My solemn wishes for the nation’s approaching birthday
“Everything dies baby that’s a fact, but maybe everything that dies some day comes back.” With our nation’s birthday looming, these words of Bruce Springsteen echo.
They derive from his ode to “Atlantic City,” rather than his completely misunderstood “Born in the USA.” In both cases, the dichotomy between the promise of the city and the nation clash jarringly against the realities of war, corruption, death and decay. Despite these, the protagonists of his songs put on their makeup, prosthetics, whatever is required to get through the day and the long night. I relate, Boss, I do.
Long before Atlantic City’s casino invasion, back when Eisenhower was in the White House, my maternal grandmother, Frances, would host my brother and I at the Claridge Hotel. It was one of the art deco-era palaces gracing Atlantic City’s boardwalk. You could spot Marilyn Monroe, Princess Grace, Bob Hope or Frank Sinatra in its lobby. These grand hotels had a similar feeling for me as the fictional Eloise got from her adventures at the Plaza in author Kay Thompson’s 1955 children’s book. As a kid, having the run of a stately hotel was a trip to paradise unimaginable in the climate of fear we inhabit today. These buildings astride the boardwalk were incarnations of the American dream, soaring and full of a resplendent wealth. We didn’t look past them.
They are mostly gone now. A rare exception is the Claridge, demeaned to a casino conversion for a time but now blessedly gambling-free. What I wouldn’t give to visit again with my grandmother. Most of the other venerable hotels fell to parking lots and memories. The shining palaces built upon the sand, in the parlance of Edna. St. Vincent Millay, were always a front: paper moons on the stage set that is America. Push back from the boardwalk, then and now, and poverty and poor education doom the backstreets. Stray to nearby Philadelphia, detour south to Baltimore — limned so tellingly in “The Wire” — or fly over the country to San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Here you’ll meet the hidden nation, raw underbelly of the capital cow we milk.
“Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried,” Winston Churchill famously intoned in 1947. His broke and battered island had gone it alone against fascism for two long years, until Pearl Harbor shocked us into the war. Six decades later, the attack on the towers awoke us again to a global threat. America’s oceanic isolationism has always strummed chords to which we’ve inclined to dance.
As a nation, we confront threats internal, external and cosmic. Foreign autocrats and plutocrats now face competition from native-born authoritarians and an uncertain economy. Worldwide ecological depredations have led to near-irreversible climactic calamities. Small wonder young Americans are not rushing to meet the needed 2.1 children per mother threshold. It is hard to see how our best-by-default government prevails against China’s challenge. Unencumbered by our increasingly uncivil society, the PRC stakes its claim to the developing world and approaches Pacific dominance. Should a hard power grab of Taiwan supplant the struggle for soft power, shadow conflict with Russia over Ukraine will seem like comparative child’s play. Our next leader will need to handle a delicate balancing act.
Where are the great American statesmen who can steer us through these challenges? They are not yet visible in either political party. A possible return to power of Donald Trump is enough to make premiers like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping dance the tarantella. His chief opponent so far for the Republican nomination, Ron DeSantis, has walked back his reference to the war in Ukraine as a “territorial dispute.” Nevertheless, his isolationist leanings and his bizarrely nontraditional Republican anti-corporate stance should give us pause. One gets little solace from the Florida governor’s singular inability to make peace with the Magic Kingdom. My wife would term his behavior “unnecessary noise.” Would you trust DeSantis to negotiate with Putin and Xi? Let’s see you tame Bob Iger first, guv. Or better yet, ditch the cultural craziness and take your hands off women’s bodies. It is one of the nation’s worst traits that we can’t seem to mind our own business.
Standing at this uncertain crossroads, I’ll step to the line and light my July 4th fireworks. I remember when I kissed the tarmac upon returning from China in my ABC News days, back before the jetways. I’m no Churchill, but I’ve seen all too much of the joys of authoritarian regimes. Think of Evan Gershkovich of The Wall Street Journal, stuck in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison. I thank my emigre grandmother I was born in the USA.
Let’s celebrate our love of country. If what we had is dying, it’s time to make a comeback.
