Is America A People Or An Idea?

Today is the Fourth of July, a holiday that's feeling more poignant than usual. Amid a pandemic, racial protests, economic downturn, and a tempestuous election year, I'm not quite sure I'm proud to be an American. I am a Texan but don't feel much attachment to its particular history as I hardly recollect it. So at a much larger scale, national pride seems detached from most current events.

I remember American history, but relating that to my daily life requires some mental gymnastics. So as a twenty-something today, all that I see happening in my country doesn't line up with thinking that we are the greatest. Trump's mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis has left the U.S. on a no-fly list for many American countries. Due to a round of blame game that Trump played in the spring, he has threatened China with various restrictions on trade and travel.

Meanwhile, a quick skim of a history book paints a picture of a country that's gone through immense progress, all of which is somehow retroactively supportive of the country's founding principles, like a drawn-out plot of a novel. All the themes connect and everything makes sense. 

But history is messy, events are random, and though it's "good for business" to have, say, all Republicans since the beginning of the party somehow agreeing with Republicans today on things, I don't think that continuity means much. We were given the Constitution, which gives us our rights and tells us how the government works. But its words pertain to bodies of power; the nation is the mass of people under it. If countries worked like businesses, and all of the people broke with the Constitution, it is the people who would still own the rights to the name "United States of America", not the system written in old documents.

America was founded as a symbol of freedom from tyranny, but 200 years is enough time for that symbol to completely turn on its head. So if my loyalty to my country is ever called into question, I will always choose "we the people" over "a more perfect union".

What defines a country at any given time are the people alive in it. I think of France as the citizens today, whose mannerisms and cuisine are recognized worldwide. I give a nod to the history of France, but history is not identity. And if that seems cursory, I believe that people inside a country are even more inclined to view themselves as The Nation than those outside would believe them to be.

Upholding history has its place. If a government and a society are to be balanced, they must do so. But each invocation should have a specific purpose. History itself cannot be the purpose. In a century that moves faster than all the others that came before it, history becomes antiquated at an exponential rate, yet people's lives do not become longer. Something has to give.