As my bus rolls through the skeletal forests of the midatlantic, I’m reminded of this ancestral, deeply patriotic idea that Americans are men and women who eek out an existence in a harsh world, yeomen who want only what they rightly deserve; Spartan farmers wearing French wigs and eating Indian grain and drinking English tea. “We’re not so different now, are we?” And then I remember that those mean bastards who wouldn’t pay their taxes and embraced the craven image of a snake hissing “don’t tread on me!” as their national symbol were entirely distinct from us. For one, they rode horses everywhere. They literally climbed on the back of an animal and spurred it to run in the direction they wanted to go. The entire economy relied on giant monsters pulling anything that needed to be moved, unless you could get it to water, in which case you could put it on a boat the size of a tour bus and hope that pirates didn’t shoot cannon balls at it.
The colonists weren’t just badass. They were friggin crazy. They actually did battle with ice and rain, with gravity and geography, with plagues and pests and heavy brush and wild animals and wild humans. The only music they heard was what could be performed in front of them. They slept on hay, dammit! What does what we live have to do with their version of existence?
Some of the trees I see out the window of this bus are on the cusp of spring. Tiny, faintly red and pink blossoms have been dusted over the branches, frosting their tips. When I get to DC I’m going to walk around amidst people who fancy themselves patriots, who believe that they best understand and champion the First Principles of this enormous country. They are wrong, but not for the reasons you might expect; They don’t ride to the Hill on horseback.
Its the cars and the planes and the buses and the trains that betray these jingoists. The founders had false teeth and their children died young and they were not TV personalities. There were no suburbs, no advertisements, no shopping malls, and the biggest corporation was the hated East India Tea Co.
We aren’t former colonists, and this country doesn’t resemble the one they fought for. Let’s not chain ourselves to the ways of thinking that they identified and embraced simply for the sake of nostalgia; we can take what’s true and leave the rest. The scope of possibility has shifted, and progress demands flexibility. We don’t need to climb onto the backs of animals to get places, so let’s not try to stand on the backs of men who have been lionized for their former greatness, when they are not here to guide us.
When those spindly trees that line I-95 grow flush with green leaves and the air in DC thickens into soup, will the self-described Patriots wear winter coats, in honor of The Founders? As conditions change, our choices must change accordingly.
