This Is My Country

This Is My Country!

a sermon preached by Rev. Khleber M. Van Zandt V at the First Unitarian Church of Alton, Illinois, Nov. 2, 2008

from an article by John McCain in the June 12, 2005, edition of Newsweek. You’ll remember that McCain was for several years a P.O.W. in Hanoi during the Vietnam War:

“My father and grandfather both served in the United States Navy. When I came of age, there was no doubt that I would, too. There was plenty of pressure on me to attend the Naval Academy in Annapolis. I was a child of the 1950s, not the 1960s. The distinction is important. I can remember that from my earliest days friends of my father would speculate, only half jokingly, about what class I would graduate from. I wanted to go, and wanted to serve. As a kid, I would listen to my father tell amazing tales of heroism and victory from World War II. I was fascinated. He was a submariner, and his stories were thrilling. I wanted to have stories of my own to tell someday. Little did I know that my time in Vietnam would leave me the living embodiment of the expression, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’

My father drove me to the Academy. On the way we had a long talk. Or I should say, he talked, and I listened. As he had done so many times before, he impressed upon me the importance of honor, character and duty. Those were the qualities he prized, above academic excellence. A good thing, since I did not, let us say, graduate at the top of my class…

The years pass, and in a few weeks’ time I will be the father behind the wheel of the family car, driving my son Jack to the Naval Academy, where he begins in the fall. Along the way, we will have a long talk, and I will tell him, again, about the importance of honor and character and duty. I hope he doesn’t need it as much as I did.”

and from a Feb. 18, 2008, speech by Michelle Obama, a clip that was played endlessly on the news:

“What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback. And let me tell you something -- for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I’ve seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues, and it’s made me proud.”

This Is My Country!

I am so tired of this election season. I know it’s about to be over – at least I hope it’s about to be over – and I can’t wait to move on to something else. It’s been a long time coming; Barack Obama announced his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, almost two years ago. Which would be a long time, except that John McCain’s been running for president since, oh, sometime in the last century. It’s high time we settle this thing and let it go.

Personally, one thing has impressed itself upon me during this seemingly eternal election season, and I’ll admit it was a little bit of a shock to me: this is my country!

I say this is my country like it’s news, even though I’ve lived here all of my life.

It is my country, and I’m finally proud of it, and luckily I’m not in politics because I have felt the same way Michelle Obama said she has felt in that speech we heard a piece of a few minutes ago. They called that sound-bite a gaff, a mistake, and she has been excoriated for it ever since.

It is my country, and I’m finally proud of it, and I’m tired of letting others dictate how patriotism must be expressed.

It is my country, and I’m finally proud of it, just like Michelle Obama said, because, one way or another, change is gonna come.

It’s taken long enough, this sojourn in the wilderness. For at least eight years, we have wandered far from our most fervently-held values. -- The values expressed by our foreign policy have made us suspect in the eyes of the rest of the world, to say nothing of how bumbling and erratic we have looked to ourselves. -- The values expressed in our domestic policy have left far too many of our own citizens abandoned and forgotten. -- And the values expressed in the language we use for all things governmental is nothing short of cynical and ironic, known now in the vernacular as Rove-ian; for example, when an altruistic-sounding program like No Child Left Behind is used as cover for an attack on public school systems all across America.

Like the Roman Empire before us, we have seemed on the verge of collapse: financially, politically, socially. While some of our citizens see this Pax Americana threatened by a flood of boogie-man invaders from outside our borders, others see the collapse as part and parcel of internal pathologies, the worst of which may be the unwillingness of our more reactionary elements to see and accept the new truths of the new millennium.

But as I told you a few weeks ago, I believe the root cause of our individual and communal malaise is that too many of us put too much faith in our human structures and systems and do not look far enough beyond that for help and support and ultimate salvation.

Cynicism, malaise, collapse: Sounds ominous, doesn’t it? So when Linda and I can’t take it anymore, we go to the movies, seeking escapist fare for the most part, when we can’t find any new Project Runway episodes on the Bravo network. In fact, we went to a theater not long ago, and as we settled into our seats and readied ourselves for the featured dramatic comedy, we were instead bombarded with advertisements, many of which were of the same trite variety you might see on your tv set at home, even though we’d paid to be there.

But then an ad came on that looked for all the world like a music video. Oh, boy! a change of pace! something new! In fact, it was a music video: some long-haired musicians setting up on a concert stage enveloped in backlit fog and a darkly ominous ambiance. When the singer stepped to the microphone and began a raspy scream, I instinctively reacted by leaning back from the screen, and I felt my eyebrows rise to a commensurately vigilant height.

What followed was by turns scary, infuriating, and silly. It was Kid Rock, singing something called “Warrior,” the video an inexplicable composite of concert film, Nascar clips, video game car crashes, Iraq War-like footage, and the requisite post-9-11 moment of firefighters – as if all of these things are somehow connected.

Most of this was just a pastiche of imagery, without plot or characterization. But the Iraq War piece was more developed: a mini-vignette showing a group of camouflaged Humvees rolling on patrol into an Iraqi village. As the patrol enters the town, a soccer ball bounces into the street followed by a smallish Iraqi-looking boy. The patrol halts while an American GI in full battle regalia, carrying an M-16, strolls into the street. After scanning the gathered crowd menacingly, he gently kicks the ball back to the child, and the American soldier and the Iraqi boy exchange smiles. Pacification at its best and most cinematically affecting.

What Nascar and video games have to do with any of this, I’m not sure, unless the screaming guitars and the pounding beat of the music are meant to evoke a deep visceral connection with clips of race cars and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., video games and car crash scenes, manly firemen and courageous soldiers, in the very beings of a select target audience: young men running on Red Bull, unrequited emotion, and testosterone.

Did I mention that this was an advertisement for the National Guard?

Last words, a voiceover: “Download this song for free. Go to Yahoo.com and search National Guard Warrior.” I’m not kidding.

Among the mid-day older audience Linda and I sat with in the theater, there were groans and some ironic laughter when it was over, indicating to me some measure of discernment and some understanding of the word propaganda. The comments about the video I found on the video’s website, however, indicate that it makes a very strong connection with a certain demographic of folks who will brook no criticism of such tripe and who believe a true patriot doesn’t ever doubt or question what she or he is told by an authority figure.

I realize you can’t get the whole effect of this penetrating and disturbing two-and-a-half-minute film short without experiencing it for yourself, but like Steve Allen used to do with early rock’n’roll songs to devastating effect, I’ll read you the first few lines:

“Don’t Tell Me Who’s Wrong And Right When Liberty Starts Slipping Away,

And If You Ain’t Gonna Fight, Get Out Of The Way.

‘Cause Freedom Ain’t So Free When You Breathe Red White And Blue

I’m Givin’ All Of Myself. How ‘Bout You?”

Kid Rock goes on at convincingly high volume about being an American Warrior, a Citizen Soldier, never accepting defeat. Pulls at the heartstrings, don’t it? Themes of teamwork, loyalty, and belonging are the gauze through which we see this one authentic way of being in the world. “If you ain’t gonna fight, get outta the way.” Glossed over, by necessity, are any doubts or questions one may have before finally giving what we euphemistically used to call “the last full measure of devotion.”

Is this the way to be a loyal American? Is this the kind of loyal American that Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachman wants to be surrounded by in Washington? Is being a loyal American about swallowing the questions, ignoring the doubts, giving in to the lowest of our lowest common denominators? Not in my country, it’s not. And this is my country.

When Kid Rock sings about Liberty starting to slip away, does he mean Liberty is slipping away because of the threat posed by pre-war Iraq? Or does he mean Liberty is slipping away because of the threat posed by an unchecked Homeland Security apparatus? Or does he mean Liberty is slipping away because of the threat posed by an unregulated financial sector? Or does he mean Liberty is slipping away because of the threat posed by an unreflective culture of excess and overkill?

I’m not sure what he thinks he means; I don’t think he’s thought about it at all. I think he’s simple-mindedly expressing an adolescent need to overlook our real and present dangers in favor of identifying a straw figure boogie-man we can punch, kick, shoot at, bayonet, or blow up.

It may be a simple-minded message, but it is quite complex what the advertising people are doing here: using language and imagery designed to drive right past the intellect and deliver a punch aimed precisely at the emotional and visceral levels. “You’ve got pent-up energy, you’ve got raging hormones, you want desperately to belong to something larger than yourself, you want to be seen as a hero instead of a schlub. Have we got a deal for you!”

I’m tired of this kind of cynical manipulation of people’s lives. I’m tired of election-style rhetoric designed not to enlighten but to obfuscate. I’m tired of the attempts to define America in the narrowest of ways. This is my country, this is our country, and change is gonna come.

For many, the United States of America has been a beacon of Liberty and inclusiveness. When I go to school at my seminary, I am in class with people from Ghana, Nigeria, Beijing, and the Bootheel of Missouri. When I go for a walk in my city park on a fall day, I pass English-speaking college students playing softball or football or kickball, I pass Spanish- and Farsi-speaking people playing soccer, I pass Vietnamese-speaking people playing some version of volleyball you play with your feet. Restaurants near me serve fare from Thailand, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Palestine, - and Mississippi. My neighbors are African-American, Euro-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, non-Americans. They are natural-born citizens, naturalized citizens, and not-yet-citizens. They are refugees from Boston and Bombay and Bosnia. They are gay, straight, single, partnered, old, young, able, and infirm.

These are our countrymen and -women, and a diverse lot they are. Now, I can’t say that I know all these people. I don’t know which own guns and vote in protection of gun rights. I don’t know which are pro-choice and vote in protection of a woman’s right to choose. I don’t know which are pro-life and vote in protection of the rights of the unborn. I don’t know which vote and which don’t. But I do see Obama and McCain yard-signs all over the place, as well as bumper stickers touting the entire spectrum of concern and belief: political, religious, social, and otherwise. I don’t know everything about my neighbors’ religious lives, either, but I do know where there are churches and synagogues and a Muslim community center, and I believe I can walk from my house to a Buddhist temple and a 12-step meeting house.

On the other hand, the United States of America has been the picture of exclusion as well. The legacy of centuries of slavery endures. Women are still second-class citizens in too many ways. The under-privileged continue to lose ground under government policies that focus on funneling wealth back into the hands of the privileged classes.

Also, this election cycle has shone a spotlight on the vaunted values of small-town America, which sound idyllic and so often are, but that can also be code for social and cultural homogeneity: it’s still possible to live in this country and only interact with people who look like you, think like you, and talk like you.

Where’s the growth opportunity in that?

This is my country, this is our country, and a diverse one it is. And I love it that way. Yes, there are problems, and we have to keep working on them. Yes, there are things that are wrong that we have to say an emphatic “No!” to. But still it’s distressing to hear so many people say they’ll move to Canada if this election turns out one way or another. “Don’t move,” I say, “we need you too much if we’re going to lift up our voices and speak the truth to power and overcome our obstacles and offer freedom to a wider spectrum of folks than ever before.”

This is our country, and change is gonna come.

I do worry that we may be looking for some sort of saving grace in our next president. But whoever wins the election is not gonna save us. No system we humans put in place ever will.

Kid Rock is right when he says Freedom isn’t free – it’s gonna cost somebody something. Some of us give all of ourselves to the ideals of honor, character, and duty; some of us give all of ourselves to our work, or to family, or to children, or to community organizing. There is a saving grace to giving all of yourself to that which is larger than yourself.

It’s worth remembering that the last great president the state of Illinois sent to Washington, Abraham Lincoln, said, “The question is not whether God is on our side, but whether we are on the side of God.”

Abraham Lincoln doubted. Abraham Lincoln questioned. And Abraham Lincoln ultimately gave all of himself to this country and to that which is larger than himself. And in doing so he helped shape a United States of America we can finally be proud of.

This is my country, and change is gonna come.

This is our country, and change is gonna come.

If you haven’t already done so, please remember to vote on Tuesday.

One way or another, change is gonna come.

So may it be.