Last spring when I saw the Transformers movie (yes, put this one alongside Vanilla Ice's "Cool as Ice" and GI Joe for retro Gen X-er appeal), I had no idea I would be using it as a bad way to start off this opinion article. At the time, I also wasn't really thinking about nationalism or anything American at all. Yes, I was more concerned with the endless war between Optimus Prime, the Autobots and the feared Decepticons.
However, over the summer I started to think about nationalism and that whole issue I had always assigned to the world of NASCAR and my grandparents. During one of the floats on the Fourth of July -- Needham Little League Team #8769, we'll call it -- I realized how divorced the holiday is from our forefather's principles. Most Americans spend their days taking in the fruits of our government without questioning our once shaky identity. They don't need to question our identity like Americans before them. There is no dividing, even "transforming" issue, no Vietnam, no Civil War, no Boston Tea Party, to make us think of our national identity. Instead, we exist in a Gilded apathy, even as oil prices threaten to end our blissful ignorance (but I won't talk about oil, sweet, sweet oil).
During English, with Professor Renza spouting distilled truth about American Prose, he hits constantly on this topic of American nature. Now, I've never been very patriotic. My Fourth of July memories consist of my uncles running for the bushes as they tried to blow up a small part of our nation. Aah, the wonders of illegal fireworks. I mean, don't get me wrong, I like the pretty colors and the big booms of Independence Day. The tank that shoots toy rockets was cute too. But I need something clear-cut to ground myself in the country -- something that U.S. History lacks in high school -- a strong understanding in the theory of our secular country. Why are the Autobots and Decepticons fighting, if you will? If Optimus Prime defeats the Decepticons, will he set up a moral utopia too?
As Professor Renza pointed out, the U.S. is unique in that it is founded on a document, without God written into our "scripture." Writing was and is integral to the very essence of this utopia. Yet while this fact may be central to American literature, it also calls to attention what seems to be one of the central paradoxes of America -- that we sign a "social contract" in order to be free. So we bind ourselves for freedom? The very language of such a document is meant to provide us with liberty under LAW, which is in itself restrictive. We have speed limits so the Autobot Hot Rod can't go over 65.
Liberty, true liberty, involves autonomous choice. However, freedom is not simply a lack of obstacles, but rather, people are free only when they bind themselves by law. Each citizen promises compliance in exchange for a like promise from everybody else. However, the paradox here is that these promises require language, which in turn requires society. Thus, someone's "natural" liberty is destroyed in exchange for civil liberty. From civil liberty springs moral liberty, but it is only with this coming that we can bind ourselves with the social contract. Thus, how can society be founded on a contract when no such contract can exist until society has been founded? Society has to be freely consented to, but free consent is impossible without being morally free. Thus the only answer is that we must live AS IF bounded by a contract, though we know this to be impossible.
After I had got through this little bit of Rousseau over the summer, I came to thinking about myself in America. Though it sounds narcissistic and arrogant, I do want to make some sort of difference in society. Maybe I'm in a passing phase, but I suddenly care about the well-being of our America or Mabutu's Zimbabwe. I care about the histories and the cultures and the futures. I want to make a difference -- to rip the flesh from the bone and expose everything in America. I want a stomach that can digest uranium, rubber, moons, oil and poems. Reform and renewal. I want to act and do, learn and strive, tear the words from the page. I want to fight the Decepticons constantly, renew the never-ending battles that simmer below the surface of our written doctrines.
