The America I Loved
What Happened To The America We Learned About As Kids?
I miss the America of my youth. Not the America from the news my parents watched — the America who started war after war in the Middle East hoping to secure more oil and succeeding to ravage countries, create dictatorships, and breed hatred for the West. Not the America that persecutes its own people in a sick scheme to make a few more bloody dollars. Not the America that we’ve ever lived in.
No, I miss the America they taught us in school. The America that was founded by idealistic young men who believed that all of us are created equal. The America that was born out of a yearning to be free from tyranny — out of a need for every single person to have a fair chance at the life they wanted to live. An America that had dreams. That is the America that I miss.
I miss the America I was told about when I was young. It had its troubles, its hardships, its evil men. But the beautiful thing about that America is that Americans — every single one — have voices louder than thunder, power that wicked kings only dream of wielding. We can vote and mold our government and society into what we need it to be to fulfill that American promise. We can rely on our representatives to listen to the will of the people, not of corporations and conspiracies. Wasn’t that a wonderful nation?
If only it ever existed.
That America, the fabled one from history class, was a living thing. It changed when we needed it to change. We were told it was not always easy, but much like in any other fantasy story, good always prevailed over evil. I miss that America.
That was the America that realized it was wrong to enslave humans, so it cast that aside and defied the waning numbers of evil, racist devils. That America took a stand against racism and fought it back, beating it into the ground where it could never hurt anyone ever again. That was the America that continued to do the right thing and destroy racists and xenophobes. That was the America that extended protections to all men, women, and children. That was the America that welcomed people from all over the world into its open arms, because we are stronger together. That America is about freedom, because that America is a land where all of us are equal. I miss that America.
Sometimes I wish that I could crawl back into my elementary school, crack open that old textbook with the majestic flag plastered on the cover, and escape back into a world where I lived in the greatest country on Earth. But I can’t. I loved history. I fell in love with those books and those stories, and my love for history ran so deep that dove headlong into learning that every wonderful thing those books said were blatant lies. America was never the country that we were told it was. This has never been the “greatest country in the world”. It was not founded by idealists — it was founded by wealthy, slave-owning white men who had a very sick definition of the word “all”. It’s still being run by wicked men with those same ideas coursing through their veins.
Learning the truth about our nation’s history is a lot like having a friend sit you down and say, “hey, I think your partner is cheating on you.” You don’t want to believe them. You do believe them, of course. When you think about it, really think about it, the writing was on the wall in six-foot neon letters. But accepting that truth is having to acknowledge that the beautiful fantasy you’re living doesn’t exist. It’s more than the end of a relationship — it’s the crumbling of an entire world that you’ve built around yourself. Many people never go through with it. They decide it’s better, easier, more fulfilling to just continue sitting in the fire and lie to themselves that everything is fine.
Paying attention to American history is a lot like that. It hurts. Our entire childhoods are built around this idea that we live in a country that deserves pride and unwavering love. We start every day of school by putting a hand on our hearts and swearing our unyielding allegiance to this country. Many of us never break out of that idea. We’d rather lay down our lives in a compound in Guyana than admit that we’ve been led astray by charismatic idols and seductive falsehoods. We choose to cling to the idea of America we were spoon-fed in school because the alternative is admitting that we are all complicit in almost 250 years of atrocities.
If you find yourself at this crossroads, trapped between knowledge and allegiance, I want to offer you a third option. I understand your pain and the loss that you feel whenever you see our flag. I, too, miss the America that was so lovingly bequeathed upon our young, impressionable minds. So why don’t we live up to that idea? Why don’t we build an America where all of us are equal? Where we have voices louder than thunder and sharper than obsidian? Why don’t we take this country we have and turn it into something that actually deserves the praise we give it?