For 2008: A Star-Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere

"What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is to understand others."
- Carlos Fuentes

As another year begins, many of us are involved in contemplating not just the behavior and principles of our country but, indeed, its very fate. We wonder if we are too far gone down a fast-running river to ever get back to the spot where the view was glorious.

The elegant language of our constitution was written with the energy produced by British oppression. Unfortunately, after independence was established, we began our own history of oppression. The near genocide of Manifest Destiny gave us cultural, economic and racial control of the continent while we also set about the business of importing slaves to carry all of our burdens. More than a century passed before women were given the vote and the African descendants of those slaves were not afforded their full constitutional rights until almost two hundred years after their ancestors had stepped onto American soil shackled in chains.

As poorly as we failed our founding principles, America did, ultimately, change. Courageous individuals forced us to confront national hypocrisies. People voted, protested, debated, read, campaigned, and we reached an honorable consensus. Our democracy was alive and vibrant and, although it might take an absurd amount of time for achievement, we were heading in the direction of a just democracy. If we did not believe in the results we at least honored the processes that formed our society. We were involved and invariably the best ideas and candidates seemed to prevail.

Where are we now?

Our modern era of cynicism and disenfranchisement appears to have begun with the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. All of our postwar prosperity and optimism took a shot to the head in Dallas but we pressed on through the Civil Rights struggle and the Vietnam War. Sadly, we began to realize that our government and leaders could be quick and facile liars. Vietnam was a tragedy years before they acknowledged our misguided policies and meaningless deaths. Eventually, Watergate meant even the most sacred of offices was not averse to grand deceits and when President Ford pardoned President Nixon many felt the fix was in and justice was a ghost.

The ensuing years gave us Iran-Contra and the Tower Report, which was a voluminous white wash of what was almost certainly a guns for drugs operation used to illegally fund a group of thugs trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. The lie about Monica seemed nearly precious when placed in the context of all the others we had grown numb to hearing. Almost every candidate for public office since World War II has promised to lower our taxes and still provide us great government services and we allowed ourselves to be convinced.

We have now stopped believing in almost anything. Our disenfranchisement has become nearly voluntary. The historic Iraq War and domestic spying lies of the Bush administration have spawned an era of cynicism without equal in our democracy. If they were caught, lying used to cause politicians their careers. Karl Rove has taught us all that it is presently nothing more than a conventional political tool. Anyone who gets caught simply lies in a louder voice without bothering to deny. Truth-tellers get swift boated and the liars win elections. We don't even trust the technology that delivers vote counts because we know that software can be manipulated by the politically ambitious. Americans are not confident they even know what happened in their recent past with either the elections or the wars. We have been spun to dizziness. Demographers, statisticians, and pollsters rant about how few people turn out to take part in the electoral process. Don't they understand why?

We used to be the people who the world counted on to do right and risk the consequences. The mistakes of our government were not reflective of the heart of our people. But the stars and stripes have been transformed from a symbol to a brand. Are we now nothing more than a business, a military-petro-chemical-political complex? Whatever we might be we find the U.S. citizenry as disengaged and cynical as it has ever been just as China is rising. They hold billions of dollars in Wal-Mart inventory, an almost incalculable amount of our debt, and maybe even our fate. Our wan dollar has reached historic lows as Wall Street greed mongers bundle bad loans and sell them to equally greedy investors in foreign lands.

We may know where we are now but do we have any idea where we want to go? Do we want to honor the language of our founding document? America was always more about becoming than it was being. In 2008, maybe we can raise our flag again guided by principle rather than political expediency. There might be a leader who calls us to serve and to sacrifice and heal, and who deserves our support.

The image is fading but we can still see it through the distant haze. As weakened as the colors are they still have meaning and value and we can know them again if we are sufficiently determined. Let's just go in that direction and find our flag.

Let's keep believing there's a star-spangled banner waving somewhere.

Read more New Year's posts from HuffPost bloggers

Comments

[desmirl]

Patriotism (and religious pretenses) are the final refuge of the scoundrel. Unfortunately, the American public is so poorly educated that they have become a credulous mob, waiting for either a huge reduction in their taxes or the rapture--whichever comes first. Bail while you can. Even rats are smart enough to leave a sinking ship.

[Sundialsvc4]

Long before John F. Kennedy lost a good portion of his cranium, his predecessor had already "drawn a bead" on what was happening. General Eisenhower's address to the nation in January of 1961 need not be repeated here, but he was right.

We may recall the man who said that democracy would last only until men realized that they could vote themselves "bread and circuses from the public purse." But even that man did not envision what would happen when they realized they could vote themselves riches from the public debt. Today we don't even blink an eye when a $70 billion spending bill is passed: no one asks where the money will come from; it simply "happens."

"Ike's" entire address stressed the point, though, that there really was a dear cost to all this "easy money." And we are paying that now.

But we don't have to. This nation has been abused by its present leadership, but I may remind you that the 320 million of "We the People" seriously outnumber the thousand-or-so of them.

[Purple Girl]

If we want to put color back into our flag we must demand numerous independent coucils investigate the dealing of these parasitic Corps and those 'employeees' who have infiltrated our deomcracy.
We need to show the world- this will not be tolerated in our country anymore. We will expose and extradict any criminals to other countries for trials too.
then we will be back to beinning the country- the philososphy humans hold dear. WE Must regain our rights/freedoms and control over those who fly our flag.
9/11 was against them - Not US
They ahve fucked with US and used US for far too long- Pay backs are a Bitch- Massive indictments of Treason, War crimes and Crimes agaisnt Humanity- both public & private sector- spannig as far back as proven valid. No Mercy.
Start Booking the Super Stadiums- it's gonna be like Rome in it's Hayday (there may be even a few Christians 'fed to the lions' this time too!)
As for the Candidates, when it comes to Change.. "Go Big Or Go Home!"
Otherwise you are just another incompetent or accomplice.

[georgeeparker]

I always love it when you see the politicos trying to outdo each other with the size of their Stars & Stripes lapel pins. If they ever took the time to find out where they are made, they would realize they all come from China. The "Communist" country that now virtually owns the US. I guess when the next Presidential candidate visits the obligatory flag factory for a photo opp... It will involve a 14 hour plane ride. My God... Do these people ever read history? Although, in reference to the Hucks of the world, do they ever read anything other than "The Good Book." I became a US citizen so I could vote against Bush three years ago. I now realize it was a complete waste of time. Better to watch American Idol and eat Big Macs... No one out there is listening, least of all the Great American Public... Being originally a citizen of Great Britain, I am painfully aware that all Empires decay and fall, yet while they are doing it, the citizens are only interested in "Bread and Circuses." Until it is too late. Sorry for the rant, sometimes, as a previous poster has said... "I feel like I am hitting my head against a brick wall!" Welcome to the club. Happy New Year... I hope!

[peterg76]

Impeachment saves lives.

[Sciguy]

Of course there will be flags waving in 2008 - over the heads of every damn politician! It's a like a contest - who can co-opt the flag the fastest and bestest?

[yowza1]

Yes yes much truth here. Don't try to emulate Alexander the Great, we live in a different world. Stop living in the past & trying to live up to images in your mind of past action heroes.
Mr Bush, can you dig that?

[LizM]

That was very well said - posts like this help make the Huffington Post the best that it can be.

The promise of America is in reach - you just have to know where to look.

[deminmo]

Your comments are pretty much dead-on. I don't
agree that in 2008 we can raise the flag that
once stood for so much, and readily salute the
idealology behind it. Like Rome, we may have
reached the end of the vision.

[parryisle]

No need to worry about our flag flying anywhere on this planet as we have troops, planes and bases in well over a hundred foreign countries and our flag flies over them. Unfortunately, where it once was the cloth accorded international admiration we are now one of the most hated nations on earth.

[Dansden]

ALL of the issues listed and implied that have brought our 'flag' down can be summed up in the change of allegiance the American people have made. No longer is the flag, made primarily in China, the symbol of America but the 'brand' as the author has so insightfully described. What is missing is the progression of that thought to its crass conclusion:
If the American 'flag' is the brand icon of America, then the allegiance has turned from allegiance to the nation to allegiance to the corporation.
The definition of this allegiance is FASCISM-
which, evidently, the powers on Huffington Post do not want repeated often for fear that
the people will realize that corporations DECIDE, DRIVE and DEFINE WHO WE ARE AS AMERICA
IN THIS CONSUMER CYNICISM THAT KNOWS 'ONLY SHOPPING' in the midst of our American delusion and destruction- thanks to the corporate agenda and interests that grind under what used to be our civil, legal and Constitutional rights.

[Xavier Ninnis]

"What the United States does best is to understand itself. ... "
Good lord, I've got to believe that Fuentes was just being flip when he said that, he couldn't possibly have got us that wrong could he?

[TheHandyman]

Sorry, but you left out a couple of other interest grops in your list, Jim, try adding, Educational- Religious-Mass Media to your list. But I am glad you expanded the Military-Industrial to include what Eisenhower also spoke of when he mentioned them, the Congressional. Without Congress, the other two would have been helpless to have taken this country down a road we should never have traveled.

I was a twenty year old serving in Africa with the Peace Corps when JFK was killed. How do you explain to people who look to the US for a better way? And there were the dogs and police attacking blacks on the streets of Selma. How do you explain that to Africans who wanted to believe that I represented what was best about the US. I saw my country in a way that was different than what I had believed it to be. But I still had hope.

Then I got drafted and went to Viet Nam. When I came home I saw the tanks rolling down the streets of Newark. I saw the burning buildings in Philadelphia. I was there in front of the Bank of America in Isla Vista when it was torched. I became a cynic. I was a skeptic and because of what I had seen my government do in other countries I knew them for what they were liars and terrorists.

But I still had hope that wiser, more compassionate people would set the country aright.

[larry278]

13 stripes, 50 stars plus W & Co made the former Old Glory into Old Snaggle Tooth. The stars have been replaced by 50 skulls & cross bones as on a pirate flag. W made the change. Tooth less skulls stare from the US flag which tells all what the USA has accomplished in Iraq. The USA is fostering continued chaos in Iraq-not democracy.

[Stirner]

Martinchill: Right you are, and the first step should be to get rid of a President who doesn't understand the limits upon the Executive by the Judicial and the Legislative bodies. There is a Constitutional right to have the President impeached and put out of power. But present efforts to put an end to this dictatorial "my way or the highway" exemplar in the WH takes more political courage than is now evidenced. The present "top tier" candidates,using the P.R. media consultants of an expensive and controlled media, lust only for the power of the Presidency as now existing, and long, as the Plutocrats themselves, to threaten the world. Only by impeachment can the world, and the people of the United States, understand that the President is no Emperor; that he is no God, that he is still responsible to the citizens, and that they still live in a Republic -- not yet a Plutocracy protected by Tyranny. I am not a Kucinich fan, but at least the fellow has some guts, and he stands near Ron Paul -- but they might be too late to save the Republic. The rest of us who fear to do more than write critical letters, such as myself, deserve what we will get -- a servile life in a declining Empire, and if you have read any Gibbon, you know that it isn't going to be any fun.