photo credit: Franco FoliniWhen I was in the fifth grade, some buddies and I had a team that competed in a Saturday morning bowling league. We called ourselves the Whips, and every Saturday morning when we we went to the lanes, we went in style.
While all the other teams distinguished themselves by wearing similarly colored tee shirts (you know, all the kids on the Reds team would wear red shirts, kids on the Blues would wear blue), the Whips would arrive at the Summit Lanes decked out in our snappy black and white bowling shirts with our team name impressively emblazoned across the backs in chainstitch embroidery. Our individual names were embroidered on the left breast. We looked sharp.
If looks could win tournaments, the Whips would have swept the league in a walk. Unfortunately, while we had the look and swagger of champions, we had the bowling skills of creatures without opposable thumbs. Fact is, when it came to knocking down pins, we weren’t worth a damn.
The Whips escaped the embarrassment of finishing last in a league of eight teams only by a last minute stroke of luck. A team called the Smokies was stricken with the flu and forfeited every game in the season ending tournament, thus catapulting the Whips into seventh place.
The good news for us was that our miserable record didn’t tarnish our image among our peers. Not in the least. The Whips remained the most admired team in the league because of those stylish shirts.
Americans, even ten year old American bowlers, have always been willing to believe that what looks good is good, and what looks best must be the best. In damn near every case, perception outperforms substance in the American mind.
Consider the following statements.
“America is the greatest country on Earth.”
“Our enemies hate us because they hate our freedoms.”
“God is on America’s side.”
You’ve heard that stuff a gazillion times, right? Slogans like those have been woven together to make up the country’s game day uniform for a long as I can remember. America has been showing up to play in its flashy red, white and blue dazzle-cloth jersey since well before the Whips got the idea for our bowling shirts.
The country looks sharp, damned sharp, as long as your eyes are focused on the bright colors and reflective cloth. Just don’t look at the score. If you look at the score, however, things don’t look quite so rosy.
America is the greatest country on earth in the same way that the Whips were the greatest bowlers at the Summit Lanes. You know, all hat and no cattle. A no-go showboat, if you will. Talks a good game, but stinks up the joint once the game clock starts ticking.
What blasphemy is this, you ask? Who dares say that the emperor has no clothes? I’ve got some better questions…
What kind of country allows 4 million of its citizens—men, women and children—to live on the streets, in the heat and the cold, in the rain and the snow, without homes?
What kind of country allows one in every fifty children to be homeless, hungry and deprived of the basics of life? Certainly, not the greatest country on earth.
What kind of country sends its police forces to raid and plunder the pathetic encampments of the homeless, adding brutality and cruelty to the weight of crushing poverty? (see videos at right)
What kind of country produces young men so heartless and loyal to dictatorial authority as to conduct such raids and inflict such cruel punishments on God’s most needy? (see videos at right)
In what kind of country can a serious debate arise as to whether health care is a basic human right?
What kind of country allows 45 million of its citizens to go without medical care because they have no insurance or money for medical services?
What kind of country spends 160 billion dollars annually to conduct aimless and unending wars, in which young American men and women courageously fight and die, while its own citizens wither and fall from poverty and neglect? All for the enrichment of the already obscenely rich.
What kind of country props up its criminal bankers and mortgage industry thugs with a trillion dollars in bailout cash while millions of working class people are losing their jobs, their homes, their retirement and their lives at the hands of these thieves?
What kind of country pays drug enhanced athletes 20 million dollar salaries while those who teach its children to read and write struggle to meet basic expenses?
What kind of country worships morally depraved entertainers, rewarding them with unimaginable wealth, while senior citizens are forced to choose between needed prescription drugs and food.
I really liked those shirts, and I was proud to be a Whip. The other Whips and I even wore the shirts to school. People noticed. It felt great to be the greatest.
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Thank you for having the moral courage to place the thoughts of many in print! I often long for the days when as a small child I believed all those many phrases that were being spoon fed to me and my classmates attending elementary and junior high schools in Clarksville, TN.
After all, the folks in Clarksville were energized by the economic benefits of being the biggest city located near the Ft. Campbell, Ky. Army Base. We lived, breathed and ate with our pride in the Red, White and Blue and what those glorious colors brought out way.
Reciting the Pledge to the Flag wasn’t just lip service and tradition to us. We actually believed that Old Mother Liberty was lifting her arms to welcome the poor, tired and huddled masses yearning to live free. That Pledge was, to us at least, a pledge to continue to live and guarantee the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to all Americans.
We also learned that our settlers, mostly from European countries, blessed us by taming those savage, uncivilized and heathen indians who wanted to scalp all palefaces. Andrew Jackson was our hero!
We visited Ft. Nashboro which protected early Nashville settlers from feather wearing wild men who would rape our women and kill our babies. We visted Travelers Rest and the Hermitage and took pictures of slave cabins. Of course these dark skinned folks, who actually built and maintained these stately mansions, came from the wilds of Africa and probably enjoyed a better life here than they did in lands inhabited by people who pierced nose and ears with bones and beads.
Similary, those Indians who once called these southern hills home were much better off way out West on reservations. Heck out there the children were even given the opportunity to go live in boarding schools. No it wasn’t just an opportunity, it was their saving grace that they were taken from their families so they could learn English and grow up to be more like us. No more would they have to live like fathers and their fathers’ fathers.
By gosh, our reservation indians would learn to be God fearing, Bible Reading, peaceful and law abiding people. They also would forget their gibber gabber languages and speak American. Damn it, they would speak English just like the rest of us!
It has taken many years for me to realize that the education I received as a child and throughout young adulthood was filled with lies, intolerance and unexcusable ignorance. Since then I have learned that wars are less often fought for noble ideals and humanitarian rights than they are fought to increase the wealth of the wealthy. I have learned that the word “equal” is an adjective and not an adverb to most people.
Life sure was easier when I skipped the light fantastic! Sometimes it just sucks to know the seemingly never ending challenges we encounter when we attempt to bring about rightful changes. It simply sucks.
Come to Eastwood Christian Church Novemebr 11 at 5:45 for our Fellowship Meal. $5 for a great meal. Doug Sanders will share a video and information regarding Tent City in Nashville.
It is all the sadder because America has such potential to be great. We have so many resources that are wasted because our capitalist system cannot tolerate anything to be free.
I’m a patriot because I sometimes think this country is broken but I am willing to work as hard as I can to fix it.