A Mirabilary Of The Passing Parade: The Unknown American

by Cynicus Americanus (September 2017)

Spirit of America, Norman Rockwell, 1974

 

A Mirabilary
 

Signs And Wonders of The Devolution Of Man And The Decline Of Western Civilization In The Wake Of Obama In The Age Of the Gnostics In A Republic of Dunces, A Federation of Twits, An Accommodation Of DumbAsses.
 

And The Rise Of The Criminally Insane Class
 

The Passing Parade

As Observed by Cynicus Americanus
 

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed by the masses.

—Plato

 

If I am misunderstood it is on account of willful obtuseness.

—Cynicus Americanus

The Unknown American or, Is He A Peculiar Sort, Or What?
 

The Great Unknowns

 

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:

Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

 

All of which brings us to the topic of the moment.

 

The Unknown American

 

A Mac, a Mick, a bloke, a guy, and an hombre, walk into a bar. How many of them are Americans? Go figure.

 

England’s American colonies were settled overwhelmingly by white Englishmen and Englishwomen, from which there issued little bundles, looking for all the world like typical white Englanders, chock-a-block with Englishness. Details, huh? They’re of no matter. Sure, sure, sure . . . there was a flag and the government, and a foundation, the Constitution, and all the white Englishmen spoke English, consulted English political philosophy, and resorted to English Common Law. They spoke in terms of a nation among nations, and there were borders, and newly minted American citizens of English stock within them . . . but . . . it was all metaphor.  America was first, and always, an idea. The conclusion had come to us post hoc—way post hoc. This idea, the idea-nation must have something substantial to give it legs. It need not be able to run or dance—just look viable, at least ambulatory.

 

Listen Up

 

Never forget that America remains the only nation on the face of the Earth founded on an idea, not an identity—an idea that free people can govern themselves, and that government’s powers are endowed only through the consent of the governed.

—House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), American Legion National Convention

 

America is the first nation founded on an idea, built on a foundation of belief.

—Phyllis Stenerson, Progressive Values e-newsletter 2007 

 

—Nick Adams, FOX News, February 25, 2016

 

France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter . . .

 

We take foreigners to be incomplete Americans—convinced that we must help and hasten their evolution.

 

America is not just a country, it’s an idea. 

—Bono

 

Our nation is the enduring dream of every immigrant who ever set foot on these shores, and the millions still struggling to be free. This nation, this idea called America, was and always will be a new world—our new world.

—George H. W. Bush, State of the Union Address, Jan. 31, 1990

 

The United States was the “first nation to have been founded on an idea.

—Margaret Thatcher, Speech to the Heritage Foundation

 

And hubris exploded.

 

—Barack Obama, State of Union Address, January 25, 2011

 

Americans were a chosen people delivered from corruption and evil to a New World and destined to serve as an example to the world.

Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, The Silence of the Rational Center

 

Here . . . delusion:
 

Aside:
 

Down To Earth and On Solid Ground

 

Ever since the ideation of America had become necessary, the notions of the Framers had to be dealt with, specifically:

 

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity . . .

—Preamble, U S Constitution

 

The world’s tired, and wretched, and poor were nowhere in the equation.

 

White Englishmen rebelled against white Englishmen and became Americans. To these Americans and their posterity, the new nation would belong. Everything went along splendidly until . . .

 

Are You Feeling It Yet?

 

Coming To America

 

Of my own experience—as an immigrant—I have gathered this and am more than comfortable with it.

 

To what may it be ascribed—our need for the hyphenated American? What can be gleaned from the hyphen? That the hyphenated human is of two (or more) natures, DNA codes, minds, and allegiances, of two hearts, two tugs?

 

Who The Hell are You?

 

Who is Abidemi Adesimbi? An African-American, An African, a Nigerian-African, a Nigerian-African-American, an American?

 

Is Linda Sarsour, the Palestinian-American, really only that? Or maybe also Mahometan-American, or Palestinian-Mahometan, or Mahometan-Palestinian- American? Venture a guess.

 

Is Miss Rostopenskaya, a Russian-American, Lithuanian-Russian, or Lithuanian-Russian-American, or an American?

 

To say a hyphen makes impossible a determination as to who is precisely what, is understatement.

 

How Radical? This Radical

 

In the accomplishment of its nationhood, America was not radical. If you would look for radical nation building there is the example of the French revolution—now that Republic was radical.

 

The Founders Echo

 

Although as to other foreigners it is thought better to discourage their settling together in large masses, wherein, as in our German settlements, they preserve for a long time their own languages, habits, and principles of government, and that they should distribute themselves sparsely among the natives for quicker amalgamation, yet English emigrants are without this inconvenience.

—Thomas Jefferson

 

Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together establish their languages and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion?

—Ben Franklin

 

—Alexander Hamilton

 

—Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man

 

There was a caveat—if the government protected the equal rights of all.

 

The revolutionary man of Human Rights was not nearly the man of the Rights of Englishmen—Edmund Burke. The conceit of Payne with his Rights of Man, put him in thrall to the government ensuring equality and tranquility. What would the dear rouser think of the government today? I wonder, would he have it in him still to depend upon the government—to bring hodge-podges into cordial unison?

 

The English Puritans pulled down church and state to rebuild Zion on the ruins, and all the while it was not Zion, but America, they were building.

—James Russell Lowell, (New England Two Centuries Ago)

 

The more America becomes an idea, the faster it swirls down the drain. An idea will have rhetorical exponents but very few fighters. We defend, and we fight, for what we love. Ideas are always unlovable.

 

A Final Echo 

 

Hippias of Elis (To the Greeks):

 

I regard you all as relatives and family and fellow citizens—by nature, not by convention. For by nature like is akin to like, but convention is a tyrant over humankind and often constrains people to act contrary to nature.

—Plato, Protagoras

 

Hippias and I rest our case.

 

GOD bless all.
 

_____________________________

He is not as cynical as he appears . . . but almost.

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