America is a 250 year old tree that’s grown around a barbed wire fence. The sharp rusty wire is trapped inside, inextricable but for the death of the tree.
There is no simple solution to the challenges this country faces and anyone claiming to have one is missing the point. If anyone wants to get into it—especially if it conflicts with the opinions I shared here—find my email at the end of this story and let’s go get a coffee or a beer. I’ll buy the first round.
And speaking of opinions, the following are my own and are not necessarily shared by anyone else, even among the GCM team.
-Sierra Hartman
Editor-in-Chief
What does it mean to be patriotic?
Is it dedication to a lofty ideal, even if it’s never realized?
Is it the thing that pulls you toward pride even when you’re nagged by shame?
Is it trusting that someone, somewhere, is wielding power with all of your best interests in mind?
Is it allegiance to an individual simply because they’re the one sitting on the throne?
Is it fanaticism for an identity that protects us from doubt and self examination?
It must at least mean loving your country, right?
But what does it mean to love something? How much of yourself can you give before love becomes self-destruction? If you realize you’re in an abusive relationship, do you stop loving your partner?
The answer is never simple and it’s never final. This country will never be perfect because it never has been. We’ll never get it right. It will never be resolved. Because this country shouldn’t exist.
European explorers shouldn’t have come here. They shouldn’t have spread diseases that would wipe out 90% of the thriving native civilizations that once occupied this land.
Slave traders shouldn’t have stolen Africans by the millions and sold them into slavery on the other side of the world. Families shouldn’t have been ripped apart and sold off like cattle.
The founding fathers shouldn’t have declared independence in the most hypocritical way, holding up the “self-evident truth that all men are created equal” all while buying and selling human beings as property.
The colonies shouldn’t have expanded westward, displacing, murdering, or oppressing every single Indigenous person already living here and also holding the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Later immigrants from England, Germany, Ireland, Italy, France, Scotland, Poland, and so many others shouldn’t have traded their rich ancestry for the lie of American whiteness.
They shouldn’t have been told that no matter how much they are exploited, mistreated, and lied to by their government, they should still follow along and hold their heads high because in America, at least they’ll never be Black.
And we shouldn’t be sitting here now pretending like generations of segregation, sexism, lynching, assasination, misogyny, homophobia, redlining, and gentrification don’t have immense repercussions on our modern-day lives.
None of that should have happened. None of it is acceptable. And yet here we are, a nation of 342 million people who can’t even agree on whether or not there’s a problem, let alone what the cause might be or how to deal with it.
And we can’t pretend that any of this is going to be resolved by winning. Americans are obsessed with victory but that’s not what this conflict calls for. Because if Americans are good at anything, it’s perseverance against all odds; against all conventional wisdom, especially when it comes to our own sacred principals.
We’re bold. We’re proud. We’re arrogant. We build rockets and fly them to the moon just to prove that we can. We make art that changes the world. We push ourselves beyond the known limits of human potential. We build and create and achieve because it’s part of our cultural DNA. And we are very very bad at being wrong.
The same mechanisms that allow us to accomplish all these amazing things are the same ones that keep us from seeing our own very real flaws. And when someone says, “What you are doing is not right.” every fiber of our American being says, “No. You’re the one who’s wrong.”
There is no winning this argument. There are just too many of us here and any attempt at identifying a “them” to pin our problems on is only going to keep the machine running. Even if they really are as bad as you think they are, you have no choice but to deal with them.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting compromise and this isn’t meant to be some kind of centrist manifesto. I’m talking about communication. Even if you never see the person on the other side as a friend or ally, understanding them is still vital.
Because no one ever thinks they’re the bad guy. Even Nazis in WWII really thought they were doing something good for humanity, or at least their fellow Germans. Until we really understand each other, there will be no meaningful progress. Punching someone in the face is easy. Calling someone illegal and blaming society’s ills on them is easy.
Allowing someone the space to express their fears and anxieties, however misguided they may be, is hard. Answering their questions, however confusing or offensive they may be, is hard. Really truly listening to someone who disagrees with some fundamental aspect of your life is very very hard. But if you can get to that point, if you can build enough trust to have that kind of conversation, that’s where good things start.
We’re not going to fight our way out of this. We’re not going to legislate or vote our way out of this. In fact, we shouldn’t be thinking of it in terms of getting out of something. We should be leaning in.
When it feels uncomfortable, lean in. When it makes you angry, lean in. Ask why and listen, not to inform your rebuttal but to actually learn. I say this just as emphatically to the left as to the right.
It’s a very rare thing for a person to change their mind when presented with facts that prove them wrong. People don’t change when they feel threatened, humiliated, or insulted. They change when they feel a connection. We change when we speak and we’re actually heard.
Of course not every conversation is safe for everyone to have. But there are a whole lot of intelligent, considerate, and capable people sitting comfortably on their respective sides, holding the signs and wearing the hats, sharing their opinions widely to strangers on the internet but keeping quiet when it comes to real life.
I said earlier that it will never be resolved and I mean that. This country was built with a fundamental flaw, the barbed wire in the center of the 250 year old tree. To fully resolve the problem would be to undo everything that started much longer ago than the establishment of the United States. It’s the definition of an intractable problem.
I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know how it ends. But it absolutely has to start with communication—not in a comment section and not through a screen. I mean real human-to-human connection. Honesty, vulnerability, acknowledgement of shared humanity.
And I’m not talking to the people who really have something to lose here. If you’re an immigrant living under a constant threat of deportation, this is not your responsibility. If you’re a queer person unsure of when or where you can truly be yourself, this is not your responsibility. If you’re Black, Indigenous, or a person of color who has never felt fully free in a country that advertises liberty and freedom for all, this is not your responsibility.
I’m talking to the white people, men in particular, who want to see better things for the people around you. Because like it or not, this country was made for you. You didn’t build this house but you live in it now. And whether or not you’re aware of it, you hold an enormous amount of power. Talk to the people you have access to. Have the awkward conversations. Ask the hard questions. Find the common ground then dig deeper to find the point where you part ways.
If you don’t believe me and you think the concept of white privilege is a myth or better yet, if you think white conservatives are actually being unfairly persecuted in modern-day America, this is a perfect place to start: sierra@gritcitymag.com
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace—not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
― James Baldwin
