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When I was a baby, my parents owned an art gallery and one of the items they had on display was a pair of paper mache punching puppets of Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon. I would, apparently, cry whenever my parents brought them out, and this became something of a party trick for them with the baby. They were proud that even in my infant state I had the capacity to recognize evil.
Despite this, my parents are not cynical people, and I was not raised to be cynical either, especially about America.
By and large, this has not been something that is comfortable in my life. My liberal friends and their families were often, to my perception, embittered and deeply resentful of the way in which narrative of America did not match up to Her reality, whereas I cleaved to the narrative in hopes that we could somehow, someday enter the storybook.
That quest to exist in pages, of course, has largely been the story of my life, and my first memory is of New York City's bicentennial parade and tap dancers dressed like Minnie Mouse in light-up costumes in the warm night. There were fireworks, and the explosions scared me; if only someone had explained they were supposed to, that this was martial, I suspect I would have been fine, even as I wasn't even four.
America's story is my story. America's fiction is my fiction, and fiction is my truth. What I rarely mention is that it has reason to be.
My last name is Maltese. That was not our name in Sicily, but it was given to us on Ellis Island to mark our foreignness, our darkness, our race, and in my teens, my father spent money to commemorate the fact, to honor the lie, at that portal's museum.
And so you see, truth and pride have always been murky things for me and for our whole family.
I know America has often failed everyone who has ever heard Her story. We have been brutal. We have been criminal. We have tortured. We have dismissed. We have ignored. And we have murdered.
I know this.
But I also know that I believe in the story, false as it may be at oh so many points, because I make a choice to believe in it, not to blind myself to our sins, nor because of some national, tribal piety that so often takes frightful turns.
No. I choose to believe in it simply because it's a good story, an exceptional collective myth, and I was raised by an ad man with gnostic leanings to always believe in the power of the lie.
This, today, shows the power of the lie: that sometimes it and all its impossible whispers can become truth, step by step and bit by bit; that sometimes lies can deliver us soundly and rightly into hope.
Despite this, my parents are not cynical people, and I was not raised to be cynical either, especially about America.
By and large, this has not been something that is comfortable in my life. My liberal friends and their families were often, to my perception, embittered and deeply resentful of the way in which narrative of America did not match up to Her reality, whereas I cleaved to the narrative in hopes that we could somehow, someday enter the storybook.
That quest to exist in pages, of course, has largely been the story of my life, and my first memory is of New York City's bicentennial parade and tap dancers dressed like Minnie Mouse in light-up costumes in the warm night. There were fireworks, and the explosions scared me; if only someone had explained they were supposed to, that this was martial, I suspect I would have been fine, even as I wasn't even four.
America's story is my story. America's fiction is my fiction, and fiction is my truth. What I rarely mention is that it has reason to be.
My last name is Maltese. That was not our name in Sicily, but it was given to us on Ellis Island to mark our foreignness, our darkness, our race, and in my teens, my father spent money to commemorate the fact, to honor the lie, at that portal's museum.
And so you see, truth and pride have always been murky things for me and for our whole family.
I know America has often failed everyone who has ever heard Her story. We have been brutal. We have been criminal. We have tortured. We have dismissed. We have ignored. And we have murdered.
I know this.
But I also know that I believe in the story, false as it may be at oh so many points, because I make a choice to believe in it, not to blind myself to our sins, nor because of some national, tribal piety that so often takes frightful turns.
No. I choose to believe in it simply because it's a good story, an exceptional collective myth, and I was raised by an ad man with gnostic leanings to always believe in the power of the lie.
This, today, shows the power of the lie: that sometimes it and all its impossible whispers can become truth, step by step and bit by bit; that sometimes lies can deliver us soundly and rightly into hope.
