A rumination on popular American culture

[mach1]

Dear Reader,

I think America has lost part of her heart and soul in a way,
culturally speaking, because of the 9/11 attacks.

Its not even socially acceptable to use the words
'licking her wounds'
because it feels like that would be such an
insensitive assault on a wounded sense of
silly selfish pride.

America used to be the brunt of so many callous and
well aimed barbs at its cultural exports that the din
from overseas was once unbearable to me,
and even for the most scrutinizing and thoughtless
and uncaring critic.

And now it just takes it with a jigger
of salt and standing up and not sitting down.

So how will it ever find its way back? Does it feel a
need to: 'get back to where it was before'?

Rediscover her heart and soul?

Or is it more that we born romantics have
to leave the familiar terrain which was back then
all at once
rendered unfamiliar on that fateful day
to find ways of re-discovering and re-connecting to
ourselves?

I mean you just can't build and build and build everything
on a
bedrock of patriotism mixed with paranoia.

Is America still in the midst of dusting it self off? Is she
still waiting in a corner waiting for the bell to ring?

Sooner or later it has to stand for something deeper.

Freedom is just not: 'it'. It can't just be an end all or a be all
unto itself. Or morph into a much cloyed expression fit for
reason,rationale
and excuse
for accomplishing everything under the sun.

And now the US seems divided upon fragile divisive lines

..is that the future of America..one where indeed identity is more
established upon lines of political partisanism and membership
than anything else anyone can possibly think of or dream up?

Yet, isnt that what America is? Like a rolling roiling mass happy
to be
non-static..., -in fact, a state of being always in a state of flux, alive;
changing, inconstant, thriving.. .. a place and point where the
wellspring of
vitalness and opportunity springs from? With a yearning
attitude and constantly craving learning disposition that
yields towards a way of life as each new chapter unfolds.

Will the US grow towards an epoch and pivotal point where the other
half of the world respects the country not for what it does or what it
says
it will do, or for what it stands for or for its contributions to the world

but merely for the fact that it has finally grown up and matured?

And attained true stature as a truly responsible citizen>?

Even Don Henley called it for what it was worth back in the nineties.

The end. The end of the innocence.

What was America pre-911 anyway? Was it all baseball, barbeques
beer and bakeoffs? Chili recipe contests, pie eating contests and
hot dog vending?

Somebody hated America enough to want to strike at the very heart
of the economic system and take many lives and inflict much terror and cause much mayhem, bringing the country to a standstill.

Defence and porous borders situations aside, is there anything
else that the US has learned from its experience as victim that
is it yet still to acknowledge?

If there is its probably not something waiting to be said
tied up in knots on somebodys scratch note pad for lack of
eloquence. Its probably something more akin to Americas
new found role as an attack victim, something it hadnt felt
a pang of since Pearl Harbour. In that victim status there
comes something implicit and unsaid. A feeling of comfortable
silence that we at once lend to victims when ever we encounter
them.

Maybe that something has to do with a certain kind of
vulnerability, but not the same type of vulnerability as
thought of by the terrorists who struck America

The last known example to the US prior to 9/11
was Pearl Harbour. Even that paradigm was fixed though,
the enemy as distinct as on any radar or in the cross hairs
of a an airplanes gun. Now the enemy seems dodgy, sporadic,
unseen, not belonging to any one race or country but tied more
to a idealogical feeling than idealogical reasoning.

But back on point: where to next? Has politics captured and enthralled the
state of the arts to the point where its transmortified and stifled
beyond the point of expression where anything can be attained
without touching politics with a ten foot pole?

Has terrorism infected our lives that much so, almost in effect, the
terrorists win...by effectively keeping us locked in fighting an enemy
we may never see or understand?

Maybe I just need to get out more. Ask around. Get peoples opinions.
Its at the heart of learning: asking questions. And in life we are all
born students. Its the resolve and amount of it that sets students apart.

I suppose I have an ongoing love affair with learning.


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