When new worlds get old

I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.\nIf it wasn't a president who said it first, I would probably think that there's not room enough in three books to finish that thought properly; that least of all someone could tritely spell out "America como problema" in a televised sit-down, get to work and jump-start the wheels of political progress.\nAnd perhaps nothing like that ever happened. I really wasn't cognizant enough at the time those words were spoken to give it thought. But as I heard excerpts from Jimmy Carter's infamous "malaise" speech of 1979 in a sentimental Disney film placed in front of me to pass the time on a four-hour United plane flight, I couldn't help but be filled with fear.\nIt is a crisis of confidence … We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. \nWith the lost, echoing words of an ex-politician, this movie, about the triumph of an American hockey team in a year when the chant "U-S-A" wasn't followed by "stinks," documented a real-life event where the citizens of this country believed in itself. They rolled film for the viewing pleasure of a nation for whom now the notion of such pride is no more than movie myth.\nNeil Gaimen, in his novel "American Gods," weaves the idea that today's America is not a good place for deities. They simply don't grow well here anymore. Our own insecurities have bred a lethal sense of irony that thrives on the destruction of ideals -- those standards that might make our own lives seem less than exemplary. So for our own sins we do penance by crucifying anything above us to take the attention away from ourselves.\nAnd this isn't about an election or a war. It's about returning from Europe only to answer the question "So how many times did you have to apologize for being American?" more times than "How was the food?" \nBut just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.\nFor every nation rebuilt and oppressor ousted during the years that Steven Spielberg likes best, today's citizens only feel as if we have something to apologize for; that though our present actions are polarizing enough to warrant serious questioning, they erase the one god that, until now, we've managed to maintain -- the god named Dream.\nFor our world is not a world in which nations are breeding grounds for saints. There is not a populated track of land on this pebble that was not founded upon massacre, upon the corruption of power and the degradation of weaker forces.\nHowever, we managed to cultivate upon that past a belief in ourselves that until now has lifted us beyond the heights of great civilizations who have carved similar histories. More than the subjects of the great kings of Europe or emperors of the East, we believed that our own dreams, not those of the benign ruler, would fuel progress -- and they did. \nBut now we've ceased dreaming and begun to apologize. We've begun to look only for ways to tear down our own walls in order to be "liked" again -- leaving behind the mortar that might repair those cracks.\nWhile the rest of the world strives to emulate our example, we are doing our best to be someone else. I hope I don't live long enough to find out what that might be, for I fear without that belief in our own experiment, there is no reason to have ever called this land the New World.