In Search of America

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As we celebrate our triumphs and successes in confronting this new challenge America faces, even greater is the obligation to understand what it is we venerate and what it is that others vilify and pledge their lives to destroy.

Until we as a people appreciate how fundamentally exceptional (as in privileged and exclusive) our national experience has been in contrast to much of the world’s peoples, we will never understand the challenge, or the opportunity.

Implicit is the danger of principled patriotism degenerating into a cloying self-righteousness.

Given America’s economic and military stature as the world’s preeminent nation state, its global interests and reach, and its aggressively homogenizing (some would say deeply subversive) culture, values, and language, it is perhaps inevitable that it should become the focus of envy, dismay, suspicion, fear, and anger, among those unable to reconcile their misfortune with our ascendance.

The marvel of the American experience is the extent to which shared conventions of culture and identity have survived in the face of such manifestly divisive forces, and a history so at odds with popular mythology.

We are an extraordinarily myopic people, preoccupied with ourselves and our interests, and that indulgence has left us profoundly ignorant of the world around us and the concerns of other peoples.

In Search of America

(and reflections on why it matters)

By Dr. Jonathan M. Nielson

I, like all of us, watched the tragic events of September 11 with a sense of detached, surreal horror, which even the beauty and quiet of the Sierra could not soften. My disbelief and outrage framed a question the entire nation asked... why? Exploration of that question in the aftermath of the “Attack on America” led me in many directions, but one struck me as particularly relevant. What explains our vulnerability to terror and makes us its object? Of these two, the latter strikes me as one we must answer through deep national introspection if we are serious about securing the benefits of “domestic tranquility”, which we once so irresponsibly took for granted.

Clearly there are those who see the United States and Americans far differently than we see ourselves. Accurately or not, much of the world’s confused or cursory sense of what we are is in large measure reflective of our own cultural puzzlement. We are such an immense, diverse, and vigorous society that we scarcely spare time to think about who we are as a people and a nation until we are forced by tragedy such as the World Trade Center attacks to confront ourselves. That is (or should be) the subtext of September 11, even as we prosecute a war against terrorism and those who condemn the United States for what it is and what it represents. If a nation’s sense of itself is its greatest security against those who would seek to destroy it, then, as I reflected upon this during the winter just past, having a clear sense of the American identity is paramount and our most pressing “patriotic” obligation. Beyond flag waving and all the symbolism so much a part of the national response, there has never been a better time to think about the true obligations of citizenship so easily taken for granted in less troubling times. Perhaps most important amongst these obligations is objective, critical truth-seeking. While truth itself can be vexingly ambiguous and we may differ on where it is to be found, it’s pursuit is never an extravagance.

Teaching and thinking about history my entire professional life, my instincts are to search for answers about the American identity in things past. As Karl Marx observed, history doesn’t repeat itself but it has an echo—both witty and true. As a nation we are inescapably reflective of who we have been. And yet the challenge and curious irony has all too often been the need in my judgment to rescue history from the past, to separate fact from fancy, the real from the mythological, or simply the badly learned (and taught). If we are to defend with honor and courage (and perhaps our lives) what we are, then surely we must know what that is. And as we celebrate our triumphs and successes in confronting this new challenge America faces, even greater is the obligation to understand what it is we venerate and what it is that others vilify and pledge their lives to destroy. It seems incomprehensible to us that those who perpetrated the events of September 11 believed they were on a holy mission and doing God’s will. America for them is not inspiration but invidious target. How can we understand such animus? There are any number of explanations, but they all have one common denominator: history. Theirs and ours. Until we as a people appreciate how fundamentally exceptional (as in privileged and exclusive) our national experience has been in contrast to much of the world’s peoples, we will never understand the challenge, or the opportunity. It is a hard truth, but out of tragedy may come the impetus for change and reaffirmation.

Americans have always harbored deep affection for a heroic, mythological past—a simplistic overlay of fabrication, whimsy, heavily varnished truths, popular legends, comfortable illusions, and anecdotal surmise. Nothing too deep please! It is said, of course, that every nation creates the history it needs to serve particular national and cultural purposes. That is certainly true of the United States. In an arrogance typical of the “chosen”, we have created and indulged in a kind of solipsistic caricature of ourselves that some in the world find deeply offensive. It is a measure of our naïveté and inattention that we should regard that harsh reality as a discovery. Even as the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union self-destructed and many heralded the promise of the post Cold War world, a so-called “axis of evil” has emerged dedicated to destroying us. If we knew our history better we would not be so surprised.

Throughout their history Americans have thought of themselves as a superior culture, born of an almost sacred revolutionary inheritance, endowed with transcendent ideals and values, and destined as a people to fulfill an anointed mission in the world. We have, in a word, pandered to a national narcissism. The Puritan image of a “City Upon a Hill” of the 17th century, coupled with the imperative of Manifest Destiny in the 19th, provided the impetus and sanction for the “American Century” following the end of World War II. Our celebratory cold war “victory” over communism and the Evil Empire is simply the contemporary recrudescent expression of this venerable national ethos.

For most of its national experience (at least until the 1970s), unchallenged faith in progress and a seemingly irrepressible energy animated America’s image of itself. History was comfortably linear—ever forward in a great confirmatory unfolding of America’s brilliance and promise, of its singularity and exceptionalism, shadows notwithstanding. Implicit are two dangers: a degeneration of principled patriotism into a cloying self-righteousness, and the fact that a nation in ignorance of its past drifts without bearings or points of reference towards its future.

Yet in America there has always been a future to contemplate, to rush toward willy-nilly in anticipation of better times, better lives... better everything. For much of the world throughout history, the word “future” has had no meaning, held no promise except continued human misery, despair and exploitation by aggressive and repressive nations, almost exclusively Western in culture and geography, ethnically Caucasian, and Christian. In a world where the predominant color is not white, the primary language is not English, the culture is non-Western, and the religion is non-Christian, the arrogance of power and presumption weigh heavily.

This, to be sure, is not a universal indictment and much about America is admired around the world. And yet this begs the question: Does our ignorance of our own history and that of others simply confirm for would be enemies that America has neither a clear sense of itself or anyone else and has little interest in what others think? Could our national indifference breed the very outrage we so decry?

History’s purpose is not to manufacture a tradition all are compelled to pay homage to. That is not history, it is propaganda. A nation’s identity is not a single or fixed assertion; it is an amalgam of multiple identities. It must be a cavalcade of diverse, even conflicting voices. If that assertion is true for our sense of national self, it is overwhelmingly so for understanding the world in which we are not only the preeminent nation state, but a global actor among some 180 others with equal claim to the rights and values we assert. In this sense, American and world history is an endless succession of compromises between disparate, fragmenting interests among conflicting claims to truth—whether political, cultural, or religious. Is it any wonder that consensus or a consensual past eludes us, or that clashing truth claims plague the human condition with often violent consequences?

Indeed the marvel of the American experience is the extent to which shared conventions of culture and identity have survived in the face of such manifestly divisive forces, and a history so at odds with popular mythology.

In the greatest of contradictions, America flourishes in spite of itself, drawing strength from its seemingly irreconcilably opposed multiple personalities. Perhaps, as James Madison believed, America’s essence lies in the free interplay of its contradictions (what he called “interests”). If that is so, for any of us who would understand and explain our history the task is a formidable one. America’s story is an Iliad of hope amidst despair, riches amidst want, soaring idealism amidst clawing self-interest, numbing ignorance amidst inventive genius, brutal arrogance amidst selfless compassion. These may be the flawed and consummate qualities of any society, but in America such contradictions stand in more glaring contrast and tension. Their power in American life is confirmed by the immense effort we expend to smooth over our history’s unsightly jagged edges. These are the very contradictions and vulnerabilities that some would exploit and use to justify their excoriation of the West generally and America specifically.

Ironically, Americans are a no nonsense people, a just-the-facts-please culture. The conundrum is that we all too easily accept “facts” unexamined and at face value. Perception is reality. It is only when cursory perceptions are stripped away to reveal what lies underneath that Americans can be challenged, however grudgingly, to confront and engage their history at deeper levels of reflection and analysis.

There is a curious paradox at work here. The vast preponderance of Americans yawn at scholarly, academic history whose purpose is the learned search for truth about the past. Yet in equal numbers, Americans take great pleasure in the muckraking, irreverent debunking of popular historical myths, and exude a fondness for what I call “history lite”. The laugh line, of course, is that while Americans know a lot about their history, none of it is true; or as a friend of mine wryly observes, “Not only have Americans forgotten what they should have remembered, they have remembered what they should have forgotten.”

Is our popular historical culture expressive simply of a cranky aversion to difficult ideas, or, conversely, preference for the superficial, the irrelevant, and the entertaining? Or does it reflect what historian Richard Hofstadter identified in the early 1960s as a deep strain of anti-intellectualism in American life and institutions? Or is it simply that we find it too uncomfortable to confront harsh realities and issues not resolved by simplistic answers? History is a mélange, cluttered; American’s seek the tidy and uncomplicated, the categorical. We are a pragmatic people and seek quick, functional solutions. It is the same with our history. We don’t question what works or suffices to facilitate a comfortable self-perception or discriminate between friend and foe. We cling to moral certainties in a world strewn with moral ambiguity.

These are, of course, philosophical as well as historical and practical questions. They are as slippery as the paradox one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Innocent people surely died on September 11 and man’s capacity for unspeakable acts appalls our sense of humanity. But these were not irrational acts, they were born of calculation and design; they had purpose and intent. They sought justification in history and scripture and appealed to retributive justice.

Still our disdain for the complexities of history is expressive of a thoroughly engrained impatience with and distaste for the hard questions, those that demand critical thinking, philosophical reflection, or analysis, and that often do not lend themselves to comfortably definitive answers. Thus the appeal of history lite and fretfulness with the enigmatic, variegated messiness of life. For all of its ability to entertain us it is peripheral. At best ours is a popular culture of antiquarian nostalgia, not one which seeks in the past the untidy, the unpleasant, or the unwelcome, though that might have enlightened or prepared the nation to comprehend the incomprehensible that literally came crashing down around us.

Perhaps this is the inescapable legacy of a nation which has celebrated its inception as an act defying history itself. It was, after all, a Revolution, a glorious experiment in government and ideology transcending centuries of human folly, conflict, and misery—indeed a “new world”. And remarkable it was and still remains. Yet the new world turned out to be not so different from the old because however culturally conditioned, human nature is human nature and not even America is exempt from the imperatives of politics, power, and strife, as we have been so brutally reminded.

I have heard the terrorist attacks of September 11 referred to as a wake-up call. If that is accurate, and I believe it is, then from what must we awaken? It is certainly the notion that somehow the United States stands outside history, that because of our institutions, wealth, and power—even our “moral superiority” some might assert—America as idea and place is an untouchable paragon, an archetype of virtue and global rectitude. The alarm that so rudely shattered our somnolence compels us to a deeper national introspection. “History,”—as scholars Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob remind us in their deeply thoughtful book Telling the Truth About History—“springs from the human fascination with self-discovery, from the persistent concern about the nature of existence and people’s engagement with it and from an intense craving for information about what it is to be human.”

Therein, I think, lies the problem. We are an extraordinarily myopic people. Our historical vision is not only blurred but shortsighted. We are preoccupied with ourselves and our interests and that indulgence has left us profoundly ignorant of the world around us and the concerns of other peoples. Nothing excuses terrorism, but ignorance or societal indifference is not a defense. It is a dangerous squandering of possibilities which leaves us vulnerable and liable. A more thoughtful contemplation of the American experience in the greater sweep of human experience would not only enrich us culturally but accord us a more compassionate appreciation for the perspective of others, even potential enemies. Would it not be in our self-interest to do so?

In times of national crisis, whether internal or external in nature, whether from genuine patriotic nationalism or propagandistic pandering to mass public emotionalism, Americans find common cause and “attachment”. And yet commonality of purpose and identity has never been a defining American trait except in the broadest sense. The salient observation is that this identity has never been definitive or static. America is in the constant process of reinvention, an incessant, at times frenetic search for itself.

Here, perhaps, is the greatest challenge for a pluralistic democracy. It must have the courage to elevate myth-dispelling disclosure above complacency, to embrace a past shorn of beguiling semblance. Americans, however, prefer to nurture rather than to dispel their myths. All too often appeals for more discerning disclosure echo merely as voices in a milieu of mawkish platitudes, in deference to the present rather than the past. We cannot escape responsibility for our past, and more to the point, the versions of the past we marshal in defense of our national character, values and institutions. The past only has significance in the meaning we attach to it and how honestly we insist that it have rigorous fidelity. If we are to foster a broader historical consciousness that fully engages us with the world beyond our shores and our parochial concerns. If we are to never again experience the kind of unconscious vulnerability we suffered on that clear late summer morning that changed our lives, then we as a nation must embrace unvarnished, objective truths about the world we live in. We must shed our comfortable insularity and replace it with the multiplicity and even the chaos from which human events spring. History is text and context; it is event and forum; it is finished and unfinished saga.

As a democracy of individuals and communities we must broaden and deepen the context. We must open up the forum. We must doggedly pursue a task whose completion is never possible so long as history itself exists. History is process, not destination. But history is also conjectural. A society judges itself through its history. As a practical matter, its collective judgments legitimize and empower institutions, ideas, groups, values, and prejudices. The verdict of history can thus have far reaching consequences and implications. A democracy can ill afford to take its history for granted or to indulge an intellectual laziness to the truth of its past, whether celebratory, ugly, or ambiguous. A society that panders to such indifference loses its compass.

If we are to safely navigate our way in a world very different from us, we will need a sure sense of direction. This century will challenge us in ways we cannot now imagine. Yet we have seen the darkest of possibilities play out on our television screens with frightening reality.

What will future historians say of these times, of how America ultimately responded to the deeper issues and causes of September 11 and to the underlying animus that burden humanity with such prolific hatred and violence? How do we define “us” to ourselves, and perhaps now more importantly than ever, how do we explain and represent America to the vast majority of humanity who know us only by our actions and ideals and how honestly we aspire to them? Perhaps our common identity lies in the very estrangement our deeply instilled code of individualism and self-reliance imposes. Americans scrutinize everything at a safe distance, even one another. It is time we reaffirm our intent to scrutinize our past—to learn to embrace our history, with the honesty it demands and perhaps narrow the distance between us. If we do not, surely any hope of finding common identity as Americans will continue to elude us.

Moreover we will just as surely forfeit our chance to engage the world in ways that will diminish rather than strengthen the influence of those who can and will exploit our indifference.

Summer now defies the clutches of winter, and the events of September 11 recede into memory. But we cannot escape the history we make or the past we create, day by day. For me that is both comfortable assurance and forewarning.

(Dr. Jonathan MaCauley Nielson teaches history at Columbia College. His new book, Augury, is available at bookstores everywhere, including Sasha’s Reading Room in Murphys and Highland Books in Arnold.)

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