Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Our worst critics prefer to stay.

I spent yesterday morning as I often do on a Saturday, immersed in the conveyance of culture that is the network morning news show. My favored flavor happens to the NBC’s version, The Today Show, but excepting the familiarity and continuity of my decades spent with Today, CBS and ABC likely do justice to whatever our national zeitgeist might be at any given time. All three lean a bit left of center, but none seem to be as purposeful in their port-side list that one feels any oppression.

They are hardly critical of America and Americans. As a group they lean into good news and good vibes. The 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence was tailor made for American network morning programming. A regal parade of Tall Ships with an airborne escort, with both the United States and multiple friendly nations contributing filled my screen. I clicked off before the “hard news” and the coming litany of critics, and headed outside just in time for a “flyover” by one of the dozen or so bald eagles that make our neighborhood their home.

Eagles lack stealth technology, leaving joy and pride in their wake. They fly for all.

The Sunday papers, on the other hand, are overflowing with the bleating of the critics. Nothing is good. Everything is bad. It’s a wonder that we have a country at all if you take them at their Sunday words. It’s interesting, at least to this center-hugger, that neither side of any debate or issue seems to be at all happy about, well, anything. Pick a story, domestic or international, and the commentariat as a whole finds everything about it to be wanting, if not catastrophic. To hear it spelled out in print one would reasonably assume that each and every American was at some other American’s throat about something, and engaged in full-throated dispute every waking minute.

Unless, of course, you put down the papers, X out of all of your feeds, and head outside for a chat. Or if you must keep your feeds or your TV or your papers open, maybe take a peek at what the masses of visitors to the U.S. have been discovering over the last month or so. Seems there’s been some kind of international sporting competition taking place in North America, with venues in Mexico, Canada, but mostly spread out across the U.S. Has a rather gaudy name–The World Cup–assuming that everyone would naturally know what it’s about here, just like all of the folks everywhere else in the world does.

What the rest of the world knows as Football, and literally a couple hundred thousand fans from all around the world, have descended on our fair country just in time for our big birthday.

Have you read any of their stories? Watched any of their interviews, or the morning news shows features about their adventures? These fans seem to be visiting a country that doesn’t seem to exist to all of those folks in the hard news world. What they have encountered is bounty. Comfort. Camaraderie. Even in the biggest cities what they have received is largely the best of Americans and America. Last week it was the guy from the U.K. who marveled at the fabulous food to be found in gas stations all over the country. He obviously hasn’t spent any time driving in Italy, but still, Buc-EE’s is actually kinda cool. My favorite story this week was about a German guy who got separated from his group and had no way to get back to his hotel. Some random anyone told him to hop in and drove him there despite living somewhere in the opposite direction.

Like the stepfather in Anne Patchett’s new novel who sent his stepdaughter for help, leaving him behind in the car wreck, the German fan instinctively new that this world is filled with the kind; to be confronted by anyone else is quite rare, especially here in America.

You don’t need a major international cross-continental event to witness this. Beth and I spent many days and nights visiting her family in Pennsylvania. Being in a cultural enclave of law-abiding citizens who have done their very best to accommodate their deeply held religious beliefs with the larger culture of the country that surrounds them makes it all the more maddening to see other groups insulate themselves behind a virtual wall of disgust for everything non-them. The Amish and Mennonite communities of Eastern PA live quiet lives of varying degrees of piety, inter-woven with the “English” that live around them. Indeed, they make more allowances for us, both large and small, than we make for them by at least 2 orders of magnitude. They couldn’t be more different.

And yet, the Amish and the “English” who live side-by-side do so in quiet respect and with quiet understanding, two peaceful peoples who want nothing more than to live together in harmony.

One needn’t travel at all to find this out about your country. I came across it at the grocery store yesterday. In line to check out I waited for the older, red, white, and blued bedecked and bespectacled gal manning the register to chase down a little boy so that she could give him a sticker of Old Glory to take home with the popsicles his Dad bought for the big party. Honestly, I almost missed it. Out of habit I thought I was in a hurry, and this tiny little morsel of goodness was somehow interfering with my schedule. You see, the cynics are so loud that even a softy like me sometimes forgets to see that goodness. But then that little fella smiled, and I felt a little bit of what that German fan must have felt.

It’s probably impossible to turn a deaf ear to the critics, especially with yet another “Most Important Election of Our Lifetime” with another “Last Chance to Save Our Democracy” coming up, roughly our 121st and counting (HT “Mallard Filmore”). But I expect the critics to stay put, as they have done before and after the first 120. Oh, they’ll have plenty to say, I’m sure. Still, I think I am going to be a bit more aware of what it is that our World Cup “guests” have been seeing. Outside of work there’s not really a whole lot of urgency around my little life. I have plenty of time to lend a hand or share a smile. Even more to notice when someone else is doing it, because it’s sure there to see if you let yourself see it.

Who knows, I might even get a bright red, white, and blue sticker of my own the next time I’m at the grocery store.

Happy Birthday to the United States of America. I’ll see you next week…