"But the lover of intelligence must be patient with those who cannot readily share his passion. Some pangs the mind will inflict upon the heart. It is a mistake to think that men are united by elemental affections. Our affections divide us. We strike roots in immediate time and space, and fall in love with our locality, the customs and the language in which we were brought up. Intelligence unites us with mankind, by leading us in sympathy to other times, other places, other customs; but first the prejudiced roots of affection must be pulled up."
---John Erskine, The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent
I spent some time a few nights ago engaging in my daily routine of checking email and surfing over to various web sites to keep updated on the activities of my favorite rock bands. I had read last week that Phil Collins was to make a revelation on Monday so I first I went to Genesis' web page to get the straight dope. (He was announcing a farewell tour, of sorts.) After giving the forum there a once over, I headed to Jethro Tull's home on the web. At the top of the page was a link to something Ian Anderson had written about some previous comments of his regarding the American flag. Funny. I hadn't heard anything about any such comments. Hastily, I clicked on the link and read. I was shocked.
Shocked that he felt the need to issue a public apology. So I went out onto the Net and found the full article which has caused the commotion. The part which seems to have stirred the ire of many of my fellow Americans was:
"I hate to see the American flag hanging out of every bloody station wagon, out of every SUV, every little Midwestern house in some residential area. It's easy to confuse patriotism with nationalism."
After having read the article, I felt clueless as to why there was all the hub-ub, Bub. I'm an American and I also happen to live in the Midwest. It seems that I would be a prime candidate for taking offense at the comments. But I took no offense whatsoever. What I did offense at, however, was the knee-jerk reactions of some of my fellow country(wo)men.
The apology echoed sentiments expressed in the interview itself, namely, that he has great respect for Americans and at the end of the statement, Anderson asked fans to share their ideas about what can be done to improve the image of Americans in the eyes of non-Americans. To do so, one could email him directly or go to the message board at Tull's site. Reading the messages, I got the impression that most of the poster were engaged in a concerted effort to avoid any attempt at amelioration. I was hard-pressed to find anything that wasn't rebuttal by epithet.
I would urge my readers to read the article in its entirety and it can be found below. Anyone with even a modicum of intelligence will read the article and understand that his remarks were not anti-American, American bashing, or whatever jingoistic piece of bullshit you want to call it. He clearly states that he has the "highest regard" for the American people in contrast to much of the world. His line of reasoning begins with two problems: 1) A great portion of the world's population hates Americans and 2) that there is a war going on in Iraq which he sees as being unjust. For Anderson, these two problems are intertwined. In addressing the first issue, nowhere does Anderson indicate he has any animosity towards Americans generally. The bit about the flags here people, relates to the perceptions of others, specifically Europeans. He addresses the issue of displaying the flag and contrasts when/where Europeans do so with American displays. Europeans have a slightly different history when compared to us Americans and thusly the exhibition of the flag takes on different meanings for them. Ergo, when every SUV and house in America has a flag waving from it, some people associate this behavior with less than savory elements of humanity's past.
Nowhere does Anderson make any blanket statement about Americans being a bunch of maroons or any such thing. What he does say is that, in order to help their own cause, Americans might think about how the display of the Old Glory is perceived by foreigners. For the long run, what's the best way to get people to not want to fly planes into your buildings? Is it by killing them or putting them into perpetual fear of being killed? Or perhaps by building bridges and understanding one another to reach, at the least, détente?
In the aftermath of 9/11, the company I worked at gave out pins with the American flag on them. It became increasingly rare to find a lapel that was not adorned with such a pin. Outside of the workplace, the flag popped up everywhere, as Anderson noted. Were these people being patriotic? To be sure. Was there also an attendant attitude, on the part of some of these people, that this gave the U.S. carte blanche to, as Ann "Thrax" Coulter said, "...invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity"? Most definitely. For many, even most, I dare say, of my co-workers, shrouding oneself in the flag was like their fulfillment of any perceived sense of civic duty. Trying to understand why terrorists would want to fly planes into the WTC was unnecessary. Looking into the long, tense history of the relationship between Islam and Christianity was unthinkable. For these people, donning the Stars & Stripes was enough. But Anderson is right, it's not enough.
As I read the posts at the Tull message forum, I was saddened. A certain Ryan White finds it necessary to yell "God Bless America" at the end of his posts as well as to label anyone who disagrees with him a "liberal". He goes on in one post to generalize about all of these so-called "liberals" by saying that they love to commit "ad hominum" (sic) attacks only to finish his comments by labeling another poster a "moron". Aside from Mr. White's blatant lack of intelligence, two things disturbed me greatly. The first was the prevalent attitude that, once Osama bin Laden is brought to justice or killed, the terrorist problem is effectively solved. This is curing a symptom but not the cause. Terrorists are not born, they're made. Al-Queda is not the lone repository of people willing to kill Americans. This is what Anderson was alluding to in his comments. No one person is the cause of anti-American sentiment in the world thusly it's gonna take a long time and the efforts of millions, including we Americans, to change the situation. For better or for worse, the United States is the most powerful country on this planet. By saying, "These are powerful forces that folks are playing with. To have that power is something you can't take lightly. You have to realize there are people out there whose lives you may affect by what you do.", Anderson is imploring the American government to take on the role of a steward and not that of a bully. His opinion on the matter hasn't changed since 1978 when he said: "That's one thing money buys: the right to acquire responsibility for things or people or animals or whatever."
To answer his question about what can be done, I would say that the most important thing is for Americans to be intelligent.
1) Approach those who are different than you as a chance to learn something, to experience something new.
2) If you go abroad, don't rush to the nearest McDonalds, for Christ's sake. Be open-minded and engage the local culture.
3) Think critically for a change and don't believe everything you hear. Just because CNN or Faux News says something doesn't mean it's so. Did you really lose your job to a foreigner or are you taking Rush Limbaugh's word for it?
4) Understand that what we Americans do collectively has an impact around the world. Pollution does not discriminate upon whom it has effects.
5) Realize that a government and its people are distinct in many ways.
6) Stop calling people with whom you disagree names as a first resort.
7) Stop thinking that 9/11 was the worst fate to befall a nation ever. It wasn't. So quit bitching about any perceived lack of sympathy from the rest of the world. We Americans have no problem drowning ourselves in schadenfreude when it comes to our own. Witness Martha Stewart, Michael Jackson, et al It was a tragedy whose causes go beyond OBL and we have to comprehend this to make sure it never happens again.
No comments:
Post a Comment