The Unseen Here and
Now . . .
Stuart
Revercomb
Stuart
Revercomb is a marketing consultant and joyously married father of four
children. He seems to remember someone once telling him he ought to be
a writer. "The Unseen Here and Now" -- Thursdays.
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"Thursday's Fare"
Are We Worth Our Keep?
Are we worth our keep? Sometimes it's hard to see the light in the darkness. For all the problems and misguided passions that Americans pursue and purvey, it's easy to become overwhelmed with the sheer hopelessness of it all. Just the commercials that must be endured while watching a football game on FoxTV is enough to make one echo the lament of the writer of Ecclesiastes:
"Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, All is vanity."
The raw pile of cultural compost generated as we go about our busy, self-serving materialistic lives is almost more than the soul can bear. From our seemingly insatiable appetite for violence and sex, to our endless fascination with anything that gives us a sense of worldly wealth and power, we are lost in what appears to be a sea of utter hopelessness.
When considered in the context of our influence on the rest of the world it is possible to become even more disheartened. It's not too difficult to see how the very freedoms and liberties that make our country so great are also responsible in their extremes for much of the moral decline of humanity both within and beyond our borders.
The question begs itself. Are we "worth our keep?"
I was recently caught up in pondering just such a sense of our "cultural malaise" when I received an e-mail from a reader containing the words of Gordon Sinclair, a former Canadian television commentator. Sinclair was said to be a "lovable, hateable, curmudgeon" and an icon of Canadian radio, television and news for many years. He had a reputation for saying exactly what he thought, regardless of popular opinion, and was one of the classic "damn the torpedoes" kind of journalist who seem to be in such short supply these days.
Kind of a Walter Cronkite with an attitude.
In 1973 with Vietnam and Watergate raging and the rest of the world vocalizing a never ending stream of anti-American rhetoric, Gordon Sinclair let everyone else know what HE thought about America. It garnered little attention at first but in a few weeks it spread on a sympathetic wind around the globe, and ultimately resulted in a variety of awards and commendations. Sinclair wound up donating the substantial royalties generated by the piece to the American Red Cross.
It became known simply as "The Americans" and while it is not particularly elegant in its language, it conveys an overriding message that I hope we as Americans can still claim. In my better moments I think we can. At other times, I'm not so sure. Regardless of your view it is a message of hope from a past that labored under its own set of political, cultural and social problems.
Perhaps it still provides a more positive perspective on America today.
I hope so.
"The Americans"
"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the Earth. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. When the Franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956 it was the Americans that propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.
"When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped. The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, war-mongering Americans.
"I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the international lines except Russia fly American Planes? Why does no other land on Earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon -- not once, but several times -- and safely home again.
"You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here. When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke.
"I can name you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those.
"Stand proud, America!"