Communities Are Greater Than Countries

There’s a scene from that Aaron Sorkin show* that everyone loved. With Bill Pullman? I never saw it but have seen it discussed with an almost nostalgic reverence, like our own favorite childhood memories. This clip is posted with great aplomb, and frequency, on my newsfeed.

A middle-aged white man sits center stage at what appears to be a political debate. He is calm but pensive. Troubled, perhaps. A woman sits on his right. A younger man sits on his left. A moderator faces them. They are all asked what makes America the greatest country in the world. His opponents’ answers are as generic, predictable. As irrelevant as they are despite their earnest intensity.

Our protagonist doesn’t respond. He remains almost recumbent in his chair and gazes into the ether. Our hero thinks so deeply. He feels so deeply. His values cannot be compromised. And his cerebral brilliance blurs out the background and commands our attention. In the clip the noise of the modern world swirling around this middle-aged white man is just a dreamscape. A blur of sounds and shapes and colors, a cacophony that fades into a backdrop behind the gravity of his super, duper important thoughts. We just zoom in on a white man’s face for the better part of eight minutes.

And it is with smug reluctance that he even answers at all. He is coaxed and prodded and admonished by the moderator who “won’t let him leave without answering.”

When he finally answers, “It’s not”, a collective gasp hushes the shocked auditorium. His answer is an impossibility that contradicts the collective American self creed.

But before he actually explains he decides to pointedly demean the student who asked the question.

“Hey, you, sorority girl. Just in case you ever accidentally wander into a voting booth some day there are some things you should know.” What a condescending treat from the middle-aged white man.

Yes. She asked a doe-eyed loaded question. But he didn’t need to assume that she was a sorority girl, a term only used as a pejorative, he had no right to assume she isn’t already a registered voter with an enthusiastic voting record, and he undermined the valid points he went on to make by starting out with sexism and ageism. The girl took the time to go to a political debate. She asked a question that is largely the product of the society his generation created. This might have been the harbinger of much millenial-hating to come.

I don’t know when a stalwart belief in American exceptionalism became the standard bearer for patriotism. Maybe it’s always been this way. Maybe I was too busy eating chocolate chip cookie dough as a safe and happy white child in a comfortable home to know how many of my fellow Americans were suffering. To have any idea how much they were suffering. How many different ways they were suffering.

First of all, why do we have to be better than anyone in order to be great? Second of all, why do we have to be better than *everyone*?

Is the definition of great being contingent upon outclassing others?

“We used to be,” he finally continues. Ruefully. He finally deigns to treat us with his diagnostic wisdom and insight.

He describes an America that apparently existed in a bygone era. Where neighbors helped neighbors. Where kids rode their bikes in the street. Boy scouts helped little old ladies carry their groceries. 

“We cultivated the world’s greatest artists.” (Really?)

“We acted like men.” What does that mean? When did it stop?

Our pouty protagonist is exasperated by our bygone greatness. But he never actually says what we’re best at. He makes a superlative statement so he should specifically argue what we’re best at and perhaps how we’re better than other countries at those specific things.

What he does describe, with mope-y Aristotelian logic, are general achievements and generic values. Ethos. Pathos. No logos. And he got lost on his own time-space continuum. These values didn’t live and die in a specific time and place only possible in apple-pie America. And we don’t need to be “informed by great men” in order to live upstanding lives of service and achievement. Our values are born within ourselves, our families, our neighborhoods. Sometimes we help our neighbors. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we drive right into the garage after work. It closes behind us as we hustle to get our groceries and our kids unloaded. We don’t always make time for our neighbors. We don’t always even know our neighbors.

But the point is that a country, a nationality, might be too amorphous an entity to create and maintain a collective identity. A national ethos can guide but it cannot create. Families do that. Religions. Individuals. Friends. Volunteer organizations. Our communities create our values. That’s why we choose the ones that resonate with us. But maybe a country, a nationality should just allow us the freedom and give us the safety to find our values and pursue our dreams.

I don’t think that America is the greatest country in the world either. And I don’t think it has to be. And I don’t think we have to define ourselves by our nationality. I think one’s nationality should enable us to pursue our own dreams and goals. I think we should be sufficiently healthy and educated to create the kind of lives we want. With integrity and dignity. Our relationship to and with our government and our fellow citizens is for another post and a review of social contract theory. But suffice it so say, I don’t think American individualism precludes the rights of others. Your freedom ends where the rights of others begin. The beauty is in the balance.

This oft-posted clip is problematic for a number of reasons. I’m still baffled by why so many of my facebook friends post it as though it were the great bridge between our current, and widening, political divide. But for now I’ll trim the fat to the no-shit part that matters: too many Americans think that freedom only exists in these United States of America. Fact: we are not the only free country in the world. We are not the greatest country in the world. This was not the greatest moment in American television. And that’s ok.

 

*I googled it. The show was the Newsroom. And I apparently think Jeff Daniels looks like Bill Pullman.