The 2016 US President Election In Perspective
(Published in The Kapiti Observer, October, 2016)
The US election is a trifle compared to US history and culture
In Scotland long ago I entered my teens, having read stories about cowboys and indians, watched Wagon Train, Bonanza, Maverick and Rawhide, and listened to Doris Day, Bing Crosby, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, The Doors and The Beach Boys (See more about Brian Wilson’s great group in this book), and other legendaryAmerican music and culture much extolled until our very own heroes came along, the so-called British Invasion led by the Beatles taking America by storm but not entirely eclipsing its shining lights. Now I live in New Zealand and I often hear of Sir Edmund Hilary and I wonder what he would have said about the US President-elect – perhaps that fine man would have said something like you can scale the heights but it’s what you do afterwards that counts. Meanwhile, consider this catalogue of greatness and not-so-wonderful.
The US produced Geronimo, Wyatt Earp, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Liberace; it shot several presidents and John Lennon; it invented Rock ’n’ Roll and Jazz (and Hip Hop and Rap); put Neil Armstrong first on the moon and the first men in flight; invented the atom bomb killing 130,000 in Japan; assassinated Martin Luther King and a couple of presidents; it produced the Ku Klux Klan and the United Nations; invented the motor car; awarded Pulitzer prizes for sparkling achievements, and saved Britain from speaking German. Consider, too: Silicon Valley, Scientology, cell phones and the internet; the needless invasions of Viet Nam and Iraq, over 30% of all scientific research and development funding to the world, prohibition of the sale of alcohol and overtaxing its poor people; no gay marriage in most States but poligamy OK in some; moving pictures and Hollywood with the likes of Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, Marilyn Monroe (See more about her in this tome), Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino and Ronald Reagan; inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell (OK, so he was Scottish working in Canada, but the first phone patent was American); Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Benjamin Franklin, Nikola Tesla, Steve Jobs, Einstein and Richard Gatling; it fought one of the bloodiest civil wars of all time; produced great writers in Mark Twain, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Poe, Steinbeck, Jack London (See more about the writer of “White Fang” in this book), Faulkner, Henry James and Melville; enriched our minds with To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Sawyer, Moby Dick, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Grapes of Wrath, In Cold Blood, The Wizard of Oz, Reader’s Digest and Playboy. Then there’s McDonalds, Coca Cola, KFC, the vacuum cleaner and Senator Joseph McCarthy; states like Wyoming, Hawaii, Texas and California, New York, San Francisco, Detroit, New Orleans and LA; Presidents Lincoln, Washington and Kennedy (More about him sooner or later); Disneyworld, Apple computers, hot dogs, pizza, hamburgers, baseball, basketball (oops, that was Canada!), skateboarding and surf music; Jesse Owens, Mohammad Ali, Tiger Woods and Wayne Gretzky (OK, Canadian, I know, but he played in the States); not forgetting singers and song writers like Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Janis Joplin, Nat King Cole, Frank Zappa, Phil Spector, Brian Wilson and the 2016 Nobel Literature Prize winner, Bob Dylan, and of course, Leonard Cohen (Hallelujah! Canadian again. Sorry, America! You can’t have all the greats!). The there are vangelical religions, Levi jeans, microwave ovens, cornflakes, Wrigley’s chewing gum, the typewriter keyboard, barbed wire, nylons, tube lipstick, The Simpsons and the near obliteration of all native Americans. Finally there’s the re-inventing of the spelling of the English language. If not the English language itself!
The measure of a country is how it allows its freedom and systems to be creative, to reach out with its inventions, politics and literature, also how it deals with its disasters. Perhaps the wonders of any country’s creativity are produced from its failures, never eclipsed by them though. I know that social media and what’s happening today are the most revered things now but a little reminder of a great history goes a long way to getting over cringing embarrassment. American achievements should make up for a President Trump without so much as blinking. Apart from which it’s possible that even President Trump will become wonderfully presidential as befitting the greatest office in the world. If that should miraculously occur, it probably won’t prevent woeful promised policies, trying to control the legislature, interfering in global warming, influencing the media and making things up. Anyway, as we say in Scotland, “Dinna fash yersel’”; in Canada, “Take it easy!”; in the USA, “You have a good day!”; and way down here in li’l ol’ God’s Own New Zealand, “Good on ya! She’ll be right”. No doubt, time will tell what the US President-elect does after scaling his Everest. At least Scotland, Canada and New Zealand don’t hold circus-like elections … yet!