Happy Last Birthday, America!

Okay, so that title is a little exaggerated. But it’s hard to find a succinct way to say, “Happy Birthday America, a place that’s abandoning its already-thin principles that many would say can’t be abandoned because said principles were never actually followed to begin with.” I went with something a little goofy instead. If you’re an FBI agent reading this, I’m glad that headline hooked you in and I’m sorry to disappoint you with the fact that I’m too inescapably lazy to be a threat to anybody.

I don’t know how I should feel about the 4th of July right now. I’m definitely not sure how I should feel about America right now. Bad? Yeah. Worried? All the time. Hungry? Yes, I am, thank you for asking.

There’s always, always, always been an undercurrent (actually more of an overcurrent) of bigotry in America. We’re a country that was built on slavery and cheap immigrant labor. And that doesn’t even include prison labor which itself is basically also slavery in a lot of states. From the Civil War to World War II, we’ve usually been on the right side of history only after someone’s really forced the issue. We’re a nation that somehow achieves greatness when we have to make a loud “ooof” sound when finally getting off the couch.

But when I was growing up, a major, major, major part of the American mythos was the whole melting pot thing. I don’t mean movies or TV shows. I mean textbooks. The way teachers talked. There was always an emphasis that anyone could make it here, and the more that people from around the world bring to this country, the better we are. I grew up in Florida going to public school, so it’s not like I was stuffed into a hardcore leftist collective. And let’s not forget that Superman, possibly the world’s most famous fictional immigrant, was against bigotry before my parents were born:

Now, I know that some asshole could argue that “immigration made this country a powerhouse in the 20th century” is also propaganda. Sure, maybe. Propaganda we’ve been teaching children for nearly a century, but fine, I guess, whatever. It just didn’t seem like that much of a controversial stance, even when radio hosts were talking about “feminazis,” people on TV were blaming Rodney King the brutality he faced, and gay marriage was still an outrageous idea to most of the country. Weirdly it seems more controversial now, just as a lot of people are going right back to being furious that women are working, black people are pilots, and gay couples are in cereal commercials. Or they were always there and I was lucky enough to not feel that heat. Probably both.

Unfortunately, it’s simply gotten worse because a large portion of the country has decided that trans people can be sacrificed for a better harvest. Then again, we’re a country that used to put lynched people on postcards. We’ve always sacrificed other humans for the harvest - including in the most real world, actually-happened interpretation of that sentence.

It feels insanely obtuse to act like things in America only got bad just now. It’s also fair to say that I’m probably at the lower end of the people in danger of being thrown in prison for moving a box of pamphlets. I’m a fat, bald, white dude with glasses and a face that appears to always be in some state of ugly resentment. In other words, I look like 90% of the people they have rounding up grandmoms and babies. Hell, I don’t even have a car that can be suddenly pulled over, potentially leading to a life-altering event. Nobody’s ever watched me in a store that didn’t sell baked goods reachable from my side of the counter.

Besides the fact that this is woefully unfair, all this sad, horrible shit reminds me that I really do believe that the kernels of America’s greatness come from the things other people bring here. Our holidays, our foods, our sports, our literature, our science, our movies, our shows, our music, and our games wouldn’t be nearly as special if we only had contributions from people who descended from the pilgrims. I don’t say that to be progressive, I say that because it’s overtly fucking true.

Let’s look at the best parts of America.

Pizza! Italian, if changed a bit.

Hot dogs! German and Austrian, if made slightly grosser.

Chinese food! Obvious where that came from, but pretty different from what Chinese people expect from culturally Chinese food in China.

Basketball! Invented by a Canadian man living in America.

Rock and roll! Well, that is singularly American. As is the fact it was basically lifted from Black musicians and handed to white ones for profitability. Not to mention that a large percentage of the greatest rock musicians of all time are from across the pond.

Actually, most of our pop culture works that way. There is no “legacy American” (a phrase that racist people love) who could’ve written a song that, over three decades later, still makes us unable to lie about our love of big butts. I’m only half joking on this one. That’s one of the greatest pop songs ever written. It will live on long after we’re dead.

The history of video games, a thing I’ve been known to love, wouldn’t have been the same if Jerry Lawson didn’t help invent cartridges. Now he’d be called a DEI hire by people using DEI to use a different word that starts with a different letter.

Movies and TV! European directors showed us what a special effects masterpiece looked like long before we got nearly as good. Foreign-born actors played some of our most famous movie monsters, which themselves were based mostly on books and legends that came from other countries. Would I Love Lucy have been the same without Ricky Ricardo?

Rod Serling was born to Jewish parents, one of whom was an immigrant. The Twilight Zone is one of the greatest American television shows ever made. Still holds up. Serling’s show talked about racism and bigotry and the horrors of war when half of television was about heroic white cowboys and dastardly Indians. Would The Twilight Zone be the same without Serling’s experiences? Did that give him empathy?

Or how about Christmas? Every country has it, but America does it pretty well. Hell, good old American man Clement Clarke Moore was one of the earliest people to establish Santa Claus as we know him today in A Visit From St. Nicholas. And if there’s anyone who defined the look of Santa Claus, it’s Thomas Nast. Who was born in Germany. He was an immigrant.

Hell, it’s crazy Thomas Nast isn’t mentioned more often in American history since he’s the artist who created a massive amount of America’s greatest icons: Uncle Sam, the Democratic Donkey, and the Republican Elephant.

But Nast was also racist. Despite being an immigrant himself, he was against Chinese and Irish immigration, drawing both people in pretty horrible ways. The immortal flaw in America will always be its deep-rooted hypocrisy going all the way back to, “All Men Are Created Equal.”

The things that make America great were shared, improved, and created by a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds. There is nothing magical about the ground we stand on. God didn’t kiss all of America by skipping over Canada to get to Alaska. These things were possible because we encouraged a lot of voices to come together with ideas. Maybe some people hate that idea now because we’ve all repeated that so many times that it sounds more like an annoying, sugary, calorie-free fantasy than an actual truth. No, we can be honest with each other, a lot of them always hated it.

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There’s a line of thought that diversity is only forced upon others. Or that it’s an affection to “please” activists. That America would be vastly better if we put the rich white protestants back in charge (as if they ever left). But I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that America would be nearly as good or as rich or as famous if we locked it all down in 1900 and only allowed in bleach-white Anglo-Saxons (“Irish need not apply!”).

What we’re doing now as a country isn’t restoring it to some previously great period. I don’t always love the tech industry for a variety or reasons, but without immigrants, that shit would be nothing here. Which is also crazy because it’s a white immigrant from South Africa who’s partially responsible for making the situation so, so, so much worse. Again, the irony of America is there, too: It’s a melting pot until you’ve got your plate full and then we can put the lid back on.

It’s kinda dumb and old-man-y to wave my hand and say with just a few changes, a new layer of paint, and a couple people in jail, this country could go “back” to the way it was. Even the idea of “going back” to better times is a cudgel wielded by the worst people who think America used to feel like the town in It’s A Wonder Life (directed by an Italian immigrant with “suspicious” politics).

America could be a great country and, occasionally, when the moon is right, and if you squint really hard, and you’ve got over twenty dollars in your pocket, it is. But it can also be a place that celebrates suffering, rewards cruelty, and sees no problem with taking a grocery cart full of shit to the “10 Items or Less” line.

I know I just spent a lot of words to say “America is a land of contradictions” like a child using the cheapest possible AI for an essay, but this is my Substack and I’m assuming only six of you got this far, so it doesn’t matter.

Happy Birthday, America. You could be better if you just stopped giving all the money and power to the worst, least qualified assholes ever born.