g. Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution who were turned away at our doorstep and sent back to Germany to perish. And of course there has been systemic economic, social and other injustice and oppression of the poor, disadvantaged and racial minorities, by individuals, groups, big business and multiple levels of our government over the years. Despite significant progress in some areas, we are still very far from eliminating these injustices.

Every country has its own mythology, but ours seems to be inordinately naïve, simplistic, idealistic and pervasive, of course completely ignoring all the negative historical and current realities such as those mentioned above. I suppose there is nothing wrong with introducing young children to a simplified and idealized version of our national history and ideals, much as Santa Claus is used for Christmas. However, this should eventually be replaced by truth and reality, so that as adults we have a realistic view of both our history and our current societal situation, which among other things would allow us to make more informed political decisions. Unfortunately, that seems to be asking way too much from our public education system, which has become an appalling sham. There also appears to be little interest in learning about our real history on the part of much of the population, both students and adults. Many Americans probably have a vested emotional interest, either conscious or subconscious, in feeling superior to the rest of the world (and even to other Americans who don’t agree with their positions) by virtue of our mythology, and that feeling would be seriously threatened by an awareness of all the facts. Our mythology has also traditionally been strongly reinforced and exploited by our politicians, who use/abuse it for their own or their party's political gain (e.g. Trump’s NFL player kneeling controversy, and truthfully also the Democrats' current denouncement, however justified, of the immigrant family separation). On the other hand, although our individual morals and actions should not be dependent on those of others, including our government, and the relationship of individual to "national" values is very complex, I do wonder to what extent our individual and collective sense of ethics might be degraded by a much greater awareness of our negative historical realities. Would we risk becoming as cynical and selfish as many of those in power? Ideally, it should instead motivate us to do better as a country than we have previously, but we all know that ideal situations do not exist. This is probably all a moot point, since none of this situation is likely to change anytime soon.

Happy Birthday America!!