notes on a revolution

A Proportional Response

From The West Wing:

Bartlet: Did you know that two thousand years ago a Roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation? He could walk across the Earth unharmed, cloaked only in the protection of the words civis Romanus — I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome, universally certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens. Where was Morris’s protection, or anybody else on that airplane? Where was the retribution for the families, and where is the warning to the rest of the world that Americans shall walk this Earth unharmed, lest the clenched fist of the most mighty military force in the history of mankind comes crashing down on your house?! In other words, Leo, what the hell are we doing here?!

Leo: We are behaving the way a superpower ought to behave.

Bartlet: Well our behavior has produced some crappy results, in fact I’m not a hundred per cent sure it hasn’t induced it.

Leo: What are you talking about?

Bartlet: I’m talking about two hundred and eighty-six American marines in Beirut, I’m talking about Somalia, I’m talking about Nairobi-

Leo: And you think ratcheting up the body count’s gonna act as a deterrent?

When I was in New York last September, I visited St. Paul’s Chapel which is across the road from Ground Zero. It is one of the oldest churches in the US, and, following the attacks on the World Trade Center, became a memorial to that day and the people that lost their lives.

I didn’t know how I would react, but I found myself sitting in the middle of the church sobbing. I’m not a big cryer, but it was hard not to be moved by it all.

Watching yesterday’s events unfold was a strange experience. I will never know what it was to be American, let alone in New York on September 11th, 2001. I can’t begin to imagine seeing that sort of thing unfold in my country. I do think it is better that the world does not have someone like him in it, but there is something vulgar about celebrating the killing of another, regardless of what has transpired.

I was thinking this as I read a piece from Good’s Cord Jefferson who titled it “When You “Piss on Osama’s Grave,” You Make America Unexceptional”. As I say above, I will never be capable of feeling what an American would have felt on that day, but I felt something very particular towards America as I watched the footage roll in on MSNBC. I’ll let Cord (an American) do the rest:

Where is the patriotism in finding joy from gory photos? Where is it in “partying” at Ground Zero or the University of Delaware? What’s particularly American about making out with your girlfriend at news of an assault that left dozens of people in a third-world country dead?

I’m happy that Osama Bin Laden is gone. He unabashedly dedicated himself to the wanton destruction of people around the world—remember that not just Americans are killed by terrorists—and the likelihood of him ever stopping that pursuit was nil. Still, in America, where we’re taught from a very young age to not kick your enemies when they’re down, all this chest-thumping in the wake of a man’s execution seems misplaced at best, especially among “progressives.”

American citizens often like to think of themselves as good Christians—decent, kind God-fearing people who defend what’s right even when that’s difficult, just as Jesus would have. Last night was an opportunity to live up to that ideal, to let the world know that we are powerful but we’re not drunk with power. Instead, we got wasted and said we wanted to rub our balls on Osama’s dead face, belying American exceptionalism by not acting exceptional, but entirely common.

I also went back to a piece I wrote almost three years ago as President Obama accepted the Democratic nomination. It seems naive now, but in America 2.0, what I talked about more than anything was the idea of America. The reality is, most of the time, far from where we wish it was, but I still long for the country America is capable of being.

As do, as far as I can see, a lot of Americans.

The myth of the City of Angels

Los Angeles is a city with myths surrounding it like few others. I’d argue that the idea of Los Angeles excites more than the idea of any other North American city. Even more than New York. Especially more than New York.

More than New York because invariably anyone who has dreamed of going to New York has wandered up through Central Park, around the cute-as-fuck neighbourhoods that make up the Village, has loathed Midtown with the mock-spite of a local, for the last little while gotten to wander along the Highline in the late afternoon Manhattan light, or seen the Chrysler building suddenly rush into view over some unexpected break in the rooftops. They’ve done that, and stopped. And smiled. And they’ve gotten the New York they came looking for.

Conversely I wonder if anyone ever gets the LA they come looking for. Even the people who come here seeking fortune and fame and achieve it often wind up finding somewhere else to spend their time. The ones that don’t burn up in the sun anyway, embodiments of the haze that seems to stretch out from Orange County right across the city each morning. Is that really the town consumed in smog, or just another collective batch of dreams going up in smoke, as the city they imagined fails to materialise before them?

Steve Martin once satirised the pains a writer from New York City would experience when coming to town for a story. The aching emptiness they would feel about LA, the sense of absolute nothingness the city could force upon you. Steve very aptly painted a 24 hour slice of not just that one lonely writer’s experience, but the experience of anyone who comes to this town for a limited period, who comes alone.

The reason for this is the sheer scope of the city. If you haven’t been before, then there isn’t a way anyone can explain the vastness of the urban sprawl. You can drive for two hours and not be stuck in traffic yet still not make it from one side of town to the other. You don’t need all ten fingers and all ten toes to count the number of buildings that actually went up in the area that masquerades as downtown, and conversely you can only guess at the number of buildings that went out, hurled ever farther from what was once the centre of town

I’ve no doubt that there are pockets of pleasantry as espoused by the people who live here, some of whom I am lucky enough to call friends. My man Chip and his heart forever in Hermosa Beach, Heather and her ruthless East-coast spirit satiated with life in Venice; people have found a way to get by. But I think that’s also part of the trick: LA is a city where getting there isn’t half the fun. In fact it’s the least fun you could possibly have. Subsequently, given how far apart everything is, it’s also the thing you are likely to spend most of your time doing.

LA is a city that millions love, and a lot more call home. It is, for all its faults, the epicentre of our celebrity-obsessed culture and the industries that fuel it day and night. And I mean that in the best ways as much as I do the worst, for LA brings with it the best and worst in everything.

In a former life, I made video games. And each May the entire industry would trek to downtown LA and occupy the Convention Center for a few days. One year in particular I remember having the curious fortune to attract the same cab driver on every trip I made around town. Someone’s cousin, brother, uncle, you get the idea. On our final drive together, one that took me out to the airport, we talked for a long time. He told me of his life in Mexico, how he had come across the border alone, convinced his mother to join him, watched her struggle, give up, and go back.

He talked about his son who was a mechanic at a Mercedes-Benz dealership. And when he spoke of him it wasn’t a story of how he hoped for more for his family, because his son had already surpassed his old man. The American Dream was alive and well, and his son was a living testament to that. What I said about LA had been true; getting there hadn’t been any of the fun. It had been gruelling and faithless and humiliating. And he drove me down La Cienega in the cab he owned proudly testament to that.

When I got out of the car, I handed the man the contents of my wallet, a collection of US bills that weren’t worth the trouble of changing back. I wished him luck and watched him disappear into the mess of steel and smoke that becomes any car morphing into a single, heaving unit on the freeway.

And I thought about the week prior, the shows and parties, a day spent wandering around Disneyland now laden with attractions sponsored by Kodak or Energizer: effectively Corporate America brought to you by Corporate America. And I decided LA was perhaps nothing more than the sum of the expectations you brought with you when you landed. Those with nothing to run from would find nothing materialised before them when they came to a stop in this broad and ill-defined metropolis. Those with nothing to leave behind however stood a far better chance of stumbling on something better than what they came looking for.

And those of us never staying in the first place, the ones who had come for little more than a cursory glance, would take the opportunity to pick their bags up off the curb.

And breathe a sigh of relief.

And get on a flight to anywhere.