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When Did America Turn from a Melting Pot to a Pressure Cooker?
The division, anger, and desperation in Land of the Free aren’t random occurrences
America, you beautiful mess. My political essays are usually full of choice words for my home country, so many might be surprised to know I have genuine affection for the land of Yosemite, bourbon, the Super Bowl, Seinfeld, jazz, and Pumpkin Spice.
There are many many things I love about the US.
And while the ‘melting pot’ framing has always been more sloganeering than practice, as the latest group of immigrants is inevitably demonized and the only original Indigenous Americans, who survived genocide, are still somehow marginalized in the national mythos, the US is a unique cultural force.
It is a place where new arrivals or second-generation individuals can rock their passports and American identity in a way that doesn’t quite happen in many other nations.
And like the common question posed to Donald Trump, “for whom and when was this mythic and great America you’d like to resurrect?” There’s always been a Grand Canyon-sized gap between the rhetoric and reality of all men are created equal, democratic values, rule of law, and the rest of the ideals that the nation pretends to uphold and exemplify.
