I recently ran across a complete discography of the great film composer Ennio Moricone. As I was browsing the cds I noticed a film-score for a film I had never heard of: Sacco and Vanzetti from the early 1970’s. Joan Baez was credited for the music as well as Morricone. I copied the tracks to my MP3 player so I could listen to the music while I was enjoying my work out.
Well, the soundtrack blew me away. There are several really excellent songs. One of them has been stuck in my head since I first played it. It’s contains lyrics which include the poem from the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired and your poor…’) and the Sermon on the Mount (‘Blessed are…’) and it refers to America as the promised land. (Joan Baez video.) As I was listening I almost began to cry when I realized that the America evoked in the song no longer exists. I realized America has gone from a place welcoming the tired, poor and downtrodden - and practicing the profound teachings of the Sermon on the Mount - to a place of fear, hate, meanness, ugliness, selfishness, disunity, divisiveness, recrimination, blame, deep-seated racism; where the needs of the many are eclipsed by the greed of the few; and much more. It seems only a matter of time before we alter the Statue of Liberty verses to read: “Go back where you came from; we don’t want you; you’re too needy; you’re just a burden. Go somewhere else and be someone else’s problem. We don’t care. Get lost.”
Everything positive that America once was (and we - you and I - once were) is gone. And what is left is barely recognizable as America at all. It’s more like some other failed nation from somewhere else in the world or sometime in the past.
It’s not the America of hope but a nation of despair.
Maybe this just upsets me because I’m a nostalgic old fart. But I have believed for my entire life that America is a completely unique nation – both in the global sense and in the historical sense. America is not unique because of its consumerism, militarism or imperialism. It’s unique because it once welcomed the “tired and poor” and was once seen as the embodiment of hope. That image of the Promised Land isn’t just historical nostalgia. That image was real - at least for my grandfathers and grandmothers who came from Italy about 100 years ago. And for many other people whose ancestors came here as recently as 4, 5 or 6 generations ago.
When did America go from being the land of hope to the land of despair? What happened? Why did it happen? Can we restore hope? I really believe we can. I think it requires that we all stop focusing on our differences and instead start re-focusing on our similarities, our commonalities. We have to go from obsessing about what separates us to joyfully affirming what unites us. We are all Americans. We all want this to be the best nation on Earth – not just for some of us but for all of us. We know how to make this happen. We know what to do and how to do it. We just lack the vision (by which I mean that we cannot see past our collective despair) and the political will. There’s a Bible quote that says: “Without vision the people perish,” (Proverbs 29:18.) Well, America is perishing; we’re perishing. And it doesn’t have to be this way. When will we wake up?
