American Core

(With the 4th of July approaching, I decided to dip into the archives. Four years after I first posted this one on Facebook, it seems more relevant than ever.)

At San Jose's minor league baseball park, when the crowd gathered to watch an open-air movie and fireworks, country songs made up the soundtrack. One was Lee Greenwood's "Proud To Be An American."

It occurred to me that I'm an odd mix of an openly patriotic person who can dig a jingoistic song like that, but still be fiercely opposed to what drove those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6th, 2021.

I'm sure many of the insurrectionists like that song too but we are polar opposites in other respects. So how can I explain this?

Well maybe I can't. Growing up in small cities in Michigan in the 50s and 60s, I did not identify with the coasts or with big-city life at all. My parents were naturalized citizens and we were not rich.

My taste in music was my always own -- my Dad disliked country songs and didn't care for rock 'n roll either. He liked Perry Como and Lawrence Welk. But it was the story-telling in country and the beat in rock that hooked me, along with the rebelliousness in both.

I was a sickly kid and for a crucial period I had few friends. For whatever set of reasons, I always identified with underdogs and outsiders. At the University of Michigan, thanks to a scholarship awarded by Republican Gov. George Romney's administration, I was first exposed to the burgeoning antiwar and civil rights movements.

I quickly morphed into a student activist, then a journalist. After graduation, I was ambitious but because of my political activism, which included an arrest, I couldn’t find a job in journalism in Michigan. So I headed west.

Moving to San Francisco in my 20s and developing connections in New York, L.A. and Washington completed my transformation into a midwesterner-in-exile.

By now you really can’t distinguished me from any other Bay Area progressive on the outside, but on the inside I’ve never lost my small-town Michigan roots. 

Fast forward to present tense, with a nation and a culture so divided it hurts, people like me actually carry around divided hearts. When it comes to specific political issues I almost always come down on the side of progressives. When it comes to the places I prefer to hang out, it's the big cities.

Meanwhile, I hate the right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists who have developed such a hold on some of the people whose lives I left behind when I moved away from the Midwest.

Most all of those back home are good people, patriotic Americans. They've been sold a bad line of goods involving a false sense of resentment, and a demagogue named Trump came along to take advantage of them. They also have had trouble letting go of their biases against the coasts and big-city life.

They need to get over that. Otherwise, our democracy is at serious risk going forward.

I hold out hope that enough of them will come to their senses and back into the great middle of our culture, reject extremism and embrace the true meaning of patriotism. That once again reason will prevail. Then maybe we can all sing Lee Greenwood's song in the same tune.

TODAY’s HEADLINES:

• NATO commits to higher spending sought by Trump and mutual defence (Reuters)

• A fragile ceasefire between Iran and Israel gives rise to hopes for a long-term peace (AP)

• Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say (CNN)

• Damaged or destroyed - how much does leaked US report on Iran's nuclear sites tell us? (BBC)

• Why America's giant bunker-busting bombs may have failed to reach their target (NPR)

• The alarming rise of US officers hiding behind masks: ‘A police state’ (Guardian)

• Florida is building an “Alligator Alcatraz” for migrant detainees. (WP)

• The U.S. Is Going Backwards on Vaccines, Very Fast (Atlantic)

• Tucker Carlson has claimed that the Murdoch family, which owns Fox News among other media outlets, asked him to run against Trump in the 2024 presidential election. [HuffPost]

• What’s in and out of Trump’s big bill as Senate races to meet Fourth of July deadline (AP)

• Trump's sweeping tax-cut legislation would effectively transfer wealth from younger Americans to older generations, nonpartisan analysts say. (Reuters)

• Mamdani Stuns Cuomo in New York Mayoral Primary (NYT)

• Drone debris found in Ukraine indicates Russia is using new technology from Iran (AP)

• Tomatoes in the Galápagos are quietly de-evolving (Phys.org)

• Over a million people now have access to the gen-AI powered Alexa+ (TechCrunch)

• Federal court says copyrighted books are fair use for AI training (WP)

• At Amazon’s Biggest Data Center, Everything Is Supersized for A.I. (NYT)

• FEMA Head Under Fire After Accidentally Playing Porn On Emergency Alert System (The Onion)

APPENDIX:

When it comes to patriotism and democracy I strongly recommend these three articles listed below from The New Yorker from mid-2021.

* Among the Insurrectionists at the Capitol

* What We Get Wrong About America’s Crisis of Democracy

* This July 4th, Can We De-Adapt from the Pandemic and Trump at the Same Time