I am part of the “left-wing cultural revolution” that, according to President Trump, aims to rewrite U.S. history and erase its heritage.
“Why” my (or anyone’s) sympathies and energies are directed there isn’t something he’s concerned about: His tunnel vision only allows him to see straight ahead, not the bends in the road.
But the reasons matter— as the people do, their lives, the Black and LatinX and other underrepresented and underprivileged Americans and those who want to be Americans.
I’m 73, white. Now, and through most of my years, I’m middle class. I was raised by and in a system that venerated tradition and, generally, traditional values: Attend to the needs of the many as much as possible regardless of their color or belief system, defend my country and its honor, respect its (mostly white) forefathers (its foremothers got short shrift even then, of course, but that wasn’t really an issue during my upbringing). And above all, respect its institutions, its flag, and, especially its government. My country, may it always be right but, my country—and my president—right or wrong. The Fifties were the Era of Rose-Colored Glasses and I, like most of my contemporaries, wore them with pride.
My vision of America began to change during the Vietnam War, and the lenses through which I saw it, took on a harsh gray tint during that, and the Nixon years. But my eyes remained clear: I saw the need, I did what I could to help, honored those I felt deserved it, worked to help effect change where I believed it was important; and otherwise, pretty much accepted—and ignored—the status quo. I wasn’t so much turning a blind eye. I was living my one life, and there were so many things I thought were important to accomplish.
Though it did, sometimes, became clouded, I held to that vision for the next three decades.
Over the years of the Trump presidency, however, I’ve come to re-examine what’s important and discovered how narrow my focus has been. Today, being July Fourth, seems a good day to declare my independence from my own tunnel vision and declare myself fully committed to the left-wing cultural revolution of which the president speaks so disparagingly. I have come to believe that many, a great many, American cultural and social traditions are flawed—and some are flat-out wrong; they hold us back from being enlightened, from being made aware of the harm those traditions do—to us as individuals, and America, as a cultural and social institution. They move us farther from the founding principles we were taught to admire, to respect.
For example: No American, I’ve come to think, should endure the presence of monuments, however beautiful, that celebrate men (or women) who achieved their status as a result of having been cruel and vicious to Blacks, Indigenous Americans, Latins. No one should be honored because they subjugated the bodies and the minds of others, or killed them off in order to make way for an ideology or system of commerce which I, and so many like me, have come to recognize as utterly reprehensible. No organization should mock the misery of people by callously naming its athletic teams some burlesque and derisive word associated with that people’s heritage, thus belittling their struggles.
No symbol should be respected unless it’s recognized to represent the freedom of all Americans. (I will never again stand for the National Anthem until I am convinced it is a National Anthem.) And no president should have the temerity to claim our heritage, our landmarks, our culture is inviolable because it belongs to those who built it, if that claim excludes the blood, sweat and tears of tens of millions of people whose own experience, whose own heritage—indeed, whose own features—do not mirror his.
The president has asserted that “children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe the men and women who built it were not heroes but villains.” No. Children are taught those men and women were often heroes, yes, but no meaningful mention is made of their villainies of which, we have learned, there were many. Their good lives after them; it is their evils that have been interred with their bones. Those evils need to be exhumed and made visible for all of us, especially our children, to see.
President Trump is wrong. That must be made clear to him and to his cadre, not only on November 3rd but in the years to come. He and his philosophy must be excised from the American psyche—not forgotten; that would be too dangerous, akin to forgetting Hitler—just as he seeks to excise the philosophies of those who realize the truth, and the lies, of his stance.
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