America, you once were a friend of mine.

It’s not a habit of mine to write expository pieces that accompany songs of my own, and I hope that I haven’t quite done that here. The song and the essay stand independent of each other but I hope that the two of them enhance each other. I find America in its creations - and creators - Thoreau, Twain, Steinbeck, Miller, etc. Its Warhols, Adams, and Rockwells, and Dylans, Guthries, Baez’s and Smiths (Patti). Here’s a playlist of songs I find to be uniquely American. With any luck I’m contributing to the abundance of American stories, and continuing the tradition of what America is and what it will be. More to come, soon.

View the song here.

Cheers,

FA

How long would I have to go back for that to be true? 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act? 1945, and the fall of the Third Reich? In part thanks to the help of the millions of American men and women conscripted into military service. Or 1920 when the suffragettes were victorious and the 19th Amendment was ratified? Or is it the year of the emancipation proclamation, 1863? Or perhaps, it’s earlier than that still. Could it be as long ago as 1776 when a fledgling, inchoate America was still more concept than instrument and had nothing but possibility lying ahead of it?

Of course, to answer that question, I’d have to first nail down just exactly what America is. The further back we go, the clearer the picture becomes and the easier it becomes to define. The Declaration of Independence is an inspired start of Hellenistic and Abrahamic origin - “We hold these truths to be self evident…”. A document I hardly think we could replicate today as representative of our society and our aims. Then, the writing of the Constitution is quite the sophomore effort from our founding fathers. Again, a charter I shudder to think about if we were tasked to recreate it today. The system of government it proposed was robust, and unlike anything that had preceded it. Admittedly, this charter did allow for the enslavement of our fellow man - the vilest stain on American history. But, the truly revolutionary idea built into the foundation, that exhibited the founders’ bravery and wisdom, is that the Constitution was written with the provision that such a despicable institution could be made illegal. It’s the 250 years of implementation of these documents that is fraught with failures, abuses, and shortcomings. Not that we haven’t made progress, the Civil Rights Act ostensibly fulfilled the last unsatisfied promise of the Declaration. But elsewhere, those promises of a government “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” have been unmade. What was intended to be a government for the people ruled by the people has mutated into an oligarchic nightmare.

Now, we live in a country ruled by special interest groups, corporations, and super PACs. The NRA, the NEA, pharmaceutical companies, etc. all have infinitely more influence and organization than the citizens do. The caucus and primary process is fraudulent but the media refuses to cover it like their preferred erroneous speculation of the 2016 and the 2020 presidential elections. Wikileaks (more on Julian later) released thousands of emails proving that the 2016 DNC was rigged in favor of the Clinton campaign thwarting Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid. More recently, and closer to home, Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District candidate Robby Starbuck was removed from the ballot illegally by the Republican Party in a private meeting when law dictates these must be public. Despite Starbuck winning his appeal in court the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision. Starbuck will be a write-in candidate on August 4th this year. The North Carolina State Board of Elections denied the North Carolina Green Party from appearing on the ballot in spite of the Green Party having more than enough of the required signatures for a successful petition. Our consent has been manufactured long before we make it to our local polling station; we don’t decide our candidates, the political parties and election commissions do indicating we have a monopoly masquerading as a duopoly in the form of the Republican and Democrat parties; a game in which the legacy media are complicit demonstrated by the arbitrary rules (determined by a commission of both parties) that kept Tulsi Gabbard out of several debates in 2016, and the frequent misspelling or blatant omission of Andrew Yang’s name in polling results.

So, what is America? Who determines what America will be? It’s clearly neither you nor me. When was the last time our country made efforts to fulfill its promissory note? Our military action has certainly become much less noble since the end of the second world war; US sponsored coups in South America and Europe, proxy wars in foreign lands, and decades long occupations don’t quite live up to “The Greatest Generation” and their standards. When Eisenhower left office he warned America of the growing military-industrial complex but it seems it has all but taken over the highest positions of government. Since then, the proletariat work away while Congress and the Pentagon use our tax money to fund un-winnable wars (Afghanistan, Ukraine) and relentless bombing campaigns (Syria, Yemen). Meanwhile, the federal government does all they can to devalue our currency, printing money at will, reducing the value of savings accounts by double digit percentages, and installing wage increases that fail to keep up with inflation. America is fiat, morphing into whatever values its leaders are pedaling, cloaking itself in the fluctuations and fashions of the zeitgeist. America used to be gold, and it could be bitcoin - a sound currency, a reliable metric with which to measure the rest of the world - incorruptible.

So, again, I ask, what is America? What do we most resemble? Are we recognizable by our founding philosophy or have we been entirely overtaken by corporate interests, the State, and their respective empires? Is America the C.I.A. and Operation Mockingbird? In 2012, President Obama signed an amendment to the Smith-Mundt Act ( a Soviet era relic that allowed for the dissemination of pro-American propaganda overseas in order to combat the U.S.S.R.’s own propaganda machine ) allowing for the distribution of state media, previously prohibited by the legislation, within our borders to our own citizens. Is America weapons of mass destruction, the Patriot Act, or the exile of Edward Snowden? Now, three presidents in a row have committed to the persecution and extradition of journalist Julian Assange with his day in court stateside looking imminent. Is America Nancy Pelosi’s stock portfolio? Or Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler ( who later lost to Raphael Warnock in the Georgia run-off ) and Richard Burr ( still serving as senator for North Carolina ) who cashed in millions of dollars of holdings in the stock market when they received their debriefing of the impending pandemic - long before the same information was available to the American public. Is America Trump Tower or the immigrant brick layer? Is America Normandy Beach or the evacuation of Afghanistan? Operation Paperclip or Einstein and Oppenheimer? Is America the tragedy of Nat Turner or the triumph of Frederick Douglass?

Is it possible that the answer to each of these questions is yes? And would that be admissible? America is the place where I was born, where just a few generations before my ancestors were poor immigrants from Europe. Leaving their homes behind for a new start in the New World - who knows what fates would’ve befell them in 20th century Europe - here, I profit from their risk and sacrifice. America is the place where growing up some of my closest friends were second generation citizens, realizing the dream their parents had only decades before. America is the place where Thai food tastes like home, and where an Egyptian shepherd runs our favorite falafel shop in a suburban Tennessee town. America is the place where I will raise my daughter, knowing she will be treated as an equal, that she can be anything she aspires with hopes that America makes good on the promises it made my forebears. If I narrow my vision, ignore all the rest, America can be just these things. But is that how I would greet a friend of mine?