It was an Apotheosis, I’d say, that Spectacle on the White House lawn the other day. An American Original. After Emerson’s credo, in his essay on “Self-Reliance,” for America to create its own aesthetic: “Insist on yourself; never imitate.” No copying those stuck-up European old fogies and their High Culture.
You bet. Now, I’d say the same of Copeland’s “Appalachian Spring.” Or Bob Dylan’s, "Song to Woody.” Or Woody Guthrie himself. Or Fenway Park. Or Marilyn. But Our America comes in many varieties. And they don’t have to fit together. They can even collide. Let’s not forget Whitman, our stand in for a National Self, in “Song of Myself”:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Multitudes. Call The Spectacle whatever you’d like. Trashy. Vulgar. Exhibitionist. Except the creator and ringmaster, Donald J. Trump, isn’t a foreign import. He springs from our soil and our streets. From Queens! Forget about all these Roman Gladiator likenesses. America is a Land of Blood and Guts and always has been. We forged that identity on our own. And can’t disown it.
That’s not all we are. But it’s part of who we are. “All real Americans love the sting of battle,” George C. Scott, in his movie character as Patton, informed us. Yeah, that’s part of the mythology, right? And it’s not just mythology. “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee” and all of that.
And so Here We Are. An intensification of a place we’ve always been. Our own Heart of Darkness. Sure, call it bizarre. Just don’t call it un-American.
