Sleazy. Grubby. Squalid. Smeared. That’s how I feel about America. I want to shower after reading the news, cast off my repugnant fellow citizens, as Britain’s king did his bumbling brother. Slam the door. But no. I stink of the sewer and it’s only getting worse. “Out, damned spot! out, I say!... What, will these hands ne’er be clean?”
It’s a new feeling. I was raised proud. Dignity at any cost: candor and kindness gave way to that onus. Who we seemed mattered, not who we were. I violated my share of prohibitions but always in delicious secret, thrilled to have “gotten away with” my delinquency. I once wrote a poem, celebrating my defiance of propriety:
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedCreeps to bed.What will he say?Will his crime lie hiddenyears, a day?
Scalds skinas noon in tropics.Noisily trampthe mind's cops.
Why did he do it?Why did he sin?To draw the lovingslap like kids?
To goad Godlike Franklin's kitetaunting the fireout of night?
Pain teaches usparameters.We rush at theelectric fence
to jerk back shocked.Only thedead giveno offense.
Lies back flushedwith pride of sin.I am hewho chucked God's chin.
Now I writhe with shame. Yes, writhe. Busted – for vileness. For I can’t help being American. And what’s happening is who we are.
Concern for personal dignity differs as much as fingerprints. Some folks exult in offending, farting loud and laughing; others blush and cringe. Perhaps because of my rearing, I’m hypersensitive on this score. In my words as my behavior, though I tiptoe to the bounds of acceptability, I try not to overstep. Loving originality yet loathing acrimony, I strive to keep the two in balance.
If America survives our present civil war and the party of decency prevails, repairing the damage will require heroic exertion: that burden is our gift to our heirs. The list of fixes is so long it will be hard deciding where to start. But for sure, we’ve got to get to work on behavior. We must reteach the lessons that my generation rejected as namby-pamby. Decorum, respect, kindness, truth, beauty are not nice-to-haves, decorative in a civilization defined by a constant contest for power; they are civilization’s purpose. “What do we live for,” asked George Eliot sensibly, “if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”
I almost blush to restate maxims so obvious, but events daily demonstrate we’ve forgotten them. Our elite party with pedophiles. The less privileged treat strangers as vermin. We spit at workers and extol thieves. We accept the preposterous thesis that making the rich richer benefits all, including the deprived. We vote for thugs who advocate grabbing women by the pussy. And so forth.
How do we reform ourselves? I have no idea, except by teaching, preaching, screeching. We must reinstate decency as the purpose of politics, not its casualty. We must relearn to say please, thank you, I’m sorry. If this lesson sounds infantile, that’s where America scores on the morality scale. We can graduate gradually to subtler discriminations once we’ve mastered the basics.
Do I sound a scold? To myself too. But we must pitch our speech to our hearers’ comprehension. Do we have to explain to our leaders why the welfare of the many matters more than the success of one party? Apparently. Do we have to demonstrate why pussy-grabbing and pedophilia and stealing other nation’s possessions are not OK? Apparently.
“To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely,” said Edmund Burke.