field notes, commentary, and resulting theories from the middle of America, summer of 2004

(or, America before the Turn

anticipating that America must soon come out of her collective denial
about the state of the planet
and wondering how that will go.)

"The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rules will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may become persecutor, and better men be his victims. � From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will be heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."

America's founding father, Thomas Jefferson (quoted in an 1908 essay by anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre), was not just a founder but a prophet (they go hand in hand). He wasn't anticipating the Terror / Iraqi fiasco, but speaking of the Revolutionary war. When we look about America today, it is almost strange to think that a Revolution took place here: and as de Cleyre points out, the name "American Revolution" is held sacred, "though it means to [Americans] nothing more than successful force, while the name 'Revolution' applied to a further possibility, is a specter detested and abhorred." Still, however misunderstood this revolutionary spirit is today, America has this spirit embedded in its genes. De Cleyre again, on America's original goals: "The real Revolution � was a change in political institutions which should make of government not a thing apart, a superior power to stand over the people with a whip, but a serviceable agent, responsible, economical, and trustworthy (but never so much trusted as not to be continually watched), for the transaction of such business as was the common concern, and to set the limits of the common concern at the line where one man's liberty would not encroach upon another's."

This project called America has brought disastrous consequences, as can be seen around the world and at home. But there was a strain of good intentions and sound reasoning at America's inception, no matter how co-opted it has become. I spent my life thinking of America as an epithet, a dirty word, ashamed that it was associated with me. But "America" shouldn't be all that: all that domination, cultural infection, globalization, genocide, environmental destruction: no. American traditions come from "religious rebellion, small self-sustaining communities, isolated conditions, and hard pioneer life"; and I draw hope from the idea that all that is still somewhere in our American consciousness. Despite the nation's myriad flaws, perhaps we can seek out the good bits and bring them to light.

Liberty, freedom, and justice for all: it sounds sarcastic now-we ask-did anybody mean those ideals seriously, or were they empty rhetoric from the start? I don't know, but let's pretend they were noble ideals, and let's see where they went. We had an ideal of equal liberty-of equal responsibility (of equal response ability)-and we didn't give up our power to something greater (the state). Americans are individualistic, but this individualistic streak has been co-opted in recent years. We used to have power in our individualism. There was a real do-it-yourself spirit, prompted in part by the necessities of the colonies in the wilderness: nobody was going to do it for you. This do-it-yourself spirit has been completely eclipsed by today's corporations, all eager to do it for you, no matter if "it" is providing for your basic needs of shelter, clothing, and food; or if "it" is as something mundane as styling your hair or cleaning your house.

As our options for living life ourselves become limited, we are offered a mind-boggling illusion of choice to make up for it: go get your hair styled, and you have magazines full of hairdos to choose from. There's all kinds of products and lifestyles to pick and match from-enough that you might even think that you're still an individual; that you sculpt your individuality through your consumer choices. Blah, blah, blah: I'm sure that this is nothing new to anybody that's reading this; my point is simply that there was an original American spirit before this consumerist one took hold (that perhaps unwittingly allowed the consumerist one to take hold)-an individualist one, full of do-it-yourself confidence.

It's this confidence that I really want to get to. We lived in the wilderness and were bold enough to even think we could tame it (another misstep of course)-but we weren't scared of it. We were off into that frontier, making our mess and killing things, but if there's any good quality in this deadly disrespect, it's a sort of childlike fearlessness that could even be endearing (say, it would be endearing if it was possible to teach the rampaging two-year-old to clean up after itself). Americans weren't scared: to speak, to act, whatever, that was the Revolutionary war and its spirit. Today, Americans are frightened; they've been cowed into submission by the current administration and its goofy spectre of Terror. Fox News crawls the current color of terror along the bottom of the screen, just to remind us to be afraid, and we buy in. I confess this blind acceptance of their fear-pushing is a bit of a mystery to me, but I can posit a few reasons for it.

Firstly, we have a lot to lose. When we started out this American experiment, we were poor & didn't have all these things. Now we've sunken into silky comfort, and we possess so much we have to jealously guard it. (The American sense of entitlement� give it to yourself, you deserve it� a black man in Murphysboro, Illinois walks down the street wearing a shirt with an American flag that also reads "School of Hard Knocks" / somebody remembers that life is hard, that because you're an American you're not entitled to an easy, comfortable life�) Anyway, having comfort and possessions means you have something to fear. I experienced this myself recently: I used to keep my doors and windows wide open, breezing into and out of the house in freedom, trusting that nobody would enter my space and violate my things. Then I got a laptop, and I found myself locking my window before I left the house in a mood of suspicion� and yes, even fear� Once you have possessions that could be taken away, you guard them, it's only natural (or is it?) to protect your assets, maybe some mothering thing, something about protecting the young-gone astray, gone haywire. We have more to lose than many other nations, and so we get scared.

Still, there are plenty of countries out there with a much higher quality of life than us, and just as much to lose (we might be reluctant to believe this, but it's true). I don't think this Terror would have gone down in say, Denmark, or the Netherlands. On this side of the Atlantic, though, there's more anxiety going on, and now I'm about to get rather vague (apologies). I think that the fear doesn't just come from the government/media alliance, or the Church with its legacy of instilling fear of God and sex. I think it's a deep-down psychic feeling ("collective psychic unease", according to Anne Waldman) that we have in these times because something in our collective unconscious knows that atrocities have been committed here-and we'll have to pay up. It's harshest in America because it's most blatant in America. We have completely mutilated most of a continent and practically committed genocide on the Native peoples in just three centuries, to be vague, and there's unease about that riding deep in our consciousness (unease that's just waiting to be exploited). Even more than the past, though, is an unconscious psychic knowing about the future: we have seriously polluted our environment, and there's the petrol crisis and global warming to contend with. We have incredible denial about both our past and future, but beneath that glossy denial ("obligatory optimism", as poet Daisy Zamora calls it) lies a great amount of fear: fear that our leaders have tapped into, and used to bow us into submission.

So, fear, fear as coercion, fear of the violent past and of the karma to face in the future: but also the deepdown psychic fear entangled with vacancy, which I want to discuss later.

Let's pull back, then, back to that original fearless America: do-it-yourself, fearless, confident, and creative. Creativity and ingenuity were survival necessities, and Americans developed them with gusto: find a new land, invent new things to go with it, all part of the same creative energy. Yet I think that this creativity has declined: in part because of the risk-taking involved in creation, in part because we're too busy working to have creative energy left at the end of the day. Certainly, there's many reasons, and I invite you to add to them.

Creativity is linked with whimsy and imagination. Americans deal with things through humor, and humorous creativity is the best kind. Let me show you some American images illustrating how whimsy and wonder are still alive and thriving in this land, despite the aforementioned mess that we seem to be in�

lawrence, kansas:
she looks bravely forward on her bicycle,
beside a SUV that somebody was brave enough to glitter up all whimsically...

also seen in lawrence, kansas: a handful of people outside the courthouse on a sunny saturday, protesting the reign of bush.

giraffe on bike, new orleans

(1) All the quoted material from Voltairine de Cleyre is from her essay "Anarchism and American Tradition", published originally in Emma Goldman's magazine Mother Earth (printed from 1906 - 1917) and found contemporarily in Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman's Mother Earth, ed. Peter Glassgold (Washington D.C.: Counterpoint, 2001).