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| "Flag" Jasper Johns, 1954 |
Huddled at home, trying to focus on something other than the din of illicit fireworks, I meditate on my high-school essay question: What does America mean to me?
I used to think it stood for Freedom. Americans do enjoy an individual freedom of speech, thought, and worship that is nearly absolute. This is what keeps me here in my native land. But Freedom is a tricky term, understood in many ways.
For white supremacists, it has meant freedom to practice slavery, then segregation and discrimination, unequal justice enforced by racial terror. For African-Americans it means the hope of freedom from white supremacy: Freedom to vote, to walk or drive through any neighborhood, to run for exercise rather than for your life.
For Franklin D. Roosevelt, it meant freedom from want, freedom from fear. For conservatives in the 21st Century, it means freedom from taxes, from caring for the poor, even freedom to endanger others' lives by not covering your face.
So Freedom's just another word to fight about.
Think of US as an acronym for Ultimate Struggle. Ever since the English set foot in Virginia and Massachusetts, the country
has been torn between two irreconcilable world-views. Let's call them the System and the
Movement. S & M.
