American insanity
By now, the world has concluded that America is insane. A crazy country filled with zany people who have gone off the deep end. A superpower that has become a veritable asylum.
From our president, whom they conclude is off his rocker, to our president- elect, whom they think, at least in part, might have mentally left the reservation, to the giant demonstrations in favor of Donald Trump to the giant counter- demonstrations against him, America, in the eyes of the world, has become a nation of lunatics.
But for all those who dismiss our colorful country as having passed its prime, I say: American irrationality is part of our greatness. Yes, we can take craziness at times to a bit of an extreme, but the American willingness to always push the envelope and do everything outside the box is what has elevated the United States to become the greatest country on earth.
And I would not have it any other way.
I lived in Europe for 11 years as the rabbi at Oxford University. I also lived in Australia and studied in the holy city of Jerusalem to become a rabbi.
Live anywhere outside of the United States, and you’ll understand why no president – not Trump, and not even Joe Biden – can lock the country down. Tell Americans there is a global pandemic and that they must shut their stores, the school and their synagogues – and they will defy you. They will fight you. Tell Americans that after an innocent black man is suffocated by a cop, they should suck it up because securing the public against the pandemic is more important than demonstrations – and they will march in millions.
There is no suppressing the exuberance of the United States, and there is no way of controlling the strong sense of American individualism, which traces back to the American Revolution. Simply stated, Americans are not used to being told what to do.
Americans are the most stubborn, defiant, industrious and entrepreneurial people in the world. No one is going to lock them down.
Let me be clear. That doesn’t mean that we should ever flout medical advice, not social distance or not wear masks. We must. People are dying, and we must bring the coronavirus under control. But if anyone is wondering why other countries succeed at lockdowns while the United States defies them, here is your answer.
Americans have a natural suspicion of authority. And I don’t mean only conservatives and Republicans. Liberals and progressives are largely the same. It’s part of the American character, and it’s bipartisan.
From the Biden supporters who made America into a giant outdoor carnival when networks announced that their candidate had passed the 270 threshold, to the Trump supporters who responded by marching a million strong in Washington, DC, in favor of the president, Americans talk a good game about needing to stop activity to limit the virus, but they burst at the seams when being told what to do.
And, of course, while they march en masse for their cause, they will condemn the other side for flouting the rules of the pandemic. They will accuse the other side of hypocrisy and double standards, when in reality much of it boils down to the simple American refusal to be suppressed.
I saw this when I lived in the United Kingdom. I’d go to buy a ticket for a movie with my wife, and I watched our British brothers ask, “Where is the queue? Where do you get in line?” But Americans hate lines; they hate waiting; they have no patience.
I admit that sometimes this impatience is a liability, and perhaps the coronavirus is the biggest example of it. But is it any mystery that the same country that refuses to be locked down is also the country leading in the race for a vaccine?
That’s what it means to be an American. We are contradictory, hypocritical, virtuous, flawed, rebellious, divided, united, together and apart. We are all those things and more. But one thing we are not and never will be – controllable. No one can tame America.
A quarter of a millennium ago, a foolish king from across the Atlantic thought he could do something as benign as simply tax our tea. But then we whipped his army and taught him a lesson about ever making a further attempt to stifle us. The British, who subdued a quarter of the earth’s surface, had never encountered anything as stubborn as America.
When Japanese admiral Yamamoto was congratulated for launching his raid against Pearl Harbor, crippling, according to his sycophants, the American Pacific fleet, he reportedly responded, “I fear that all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant.”
Indeed, he had. And his country paid a terrible price for trying to suppress America.
In a statement released on August 6, 1945, announcing the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, US president Harry Truman famously said, “The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid manyfold. And the end is not yet.”
These were fighting words. And we can debate till today the morality of the bomb and whether it saved the lives of one million Americans who would have invaded the Japanese islands, or whether it was an inhumane form of punishment on an adversary that was all but licked. But regardless, America wanted to send a message to the world. Slap us, and your hand will get burned.
When al- Qaeda murdered 3,000 innocent Americans at the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/ 11, the result was America unleashing a fury that continues to this day in the war in Afghanistan.
Was it wise? Was it an overreaction? Should we withdraw all our troops? All this is debatable, and no doubt many Americans have regrets over the war in Iraq. But the debate misses the larger point: what remains of al- Qaeda, not to mention Iran, will definitely think twice before attacking again.
Our nation’s capital is named after the father of our republic, George Washington. But the quintessential American is not the victor at Yorktown but rather Thomas Jefferson, the author, quite literally, of our independence.
For Jefferson, in all his contradictions, embodies the paradox that is America. A slave owner who nonetheless wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.” A devoted husband who swore to his wife Martha on her deathbed that he would never wed again, but then had six children with Sally Hemings, his property. A president who, at his inauguration, delivered the famous lines “every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle,” but then engaged in the most brutal partisan warfare against Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists.
We are Jefferson, and Jefferson is us. Virtuous and scandalous. Brilliant and irrational. Visionary and at times blind, as we were in Vietnam. Supremely religious but at times agnostic, as many were with the abomination of slavery. Deeply spiritual but also materialistic. Profoundly just while often ignoring the dictates of justice, as we have in racial matters.
I suspect that this Jeffersonian impulse is one reason that 70 million Americans voted for Trump while he is excoriated by the rest of the world. For Trump embodies so many of the contradictions that is America. A billionaire businessman who has also declared bankruptcy. A twice- divorced husband who has the absolute loyalty of his children. A man accused of being an Islamophobe who attacked Syria for gassing innocent Muslims, while president Barack Obama did nothing under the same circumstances. A man accused of hating immigrants who married two immigrants. And a president who is loathed by the media which remain utterly obsessed with him.
Of course, this does not mean that the 75 million who voted against Trump will, or need, appreciate him. But they do need to appreciate, as do we all, the differences that exist in America and not simply revile our very American instincts.
It is something that President- elect Biden and his supporters – all of whom possess contradictions of their own – ought to remember as they begin to govern. America is not monolithic, it can’t be contained, and it is made of multitudes.
Every American is a host unto himself.