I grew up American. All the way American. I know all of the songs. I know the old ones, like our National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner.

My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!

You’re a grand old flag, you’re a high flying flag, and forever in peace may you wave, You’re the emblem of the land I love, the home of the free and the brave.

I know the new ones too. Like the post 9/11 Toby Keith classic, Courtesy of the Red White and Blue, also colloquially known as The Angry American. Perhaps my favorite lines of the tune:

Oh, and justice will be served and the battle will rage

This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage

And you’ll be sorry that you messed with

The U.S. of A.

‘Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass

It’s the American way

There is a kind of a perfection of toxicity in those lines that hammered hard when I was young and teases at amusing today. We’ll put a boot in your ass. Is that the American way? Is that your way?

Alan Jackson sang:

I’m just a singer of simple songs

I’m not a real political man

I watch CNN, but I’m not sure I can tell you

The diff’rence in Iraq and Iran

But I know Jesus and I talk to God

And I remember this from when I was young

Faith, hope, and love are some good things He gave us

And the greatest is love

Kinder words for sure, but I do think perhaps all of us could have spent a little more time learning the diff’rence in Iraq and Iran. Faith hope and love.

I am an American. I travel with an American passport and I consistently pay my taxes. This has presented more and more conscientious challenges for me as I’ve gotten older, and I think, if we’re honest, it presents them for many of us. We border on sociopathy when we hide our eyes and our minds from the American Way of putting boots in asses.

And listen, I was there, I remember 9/11. I was young but I was awake. I was living with my grandmother at the time, because I was awesome. My friend was quietly staying there with me because he was also awesome.

We both came downstairs that morning and my grandmother was weeping in her armchair. Sitting not comfortably back into her chair as was her way, but perched up on the edge, hoping she wasn’t seeing what she was seeing. We watched the coverage of the first tower, then we watched live as the second was hit. The loss of life was senseless. The cruelty was on display in a way we’d never experienced in this country.

Except. I mean. We did know our way around cruelty, right?

Approximately 13 million Africans were shipped like cargo across the Atlantic ocean. An estimated 10.8 million actually survived the journey. Of those, most were landed and were enslaved in the Caribbean and South America, with a comparatively small percentage making it to North America proper.

But statistically all of them were bought, sold and traded by people that look like me. That’s just what’s real. Our whole society is built on globalized poverty, those systems were institutionalized and propped up with enslaved people. Sugar, (and rum) and tobacco to feed our insatiable appetite for vice brought in from the Caribbean.

Importantly, the slave trade didn’t end there. In 1808 after we outlawed the international slave trade, (partly to clean up our act, thanks, Quakers, partly to present ourselves as more virtuous than we had any right to to the international community, but mostly to protect the economic interests of southern plantation owners), a robust internal slave trade took root, displacing families and individuals at an unprecedented scope and scale. God damn it. Damn it all to hell. Slavery has been a part of human history for millennia. But we, white Europeans and Americans, perfected this most barbaric, treacherous evil. Nobody enslaves like we enslaved.

Also I skipped past the atrocities committed against the people living here before Europeans began arriving in force. Forced displacements and starvations literally designed to eradicate in the name of our Lord.

The card says “Protection of my nation from enemies”. I have seen the enemy you guys, and it is us. It’s me. It’s my fathers and theirs.

What then is our response. What’s the big, white, traditionally Christian guy’s response to such heinous history? Such ugliness?

I must protect my nation. I want to protect my nation. And the only way I can do that, the most subversive act I can think of is making room on the bench for others. It’s using my girth, as I’ve said before, to hold the door open for others. It won’t end up being apologizing, (though that probably couldn’t hurt), it will be demanding equality, loudly if necessary. Only then will it be a brighter tomorrow.

We cannot blot out the stain of the past, and our past is filthy and stained. Don’t listen to anyone still peddling American Exceptionalism, still peddling Manifest Destiny. Get your head right.

It’s not about a guilt trip. That’s what they want to make it. They want to say that the blacks and the browns are pissed off and they want the whites to prostrate themselves before them. They’re coming to GET us! But it’s not about that. It’s about a brighter, better, coequal, loving, caring, generous future that considers everyone and leaves nobody behind.

Look, I’m happy to be an American. I love my lovely valley and my mountains high. I love many cultural aspects of America. I love the ingenuity that has been shown by the people here from time immemorial. How else could the first Americans, (the ones who knew the place before there were roads or bridges or pubs or muskets or AR-15’s or horseless carriages or Christianity) survive and thrive as much as they have? Ingenuity! Constant personal reinvention! Admirable qualities that we could all aspire to.

I’m not advocating for anyone to go home. Europe wouldn’t know what to do with our Chick-fil-a’s and Ford F650’s.

We are all Americans now. The least we can do is all be Americans.

I will end this essay with the entire text of Emma Lazarus’ consummate piece of Americana, The New Colossus. May we read it over and over until it’s burned into our souls, and for once in our history may it be true for us.

Now, you read it. I mean it. Read it all and read it twice. Don’t you skip this ending.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com