Old Fashioned

On waking up with a hangover from the false American promise.

Last night, we met a friend for drinks at a local cocktail bar. I left the evening feeling like I hate this country that I love. Our friend is a local real estate agent, a lovely woman who sold us our home here in Savannah. Like so many people, she’s bounced around the country throughout her life: New York, LA, Santa Barbera, before settling here. She’s charitable and kind and stylish and seems to get real joy out of her job; she told us how satisfying it is when she’s able to help people relocate and get settled, the same way she did for us. When the conversation turned to social issues, she bemoaned the homeless encampments popping up all over the country and expressed bewilderment that people can’t “lift themselves up by their bootstraps” the way she did when she was raising two sons on her own. She repeated to us false stories about immigrants being given smartphones, vets being kicked out of their homes in favor of immigrants. She’s given to both rightwing and leftwing conspiracy theories, and when we pressed her on where she was getting her information, she told us we should “look it up.” We did. She was wrong about all of her information. The point isn’t to deride or make fun of her. The point is that, ultimately, she was expressing the same uneasiness with America that my wife and I feel, the same bewilderment at where things have gone so wrong. Her eyes are trained on the symptoms, whereas I feel like my eyes are trained on the disease. The disease is oligarchy and I don’t know that American can recover.

An old-fashioned, which feels apropos.

I do love my country, but more and more I love it the way you love a relative with dementia. I love what used to be, or at least the promise of what used to be. But that promise has faded, replaced by the fuzzy senescence of an octogenarian president and the soon-to-be-octogenarian running to usurp (and imprison) him. We are a nation captured by corruption, the “can do” American spirit papered over with credit default swaps, leveraged ETFs, and subprime mortgage tranches. We’re a nation awash in money that somehow can’t afford to meet the basic needs of its citizenry. There’s enough money for the Pentagon to “misplace” trillions of dollars but not enough to make sure people have roofs over their heads. It’s a nation of winners and losers, all of us competing against each other instead of working together. Increasingly, America feels like the Land of Zero Sum Game, a place where the “winners” aren’t satisfied with their larger slice of the cake. They want the whole cake. And, while they’re at it, they’ll help themselves to everything in the fridge. Are they evil people? No, I don’t think so. Not exactly. I think they’re doing what most of us would do if we could – taking whatever they can while the getting’s good. Not because they’re “bad” but because they’ve been taught the same thing we’ve all been taught: it’s never enough. Greed, as the saying goes, is good.

Lest I state the obvious: greed is not good. Greed is corrosive, bilious. Thomas Jefferson famously said the “Tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants.” There’s certainly no shortage of tyrants, but I fear that the blood of our patriots is too tainted now to be of much use.

Who are we? What is the American purpose? I used to think I know. Now I have no idea, other than accumulation. Rather than asking where it all went wrong, I’m inclined to ask now if it was ever right? I don’t like the answers I’m finding.

There’s so much to love about this nation: the geography, the people, the opportunities that still exist for people to carve out a life for themselves. But the land is sick, the people are sick, and the opportunities feel more and more fleeting. We’re dying younger now and when our lives take a tumble, rather than lift each other up, we blame the victim for dragging the rest of us down. All of it in service to the cult of unchecked capitalism.

I know I’m not saying anything new here. And I’m certainly not offering any answers. My intention is only to convey dismay and disillusionment, and, perhaps, a different appreciation for the MAGA voter who feels, like I do, that the Tree of Liberty has gone to rot. Their solution is to replace our grotesque system with one even more grotesque, assuring themselves that, when all the fat has been trimmed from America’s books, they will find themselves on the positive side of the ledger.

Their solution might be foolish but at least it’s an attempt to solve the problem of America. I wish I had such an easy answer. I have none. All I have is a sense of doom about this so-called “American experiment.” I’m not suggesting that the country is over. It will continue on as the richest nation in the history of the Earth for at least a little while, but when I tally up the cost of all that prosperity, it feels too dear to pay.

I don’t know if I’m quite ready to give up on America. What would that even look like? Moving abroad? Finding a little house somewhere in the middle of nowhere and keeping my head down and my mouth shut? I’m not particularly worried about myself. My wife and I are going to be fine. But what does this country look like for my children’s generation and all the generations to follow? Nothing good, I think, not without fundamental, foundational changes to our laws and, more importantly, our ethos. But I don’t see that happening. I don’t see that happening at all. I don’t know where my country went, or maybe I’ve just stopped believing in a country that never was. Cheers.