It's true. In our hour of crisis, no modern leader called on us for
voluntary material sacrifice. The entitlement to personal gain is now,
apparently, a higher value than duty to our country's greater good;
please note that the wealthiest among us who rushed to dump their
failing stocks and give our economy a black eye were never called
unpatriotic. No leader could oppose it. No one dared us to put ourselves
in the world's shoes (or its bare feet) and share, at least to some
extent, in its fate. No public official even pointed out that we could
improve our security immediately through our own collective action—by
turning to local economies of production and distribution for our food
and other necessities, by conserving energy, by turning off the TV and
seeking solace from a city or national park or the hummingbird in the
backyard instead of a new pair of shoes made in Malaysia. What could be
better for our country, including its own economies, than to ease
ourselves away from a framework of international profiteering that's
proving perilous for so many reasons? But to call for this out loud
might rattle the unassailable right to global moneymaking. It might be
called treason, or sedition.
Such coldhearted values drive me back to my own faith as I mourn for the
humane vision of a time that went before, and hope that vision will soon
return to us. Freedom from fear, freedom from want—these clearly
aren't meant just now for the Afghan civilians placed at risk of
starvation. Our costly campaigns have put a notion of safety peculiar to
ourselves ahead of any concern for the majority of world citizens who
are starving and frightened—or for that matter, the hungry here at
home.
Life takes awful, surprising turns; that's no news. I'm aware that
just thirteen months after Roosevelt's eloquent call to conscience,
the War Department persuaded him to order the internment of Japanese
Americans. (The War Department, it's now known, manufactured threats
of resident treachery to stir up public fear and uphold the
concentration camps when they were challenged as unconstitutional.) But
history's griefs can't entirely cancel its glories; there was that
January day—the speech is archived as proof—when an American
president proclaimed the lives of civilians on other soil to be as
precious as our own. I would have planted a victory garden and accepted
leaner rations to further that vision of a kinder world, in which all
hungers mattered.
In fact, I'm planting one now: In response to September 11, a national
network of gardeners has developed the means to devote a few rows of our
gardens to the food banks that feed the hungry in our own communities.
If our present leaders can't ask us for this sort of patriotism,
we'll just go ahead without them. The public may expect fireworks
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today's globalized world.
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