…But what about the bird? (v.2)
… But, what about the bird? (v.2)
Note: In March 2016, 6 months before the presidential election, I published the first version of this article. Now, 8 years later, the topic is even more pressing, even more distressing. I have made several changes to make it current.
It’s the season when birds start to look south, their songs still with us, but fewer and, perhaps, a bit less intense than they were in the spring. With that in mind, I know you’re all dying to know how it is that birds are able to fly. So, here’s the answer: Birds use their strong breast muscles to flap their wings to give them the thrust they need to move through the air. Further, birds use a swimming-forward motion to get the lift they need to fly.
Naturally, both wings need to move in unison to achieve lift-off and sustain flight. It doesn’t take much to imagine the flight path of a bird whose wings are working against each other, pulling (or pushing) in different directions, or flapping at different speeds. The chance of actually breaking a wing (or two) becomes a distinct possibility.
Welcome to America…
Today, we have a right wing that is stretching as far to the right as possible. This wing is advocating attitudes and preaching policies that are fueled by fear, my-way-or-the-highway injunctions and exclusionary imperatives. These imperatives are clear in the words of Donald Trump and other MAGA Republicans.
We also have a left wing that is stretching as far to the left as possible. This wing is advocating attitudes and preaching policies that are excessive in their idealism and economically suspect – in short, polyannaish to a fault. For all his sincerity and seeming love of America, Joe Biden’s policies tended to give away the store in the name of helping everyone, all at once. Blank-check diplomacy, at home and abroad, is simply unsustainable. Where Kamala Harris comes out on economic priorities, as well as on other vital, U.S. interests has yet to be determined.
What is distressing, is that each wing believes it holds the answer to what America’s real identity is. “We” really are a red nation, whose fundamental values are deeply conservative. “We” really are a blue nation, whose fundamental values are rooted in progressive ideals.
“We” are neither. In the midst of this turmoil, I keep asking myself: But, what about the bird? What about America, the nation? The institution? Is our essential identity really all about the wings?
Who are we now?
For nearly 250 years, Democracy has been the wind beneath our wings, both of them. Yet today, America-the-bird is struggling to stay aloft thanks to the frantic tug-of-war between its wings and, in turn, the fate of democracy may be on the line. In fact, America-the-bird is hobbled, laboring under the weight of its’ wings. And, so, its’ flight path is indeterminable and dangerously out of control.
The eagle is no longer soaring.
I imagine the sound of that magnificent bird, its’ high-pitched, prolonged, gull-like peal, crying out to be made whole again, its two wings brought more into synch with one another in an effort to set it on a once-again, more powerful and stable trajectory.
Does the bird have a soul?
I believe it does. And if you’d like to comprehend it, I recommend reading the finest book I have ever come across about what it means to be America – The American Soul by Jacob Needleman.
The founders of our country, Needleman argues, conceived of an “inner democracy” – a continual pursuit of wisdom and self-improvement that would undergird the outer democracy in which we live today. We have lost touch with that inner democracy. It lies in despair, abandoned and ignored by both wings. And it is the bird who is suffering.
We are suffering.
What now?
Politics, in my view, is a desperate game. It is ironic that politics is killing the very body that it purports to represent. The soul of America is not right wing or left wing. It is at once both and neither. I view America as exasperatingly, imperfectly human and yet exquisitely beautiful, bigger and more potent than either one of its wings. But America’s soul – its’ defining identity – has, for the moment, been lost to those wings.
If you know of a candidate, a party more interested in protecting the bird than its wings, let me know. He or she, somehow, will get my vote. And my prayers.
Have a view? Peck out a few words and let me know what you think.
