I first became aware of presidential politics when John Kennedy won the Democratic nomination in 1960. I was a serious Catholic school fourth-grader who read the newspaper every day and dreamed of becoming a priest.
Kennedy’s Catholicism and my prepubescent, priest-worshiping fervor made politics personal and spiritual for me. I’ve never been able to break that connection.
That makes me an idealist, an optimist, a Marxist and a moralist all at the same time. It’s a curse. I try not to burden my friends with it. So if you want to avoid half a dozen paragraphs of pretentious treacle, go on to another diary with my blessing.
I bought my first American flag last night.
I drove up to the drugstore for it---a little linen flag on a stick, made in China, $1.49.
I planted it on our front lawn next to our Obama sign.
Starting in about four more hours, 50 or so cars will drive past, most of them worth as much as our house. About a third of them are high school kids, about half the rest are from other countries (I walked---and talked to---every house except two in my neighborhood over the past six weeks). About 10 a.m., the first of a dozen or so older exercisers will hike by.
I’ve never been proud to be an American. It’s an accident of birth, like being white, or tall, or bald. I understand the existential power of patriotism, but when I try to picture America the Beautiful, my vision gets clouded by Kennedy assassinations and Dr. Martin Luther King and Abu Ghraib and that naked little Vietnamese girl running from a Napalm attack.
Once I denied being an American. When my wife and I bused across Mexico two months after Sept. 11, we carried an old Army surplus duffel bag stenciled "US." I used a black Sharpie to rebrand it "Mucho GUSto Mexico."
That trip, I regretted being an American. I’m tall and I have a big Santa Claus beard, that’s unusual in small farm towns in Mexico, my wife is very tall with long blond hair, so we’re used to being stared at, it’s always been modest and understandable and we’ve never been treated with anything but extreme kindness and hospitality.
But on this trip, every day for 28 days I heard the same thing, at least once a day and sometimes several times---some anonymous person in a market, a bus terminal, on the street, always behind me, always headed the other direction, always a young guy, and always a sneering whisper: "Osama!"
I’m sure I projected the ‘sneering’ part a little, but after about day 15 it started to get a little oppressive.
We were sitting outside the bus station in Zitácuaro, a tiny town with a one-a-day connection to Angangueo, where Monarch butterflies go to winter.
In small, remote towns in Mexico, teenagers don’t show off as much rebellious attire as Americans do. I’m sure there are flares I can’t see, but they pretty much dress and groom like their parents, and act like them.
So we both paid attention when we saw this one skater kid with pink hair, shades and a sleeveless t-shirt coasting down the sidewalk across the street. He dropped off the 10-inch curb, flipped his board and caught it, crossed to our side and kicked past us. We smiled, my wife clapped.
"Osama!" he sneered.
I was too young to be drafted to Vietnam, but I qualified to learn to pilot med-evac helicopters and volunteered. The Army canceled that program before I reported for basic training, but that afternoon at the induction center is the only time since eighth grade I can remember ever reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with my hand on my heart.
I’ll stand out of respect for your patriotic fervor, but I never had any. I’ve always thought flag display was silly. My father earned one for his coffin, probably the only one anyone in my family has ever owned.
But a couple hours ago I planted an American flag on my lawn, next to my Obama sign.
I hope I’ll jump off a bridge before I devolve into a flag-waving ‘get off my lawn’ caricature. But, come next July 4th, President Obama and Democratic House and Senate majorities will have had six months to restore our Constitution, earn our confidence and exercise our common sense.
So who knows?