"I'd like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I'd like to buy the world a Coke
And keep it company
That's the real thing".
Coke ad, "Buy the world a Coke," Hilltop commercial, 1971
"We are the world, we are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So lets start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives"
By the supergroup Food Aid for Africa: "We are the World," 1985
"Global" used to be a good word.
Now "global" is a bad word in some circles, the supposed cause of misery and national failure.
At the United Nations this week, Trump spoke at length about immigration and racial/ethnic mixing:
If you don't stop people that you've never seen before, that you have nothing in common with, your country is going to fail. I'm the President of the United States, but I worry about Europe. I love Europe. I love the people of Europe, and I hate to see it being devastated by energy and immigration. This double-tailed monster destroys everything in its wake, and they cannot let that happen any longer. You're doing it because you want to be nice, you want to be politically correct and you're destroying your heritage.
I have a different view. Immigration is American heritage. President Trump is riding a wave of sentiment about immigration, and we are at full tide. It is hard to weigh in against the tide, but in the longer view, I recognize that the waves come and go. Trump is laboring under a misunderstanding. The true American Volk has always been a lumpy melting pot undergoing change.
America has never been an imagined first "real" American of a White Protestant Christian from northwest Europe. From the very beginning, the two groups of religious dissidents in Massachusetts, the "Pilgrims" in Plymouth arriving in 1620, and the "Puritans" who started coming to Boston in 1630 -- 40 miles apart --were in severe disagreement about how best to separate from or purify the church. When our country started in the 1770s, there were Protestants from England in Massachusetts; Germans and Quakers in Pennsylvania; the Dutch in New York; Roman Catholics in Maryland; Blacks imported from western Africa, living in slavery; and the indigenous people already here, sometimes in and sometimes outside the polity. The Constitution and Bill of Rights linked freedom and tolerance for minority rights so that the different people in different regions could live together in a single nation.
That early nation was changed over the centuries by waves of immigrants from different places. My mother's people came from Greece 120 years ago. My wife's family came from China 70 years ago. The people who help me tend my grapes came from Mexico, here legally, arriving in the past 20 years.
Let me recommend once again the Medford Multicultural Fair. It celebrates that American heritage. It is a feel-good gathering of music, dancing, home-country costumes, booths, ethnic food trucks, and activities for kids. It is at Medford's Pear Blossom Park next to the Lithia Building from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. tomorrow, Saturday.
Global is retro but it is current, too. Global is all-American.
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| Annual event. This from 2023 |
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10 comments:
"Global" is one thing; "globalist" is another. The latter deemphasizes, and even pathologizes, national borders and/or selected discrete cultures and traditions.
Some immigrants, past and present, are either gratefully eager to become Americans as such, or instead prioritize the balkanizing, siloed side of the hyphen.
I’m not as learned about history as many commenters here seem to be, and certainly I’m not even close to Peter Sage. But it occurred to me that while there have been kingdoms and empires for thousands of years, it wasn’t until the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 that the notion of sovereign nation-states was established to end the 30 Years War (that killed over 8 million people btw). That was 377 years ago, which when you think about it, is a mere blip in the span of human history.
The Europeans brought that concept of boundaries when they colonized the Americas. The indigenous folks had no idea what was happening when treaties and maps were drawn up declaring sovereignty until it was too late.
Those familiar with King Phillip’s War, might agree that if Massasoit had secured their borders and prevented the Pilgrims and Puritans from surviving and thriving, perhaps the Wampanoag would still be a nation instead of a a charming part of the Thanksgiving story. Metacom, Massasoit’s son who was beheaded, drawn and quartered and hung from trees in Plymouth would agree that immigrants can really spoil your heritage.
Trump is not a diplomat and has no interest in diplomacy for the sake of peaceful prosperity. He’s a Conqueror who vanquishes his enemies. He will not stop until he is universally worshipped.
Go!! This is what America actually is. Put our differences aside and celebrate our diversity, our strength as a nation, and our shared humanity.
The cultural left has spent the last few decades disparaging the concept of a “melting pot.“ Instead, they have insisted on emphasizing our differences to the point where they have made it very difficult for us to come together.
Fortunately, the cultural left has gone so far with this that they seem at this point to have discredited themselves with a majority of the American people. Now all we need is a politician with enough charisma who wants to actually bring us back together. I don’t see one yet, but I have my fingers crossed.
🤞
The current administration cherry-picks the higlights of the American Dream and omits from that story the reality that is the American story of land confinscation and racial hatred.
This was me, probably no surprise to anyone.
If you don’t believe your opponents are truly sacred humans, then racial prejudice or worse is morally acceptable. This is a problem for the Christian Right who for example, fight against abortion on moral grounds because all human life is “Imago Dei” , but are blind to, or even complicit in the pain inflicted on the ‘least of these’.
It’s easy for most rational human beings to enjoy and appreciate the differences between cultures and our common commitments to freedom and democracy at the same time – kind of like walking and chewing gum. Unfortunately, our current president and his white-wing whackos are incapable of appreciating either our diversity or our democracy.
Why anybody prefer a “melting pot” to a wonderful selection of American, European, Mexican, Thai, Korean, Chinese, Indian, or African foods is beyond me.
Notice I wrote lumpy melting pot. I watched my immigrant grandmother, very Greek, spoke little English, made a home in suburban Boston. Poor. My mother, lived in two world, fluent in both, worked for the BLM,fully Americanized. Her three children speak no Greek other than a few food words. My wife, here from China as a young Child, spoke Chinese at home, but little now. My son speaks no Chinese. My observation is that growing up in the US does a pretty good job of Americanizing people. -- but there are lots of ties to the old country. Evert family is different. In my case, we moved away from home base. The Greek cathedral in Boston. In my wife and son's case, the Chinatowns in Boston and Providence. Mobility, education, marrying outside the ethnicity, employment all hasten the melt. Every situation is different, though.
Food is a place where multiculturalism is OK. Freedom of speech is not such a place. Muslims who want to kill cartoonists for depicting their prophet are not OK.
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