Letters to the Editor
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I'm A Leftist, And I Approved This Message
Let America Be America Again
by Langston HughesLet America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.(It was never America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.(There never has been equality for me,
Nor freedom in the "homeland of the free.")I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In that Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every birck and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.O, let, America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!O, yes,
I say it plain,
America was never America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!Out of the rack of ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again! -
more than one reason?
glenn - i've hesitated to comment directly to your post, for fear of not being capable of describing my objection to your analysis... but impulse has overcome resistance, so here goes.
i think it's possible you've grossly over simplified the reason USA is now so disliked. the bush regime, and our acceptance of it, matters (indeed i would agree that it is the most important factor) - but there are many other factors that together have created a tsunami of world-wide revulsion.
i think the issue information distribution (both breadth and speed) that bernhard raises is also a factor. this is a falsifiable hypothesis - and why i asked yesterday if there was any equivalent polling data for 1995-2000. if information distribution does also matter, we should be able to see some downward trends (even if not very steep) prior to 2000. and if this is so, then i think bernhard's also right that a return to clinton-era type foreign policy will not be sufficient.
additionally the absence of the soviet union also matters - we no longer benefit by the comparison of a much worse superpower and we no longer have the excuse of acting in opposition to an existential threat.
according to brzezinsk (as i understand him) we are in the midst of a world wide political awakening where expectations of self determination are increasing. this is happening at at a time where global threats (climate, resource constraints) face us - the rest of the world wants a say in how these threats are addressed.
historically we seem to have gone back and forth in a cycle of "good cop" / "bad cop" foreign policy - where the bad cop makes the good cop look better by comparison. by 2000, the neoliberal "washington consensus" of our foreign economic policy was in the process of being rejected by the world (and at home). it was time for the "bad cop". as thomas freidman wrote: "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas".
isn't it possible that these factors (among others) have coincided with the bush regime in a way that amplifies the damage done by any one component? the bush regime matters (glenn's thesis), information distribution matters (bernhard's thesis) and it matters that we're now in the "bad cop" phase of overt military force in a cyclic foreign policy (the our foreign policy has not fundamentally changed argument).
couldn't it be that, like the why we invaded iraq, there is no one reason?