Happy Rants Are Here Again

The Rant would point out that the key word in the phrase “Take America Back” is the last word. American culture has always suffered from a crippling nostalgia that began almost simultaneously with wresting the resources and land of the country from the Indigenous Peoples that lived here. The Puritans, the supposed defenders of religious freedom, immediately began grumbling about taking their community back, just like the good ole days minutes before, and promptly booted Roger Williams and his ilk to Rhode Island.¹ This occurred in the 1630s.²

America has an obsessive yearning to return to the past, not matter how delusional the construction of that history;³ an occasional burst of fervor to think about what it might become; an absolute aversion to coming to grips with what it actually is.⁴ Even an astute political observer like Fintan O’Toole despaired in The New York Review of Books: “we must not lose sight of the much larger consequence of Trump’s victory; it decisively shifts the idea of who is a normal American.” O’Toole is Irish, but he has fallen for the spell of American nostalgia. The Rant would ask, when have we ever allowed the idea of a “normal” or “good” American to stray very far from the narrowest of definitions? So many have worked so hard in our history to expand access to equality, opportunity, and self-choice, only to see those gains rolled back in the name of a “better” yesterday.

Perhaps what unnerves us is the casual, public way the culture has taken to articulating its desire to return to a past that can only be achieved with violence, cruelty, and exclusion. We like our racism expressed in the bureaucracy of the Redline,⁵ our misogyny expressed within the home and behind the closed doors of the boardroom. We enjoy paying our undocumented workers in cash, under the table, while screaming for their deportation. Was the FBI’s attempts under Hoover to undermine the Civil Rights movement a “normal” function of government because it was conducted in secret?

The Rant tries to remember that it took the footage of Bull Connor unleashing the dogs and fire hoses on peaceful protesters for Americans to understand that Jim Crow wasn’t some benign system of Separate but Equal, but a state-sponsored society of White supremacy predicated on terror and bloodshed. The riveting photographs of Lewis Hine, like the one above, helped to finally move the country to real child labor and safety laws.

Darkness may be coming, but perhaps those awful deeds executed in the light will force us to consider the true cost of maintaining the fictions of a supposedly righteous past. Maybe then one of those brief moments of considering what we might become will open.

1. Look, travel was much more vexing back then. Williams being sent to Rhode Island was the equivalent of . . . being exiled to Rhode Island. Have you tried to get a flight into Providence? Don’t bother.
2. Among his many offenses, Williams suggested Native tribes should be paid for the land settlers appropriated, often with some violence thrown in for fun. The Rant hopes you remember that when someone comes to your door from the Department of Racial Happiness and informs you that a couple that loves White Jesus more than you will be living in your house to do some baby birthin’ and home schoolin’. Oh, you’ll be nostalgic my friend.
3. Are you really going to require examples? Fine. Calling ourselves a Christian nation in the midst of slavery; counting said slave as 3/5 of a human being. Look, The Rant knows people that behave like 3/5 of a human being, but that’s a personal problem; Calling ourselves a melting pot. Ask your Black, Irish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Brown, Jewish, and Catholic friends and ancestors how that went; Being legally permitted to bust some heads when your employees requested less loss of limbs at work; Believing Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez would lead to anything but heartache
4. No politician has the courage to tell the electorate what they truly are. Republicans in this election painted a hellish, post-apocalyptic present while Democrats claimed we all had an inner Tim Walz dying to get out and mulch the flower beds
5. Redlining was/is (don’t kid yourself) the practice of drawing city maps to deny home loans and financial services to certain neighborhoods. They also always happen to be neighborhoods containing poor people and minorities. This practice cripples home ownership and the building of generational wealth. And you sure as hell weren’t living outside of one of those neighborhoods. Ella Fitzgerald’s White manager had to secretly buy her home in Beverly Hills for her.