My relation was enthusiastic about the positive vision the ad offers of our country, she told me. But as I watched it, I found myself wondering how I’d feel if I were anything other than a white American…
I can believe that this is how the president envisions America. It’s very much a TV vision from the era of his youth (also the era of my youth, so I know whereof I speak). Lots of bits from TV shows and movies are edited into this [times are approximate], like Davy Crockett, complete with coonskin hat, riding into Washington, D.C. [0.42]. The president’s voice lists heroes (predominantly white males, with some odd exceptions: Annie Oakley appears in old film shooting a repeating rifle at a target) and tells of their carving “a nation out of the vast frontier” [0:56]. These heroes “tamed the wilderness” [1:10] and “settled the wild west,”[1:13] they “braved the unknown.”[1:09].
A Native American might quibble with the characterization of wilderness taming. They might point out that the “unknown” could have been known if the newcomers had adopted a different approach to the folks who already lived in the lands they'd stumbled on. Native Americans could also debate the nation carving, given that those who lived in the unknown lands actually managed it with a light but effective touch, and in much of what’s now the United States, had a fairly long history of organized governance, even confederation among peoples.
African Americans might also find this telling less than relevant. The president’s American Story doesn’t have slavery (though it does have Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman as its token black heroes, for unspecified reasons—no MLK or Rosa Parks, mind you!).
Mexican Americans might wonder at the account of the 1836 “last stand” at the Alamo, by “Texas patriots”[0:51]—particularly given that those “patriots” were immigrants to the Mexican territory of Tejas. Many were slave holders, and it’s not so coincidental that Texas rebelled not long after Mexico abolished slavery in 1829. Texas became the independent Republic of Texas in April 1836. Not a part of the U.S., and at the time, not interested in being a part of the U.S. Though the United States did not directly participate in the insurgency, the Texian forces, as they were then called, included numerous U.S. soldiers who returned to their U.S. military units back home in the United States after the rebellion without consequences for being AWOL.
The tacit U.S. support for the rebellion, and the later annexation by the U.S. of Texas in 1846 led to the Mexican American War, a war ignored by the ad, as well as largely ignored in mainstream U.S. history. (Lincoln made a forceful speech opposing this war while he was in Congress—not a part of Lincoln’s legacy that the current president chooses to mention). The origins of the war are murky, as is often the case, but U.S. President Polk definitely saw it as an opportunity to fulfill the so-called “manifest destiny.” When it was over, Mexico lost most of what is now California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona, the western half of New Mexico, the western quarter of Colorado, and the southwest corner of Wyoming, along with bits of Kansas and Oklahoma.
Parenthetically, Korean Americans and Vietnamese Americans might wonder about what happened to the Korean and Vietnamese Wars--as might the veterans of those wars. There's also no mention of Jewish Americans or Arab Americans; the far east and the middle east might not exist at all....
Irish Americans might find a timeline showing 1848 - 1849, where the president’s voice says we were lifting “millions from poverty, disease, and hunger”[1:15] mildly puzzling. The smaller print that goes by quite quickly references Irish immigrants coming to the United States, who arrived (in the thousands, not the millions) to escape the potato famine. No mention of the discrimination Irish immigrants faced on arrival in the accolade to lifting millions out of the muck.
Into the 1850s, now, Civil War on the horizon. Except according to the president’s vision, there apparently wasn’t one—a sort of lip service is perhaps given in an image that zips quickly by of a black soldier in what may be a Union uniform holding a flag [1:00]. Nope, there was nation-building in the infrastructure sense: we “laid down the railroads” [1:25]—again, from an indigenous peoples’ perspective, this might recall land grabs, or buffalo slaughter, or relentless relocations and suppressions—and a Chinese American might wonder why their contribution to the transcontinental railroad is ignored but for a single lone frame showing the back of a worker’s head, topped by a conical hat and displaying a single long braid [1:29]. Nor is there mention of the legally imposed discrimination, once the railroad was complete, which barred Chinese laborers from entering the United States and placed restrictions on those already here. Indeed, until 1943, federal law prohibited Chinese residents from becoming American citizens.
Native Americans, in fact, might find a a strange image juxtaposition ominous: Mt. Rushmore appears [1:36] as the president is talking about “our ancestors” building “the most exceptional republic ever to exist in all of human history”; the Statue of Liberty flows by with Manhattan in the background, immediately followed at 1:40 by an image that looks like a horseman from one of the Plains tribes consumed in a dust storm as the president’s face then appears [1:43] saying “and we are making it greater than ever before.”
A bit later, a painting flashes on the screen [2:10]. I recognized it as “The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914, Jennie Augusta Brownscombe), or rather, a piece of that painting. Bad enough that in the complete painting, shown here, the Wampanoag who enabled the Pilgrims to survive were portrayed as a few attendees, mostly in the background. But in the campaign video, they’re cropped out entirely. Just the left side is shown (pilgrims only). The painting is apparently meant simply to illustrate “the hand of Almighty God” by which we are, says the president, all made equal. There’s a certain irony, there…
Since they opted to use this painting, it’s worth taking a look at what it doesn’t depict. According to Grace Donnelly in a 2017 Fortune article cited by Charles M. Blow (NYT, Opinion: “The Horrible History of Thanksgiving,” 27 November 2019).
"The celebration in 1621 did not mark a friendly turning point and did not become an annual event. Relations between the Wampanoag and the settlers deteriorated, leading to the Pequot War. In 1637, in retaliation for the murder of a man the settlers believed the Wampanoags killed, they burned a nearby village, killing as many as 500 men, women, and children. Following the massacre, William Bradford, the Governor of Plymouth, wrote that for 'the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a Governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.'”
In short, as Blow points out succinctly, “Just 16 years after the Wampanoag shared that meal, they were massacred.” Another way of looking at it might be that one European life is worth around 500 indigenous lives. Begging the question, in today’s terms, which lives matter?
Those are just some of the president’s historical interpretations that frankly, we should all take issue with.
My point here isn’t to denigrate my flawed, beloved country. But in order for us to continue the great American experiment of forging “a more perfect union” that began in Philadelphia in 1776, we can’t pretend that we haven’t tripped, stumbled, and even fallen along the way. We can’t dismiss the voices and perspectives of huge portions of our united peoples.
What makes us great is that when we trip, we search until we find our footing; though we may stumble, we catch ourselves and keep going; when we fall, we get ourselves up again.
What keeps us great is our diversity, our ability to learn and progress, our fundamental goodness when opportunity arises, like the outpouring of help in times of flood or sacrifice in a pandemic. When we draw on it, our diversity allows renewal through the myriad voices that join the national conversation, offering different viewpoints and creative visions. It is, as former President Barak Obama says, “messy.” But it is far more beautiful, offers far more freedom, than the lovely, distorted myth of America envisioned by the president.
Nice piece of writing, my friend.
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