I realized that when we sing the chorus, “Born in the U.S.A.,” we are in fact singing a dirge to the death of our faith in American exceptionalism. The country that supposedly stands for freedom and justice more than anywhere else that has ever existed in the blood-soaked history of our species—”No nation has done more to advance the human condition,” said Trump at Mount Rushmore last night—nevertheless drops an M16 in the hands of its poorest young people and sends them off to do its dirty work slaughtering some other vilified race. When our soldiers come home, having served the cause, they find a “thank you for your service” and little else. This might happen to Bill, too, I thought. I had been singing “Born in the U.S.A.” like it was “America the Beautiful” all through the Reagan and Bush, Sr. years. But it’s America the neglectful. America the empty-well-wisher.

On the way home from the fireworks, I told Bill to grab the Born in the USA cassette out of the glove box. “Is he pissing on the flag?!” I asked about the album art, with new eyes. “What?! Uh, maybe,” laughed Bill. Then in one fluid motion, he whipped out his Zippo, flicked it off his jeans like he always did, and lit a Camel, tossing the Springsteen case on the ground. “‘ThunderRoad’s’ better.” He didn’t care about my revelation. He was still reveling in the fireworks and thinking about how we could get high before he shipped out.[1]

This year, though … the Fourth of July offers a somewhat different experience this year. From my house, I hear dozens of small fireworks displays going off in neighborhoods and backyards in every direction. The howling of dogs and the scream of distant sirens fills what little air is not filled with pops, fizzles, and bangs. The individual displays, and the accompanying howling and siren wailing behind them, last for hours. I suppose that social distancing has meant that instead of an all-together civic celebration of our American-ness, we’re huddled in small groups, blowing up gunpowder in vast quantities right over our neighbors’ yards. I’ve never heard so many fireworks. And it’s not just tonight–this cacophony started a few nights ago. My poor dog is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Fires seem a real possibility. But I’m more concerned that, though I’ve seen houses and yards stuffed with friends and family, most of the white people I see aren’t wearing masks (though other non-whites do seem to be).

So pandemic Fourth of July is … different. At the same time, however, the contradiction between what our country is versus what we wish it could be, is still as sharply apparent as it was decades ago when Springsteen penned that anthem. Are we good with what it is right now? Are we willing to stand on the steps of our Gilded Age mansions, semiautomatic rifle drawn, to keep it? Or do we think that something dramatically better could lie before us, even if it requires marching and shouting and being coated with pepper spray? (Ha—this framing seems too reductionistic and sermonizing even as I write it. Let me try again.)

There are so many among us who feel that the status quo is not working for them. Nevertheless, they fear change. Others vilify what they don’t understand, whether the status quo is good for them or not. Ironically, if I were looking for patriotism in America today—if I were looking for examples of people trying to make the world less like Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A. and more like “America the Beautiful”—I would point to those protestors who are out on the streets every night demanding that this nation live up to its promises. The marchers are taking blows from the police because they believe in the possibility of change. They believe that the future can be better. There is another group gathered around Mount Rushmore to hear their leader unveil the latest edition of Stephen Miller’s “American Carnage” speech. They fear change. They fear loss. And they do see carnage in their cities as their young promising men come back from Afghanistan with no job prospects or drift off to larger cities where they encounter (but rarely befriend) people from very different backgrounds. They see the rich get richer while they get left behind.[2] But, of course, they have been seeing that since the steel plants closed in the 1980s—around the time Springsteen wrote those lyrics. What’s changed is that more people, even white people, are recognizing how disproportionately the pain is distributed in America. People on the streets are asking people watching the marches on TV to learn a different version of American history. Indeed it’s this demand, that childlike false history enshrined in marble monuments needs to be replaced by a mature, historically realistic view of America as not angelically insulated from corruption and mismanagement of power, that Trump denounces in his Mount Rushmore speech.

The Fourth of July always seems to bring this debate over the status quo and the way we got to it into sharp relief. And two events are making that contrast even starker. On Thursday, the NFL agreed to play “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” nicknamed the “Black National Anthem,” before the Kansas City Chiefs versus Houston Texans game on September 10.[3] Additionally, some players in the NFL have agreed to wear on their jerseys the names of those killed by police—a fulfillment of Colin Kaepernick’s protest that led to his blackballing by the league in 2016. Like clockwork, boycotting the NFL became a thing on social media today. (Just wait until they change the Washington Redskins to something less nineteenth-century.) And, almost at the same moment that the largely white crowds dispersed the largely native American protesters in order to gather at Mount Rushmore last night, Disney premiered an original-cast performance recorded four years ago of the highly decorated musical Hamilton on their Disney+ app.[4] We decided to watch it while the explosions rattled outside.

I watched this musical with altered eyes tonight. When it debuted in 2015, Hamilton represented a triumphant recasting of the nation’s founding by an ethnically diverse cast singing in modern vernacular. Having Washington, Jefferson, Aaron Burr and others played by men and women of color felt revolutionary. The recorded performance that we are watching tonight is from the summer of 2016. It was filmed when the first serious female candidate for president looked to be a shoo-in. It seems almost quaint now, from the “before times,” as we are now apparently calling them. Unlike “Born in the USA,” it is hard to misread Hamilton.

It is hard to overstate just how much cultural penetration Lin Manuel Miranda’s work has had. Even the neo-con John Bolton lifted the title of his tell-all The Room Where It Happened from the Aaron Burr character’s central song of political envy. It is clear now, however, that Hamilton is merely the first verse of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”–the hopeful, uplifting, look-at-what-we-can-do verse.

Missing even from Hamilton is a full-throated critique of the deep contradictions in the American genesis: a supposedly Christian quest to extend white property rights by killing or displacing the original occupants of the continent and by enslaving labor from West Africa. For crying out loud, our country’s national anthem is based on Francis Scott Key’s poem that glorified the inability of the “hireling and slave” to escape the “terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.” In a country that cannot even face up to these historical facts, perhaps there isn’t yet a stomach for deeper understanding of our complicity than what Hamilton gives us.[5]

Notes

[1] Pointing out, usually with glee, that conservatives don’t know the lyrics well enough to know that it’s an anti-nationalistic song, is still an annual pastime two-and-a-half decades after the song was released. Robyn Pennacchia, “36 Years Later, Conservatives Finally Read The Lyrics To ‘Born In The USA,’” Wonkette, July 3, 2020, https://www.wonkette.com/36-years-later-conservatives-finally-read-the-lyrics-to-born-in-the-usa.

[2] Our Foreign Staff, “Donald Trump Attacks ‘Cancel Culture’ in Fiery Mount Rushmore Speech,” The Telegraph, July 4, 2020, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/04/mount-rushmore-speech-donald-trump-vows-tougher-measures-protesters/.

[3] Jason Reid, “Source: NFL Plans to Play Black Anthem Week 1,” ESPN.com, July 2, 2020, https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/29401000/nfl-plans-play-black-national-anthem-week-1-games.

[4] Future historians of technology: for the whole family to watch, we had to download it onto an Android phone via the Disney+ app and then screen mirror to the LG television because, even in 2020, there was so much lag in streaming directly. Also, so-called smart TVs just aren’t that smart.

[5] Jason Johnson, “Star-Spangled Bigotry: The Hidden Racist History of the National Anthem,” The Root, July 4, 2016, https://www.theroot.com/star-spangled-bigotry-the-hidden-racist-history-of-the-1790855893.