That Ain't America

The irony wafted over me, like a dark cloud.

Ain't that America...home of the free.... As cynical as John Mellencamp intended the song to be, freedom was our saving grace. Behind the facade of our pink houses, life often wasn't easy, and it certainly wasn't fair. But nobody ever doubted who we are, or at least who we were intended to be.

As I half dozed in a Tequila and sun-drenched fog on a Mexican beach, I wondered if somebody had cued up the song to mock us, temporary escapees from an America nobody recognizes. A land of white picket fences gone mad, a dream turned into a nightmare of xenophobia and racism and anti-Semitism and anti-LGBT and anti-choice and anti-pretty-much-everything that isn't white and some twisted notion of what is Christian. They shake their heads down here, incredulous. Believe me, I want to tell them, to borrow an empty phrase. It's really happening, and it's worse than you think.

Down here, sunshine and swim-up bars, a seemingly limitless supply of great restaurants, and spotty cell phone reception have shielded me from non-stop cable punditry and "breaking news" alerts. I have not seen a White House press briefing for a week; perhaps Melissa McCarthy is now dispensing one-liners to all who have been excluded from the gaggle of propagandists behind the newly installed iron curtains. Today, in America, anything is possible, and I don't mean that in a positive "aim high" sort of way.

The bar has become so low for "45" that if he manages to read a speech written by someone else without foaming at the mouth or insulting anybody in particular he is applauded for his gentle tone. The details? Yawn. Nobody really cares about the details. He is being presidential. Walk by the Lincoln Memorial; I bet he has his head in his hands.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch on Pennsylvania Avenue, the likes of Steve Bannon are pulling the strings. Rocks have been overturned, and all sorts of despicable ideas have been brought out into daylight. Hate is emboldened. It is now okay to persecute Muslims (or anybody brown); it is now fashionable to desecrate Jewish cemeteries; it is now cool to persecute anybody with a "different" sexual orientation, and it is realistic to think that our three branches of government will soon be sufficiently tainted to allow these creatures who have crawled out from under rocks to undo almost two and a half centuries of really good work in progress.

Ain't that America? Ain't my America, that's for sure. Speaking at John Mellencamp's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, Billy Joel said this:

Don't let this club membership change you, John. Stay ornery, stay mean. We need you to be pissed off, and restless because no matter what they tell us—we know this country is going to hell in a handcart. This country's been hijacked. You know it, and I know it. People are worried. People are scared, and people are angry. People need to hear a voice like yours that's out there to echo the discontent that's out there in the heartland. They need to hear stories about it. They need to hear stories about frustration, alienation and desperation. They need to know that somewhere out there somebody feels the way that they do in the small towns and in the big cities. They need to hear it. And it doesn't matter if they hear it on a jukebox, in the local gin mill, or in a goddamn truck commercial because they ain't gonna hear it on the radio any more. They don't care how they hear it as long as they hear it good and loud and clear the way you've always been saying it all along. You're right, John, this is still our country.

It's time to come out of our little pink houses, to listen clearly and to get loud.