“Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.
“And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer…”
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
D-day, June 6, 1944. Eighty years ago
The first time I heard the phrase, My Fellow Americans, was from a different president, seventeen years later and in a different world. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy said, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country… Let the word go forth from this time and place… that the torch has been passed to a new generation…”
It was his 1961 inauguration address. And it was explosive. We were to be, ‘A New Generation.’ One of hope and promise. Altruism, peace, and the exploration of space. After half a century of horror it was the answer to an earlier president’s poignant prayer.
Since then, it has been standard fair for politicians and presidents from Lyndon Baynes Johnson, Richard Milhouse Nixon and up to William Jefferson Clinton to use that tired trope: “My Fellow Americans.” Today it sounds as sincere as a 1950’s cigarette commercial. Lucky Strikes/Means Fine Tobacco!
My Fellow Dupes. My Fellow Useful Idiots. My Fellow Vote-Monkeys. I don’t know if anybody bothers to use it these days. Does it even mean anything anymore? Did it ever? Even the politicians are cynical. Cynicism has replaced patriotism. We cast our votes for the uniparty now. Cast the new vote, same as the old vote.
We used to believe it did, once. Some of us did, maybe. I did at least, naively. That we were all, ‘Fellow Americans.’ Whether Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, middle class, poor or rich, black or white, or man or woman, we were in some intangible way a part of something timeless. Whether we agreed with or liked each other even, we were all in this together. That our problems, which were legion-the 1960’s would be a hotbed of dissent, protest, war, and the passing of major legislation aimed at ending poverty and correcting the sins of our checkered past-could not overcome this one, solid fact: That we, each and every one of us, was, is, and remains, ‘My Fellow American!’ And there is nothing that can shake that.
I have always believed that there is a zeitgeist to any community of people. An illusive and peculiar sense of unity in plurality that makes us who we are. Who we are as Russians or Chinese, chess players or theatre geeks, butchers; bakers; candlestick makers, or any other commonality of being or singularity of secular purpose with our brethren and sistren, sharing our own peculiarities, foods, dance, and our own catechisms of beliefs and mythology.
It is that which makes a group of isolated I's into a body of ‘We’ and that ‘We’ into a solid, unyielding ‘Us.’ And what makes the mighty ‘Us’ into an overwhelming, ‘My Fellow Americans,’ whole, undivided, and of like mind, body, and soul. Though we may vary in opinion, we remain unique in belief and outstanding in singularity. It is the meaning amongst the madness. It is the thing that cements us together.
Without it we are no more than a bewildered, isolated mob of the ignorant ‘One’ amongst the nebulous, soul-sucking ‘Many,’ alone and powerless. An empire at its fall, reduced to a parody of its former self. One of pathetic background and vapid culture that vanishes with the wind. Gone, mourned briefly and by few, and forgotten forever where Ozymandias rules all.
Anonymous suspicion has replaced intimacy in our daily interactions with our once fellow Americans and transformed us from mutual respect to unease to suspicion, distrust and-finally and at the bitter end-to outright hostility.
The emergent, ‘Us’ has become the quiet quitting, ‘Who cares?’
It has been the driving goal of my life to understand whatever I encounter on this earth. Other cultures and other languages, other histories, religions, and philosophies. Other customs and styles of clothing, other foods and leisure pastimes. Other geographies and nation-states, other political parties and kingdoms. Other science and other mystery.
Everything and everyone on the platter of life, a cornucopia both rich and inexhaustible, speaks to me in their own manner. I have always believed that we are the same People, even if we each ‘people’ differently and in our own peculiar ways. And that, the whole globe around, we agree on much more than that which divides us. Spectacularly more.
Your lot in life is also mine.
Maybe I can experience just a little bit of it. The rhythm of it. The rhyme. The genius of it all. The life from which it grows. And the God of all things who created it.
For this reason I regard everyone as, ‘My Fellow Something-or-Other.’ Shared humanity will do. Passengers on the ship of life, whether first, second, or third class. Or boiler room attendant-I’ll shovel coal with the best and the worst of them, heroes and rogues alike. We all sail together. Or we all sink.
Now we enter another election cycle. Another Rendezvous with Destiny, to quote President Roosevelt on another occasion. Another food fight of war lords and petty fiefdoms dug in like the aftermath of the fall of that Rome of which our president also spoke and I fervently pray we are not about to repeat. That we shun the bitter path of undermining each other instead of understanding. Tearing down our mutual country instead of together leaning our shoulders into a shared burden and stabilizing ourselves with a common purpose in the service of a common goal. Our purpose. Our goal. Our fellow Americans.
Is there room still in this country for fellowship? In whose interest is it that we hate each other? And why do we listen to them? Why do we heed the apple peddler in the Garden of Eden? Democrat or Republican, black or white, straight or gay, man or woman, we have all been duped by a strategy of divide et impera: Divide and rule.
We are the many stooges for those detached few who benefit from our disunity into being their useful idiots. Our hatred is their life’s blood.
In what fevered dream do we walk? Of what cursed apple do we eat? Who is this enemy we so eagerly serve?
At the heart of every Greek tragedy is the notion that we carry our own downfall within us. And it goes on and on even unto this day. Each generation cannibalizes the last and creates a new experiment in social engineering. For as long as there have been teenagers becoming adults we have picked and parsed through the fragments of our parents’ and grandparents’ social mores, weighing them and finding them wanting. Taking some of them to heart and making them our own, renaming others so we can commit the same sins as our ancestors while pretending to be superior and modern, and sweeping the rest away with a snort of superiority.
So the Silent Generation begat Baby Boomers and in their turn Gen-X, followed by Millennials, Gen-Y, and then Zoomers until the alphabet is exhausted and the cycle starts again from the beginning. And we pass along our fevered dream from new generation to new generation, our own torches. And we keep making the same mistakes.
Why not wake up? For real this time? Shake ourselves! Arise from that bad dream and greet a new day as a new generation of promise. Or sorrow. Or hard work. Or suffering. At least it will be our promise, our sorrow, our hard work, our suffering. And our reward.
Let the word go forth, that it is our new day and our new dream. Our new generation once more. Let us ask what we can do for our country.
Were I yet a praying man, I would petition the Almighty that we rediscover ourselves as Our Fellow Americans. Maybe, just maybe, it might make a difference. Who can tell?
As President Roosevelt concluded:
“With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace, a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.
“Thy will be done, Almighty God.
“Amen.”
Amen, Mr. President. Amen.
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