I’m a Sucker for America

Hey,

I’m on Day 4 of my bout with the flu. My fever has come down to the point where I no longer find myself miming scenes from Punky Brewster, a bit like Martin Sheen doing martial arts in his Apocalypse Now hotel room.

Anyway, one of the stories I glimpsed briefly through the fog came Monday, or as I called it at the time “Falula.” 

A video of Anthony Mackie, the African American actor tapped to take over the role of Captain America, appeared on a panel in Italy to promote Captain America: Brave New World. “To me Captain America represents a lot of different things and I don’t think the term ‘America’ should be one of those representations,” Mackie said.  “It’s about a man who keeps his word, who has honor, dignity and integrity. Someone who is trustworthy and dependable.”

Much like the influenza in my bloodstream, it went viral. 

By Tuesday, Mackie tried to clarify. “Let me be clear about this, I’m a proud American and taking on the shield of a hero like CAP is the honor of a lifetime,” he wrote on Instagram. “I have the utmost respect for those who serve and have served our country. CAP has universal characteristics that people all over the world can relate to.”

I’ll be honest. I don’t think it’s a great mea culpa. The issue wasn’t that he insulted “those who serve and have served our country.” The issue was he insulted America itself.  We’ll return to that in a moment.

I’m happy to take Mackie at his word, that he didn’t mean it to sound the way it did to some. I should also say that I’m also incredibly tired of these sorts of controversies. We went through this when Superman dropped “fighting for the American way” from his motto. In 2021 it was “Truth, Justice and a Better Tomorrow.” In 2006, it was “truth, justice, and all that is good.”

Now, I didn’t like that stuff very much back then, and I still don’t. But I will say that the case for Superman going full cosmopolitan—citizen of the world and all that—is much stronger than the case for Captain America. Superman isn’t from here—Earth, I mean—and you could tell he was already trending globalist by 1987 in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (known in my corner of the world as Superman IV: Quest for My Money Back):

The culture war fights over these things can be exhausting, even for people not sweating Theraflu. It’s a bit like the war on Christmas or the Gulf of America: The point is just to make people angry as simplistically as possible. By the way, there are arguments other than “Hollywood hates America” that explain why an actor promoting a movie in Italy might opine, clumsily, that you don’t have to be an American to like Captain America. But, for obvious reasons (or at least once-obvious reasons), blaming capitalism is less fun for righties than blaming America-hating Hollywood libruls. 

Now, let me be clear: I am not saying that there isn’t ample anti-Americanism, from subtle to strident, in Hollywood fare. There is. A lot of West Coast progressives are, or have been, quite hostile to America. And I don’t just mean Oliver Stone or Jane Fonda, or the aforementioned Martin Sheen.  I could give you a few paragraphs on my contempt for Adam McKay’s contempt for America and capitalism, the two things that made it possible to translate his talent into fabulous wealth. But my tank is running low. 

Suffice it to say, I think a lot of prominent Hollywood types are uncomfortable talking about America in basic patriotic terms, never mind making a good case for America as an indispensable nation and force for good in the world. Some can: Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise come to mind. And some of the right-wingers in show business can go too far in the other direction, thinking that defending your country to foreigners means pointing out that without us you’d be speaking German. 

That’s one reason I hate these fights. The loudest voices are more scared to concede a point to the other side than to take a reasonable, nuanced position. Saying America has fallen short of her ideals more than once doesn’t make you an America-hater. And saying that Americans should be proud of America’s ideals and her commitment to them, no matter how flawed, doesn’t make you some jingoistic freedom fries gobbler or the closeted Nazi dad in American Beauty.

The point is, Hollywood needs to get over its reflexive discomfort with basic patriotism. Saying this is a good country and a force for good in the world isn’t the same as saying it’s perfect or that it hasn’t made mistakes. And saying it’s better than a lot of authoritarian countries should come easily—if you’re not worried about box office returns in China or Iran.  

But let’s get back to America. Mackie says that the defining characteristics of the character he plays are “honor, dignity and integrity. Someone who is trustworthy and dependable.”

Is it so hard to add “patriotism” to that list? And is it too heavy a lift to concede that being patriotic isn’t at odds with those other virtues? Indeed, should patriots, regardless of where they are on the ideological spectrum, think that honor, dignity, and integrity should define America’s conduct whenever possible?

Yesterday, I had a great conversation with Francis Dearnley from the Telegraph. He closed with a dire warning about the direction some fear America is going. Geopolitically, America’s strength doesn’t just come from our military might. It comes from the fact that our allies want to be with us for other reasons, starting with the fact we are a good country. They are our friends, and they look to America for moral, principled leadership. Lots of countries have superficial alliances—formal or informal transactional relationships with other powers. These are mercenary relationships. 

America has real friends who see America, for all of its flaws, as a nation that stands up for certain American ideals. They expect an America that conducts itself—or tries to—with honor and integrity. These friends organize their foreign policies around the idea that America is trustworthy and will honor her commitments. And we reap enormous benefits from that. 

I want America to be the preeminent global superpower not because I love being the strongest. I want America to be the preeminent global superpower because that’s good for America and the world. And, more importantly, the alternative contenders for the job all suck. If China, Russia, Iran et al. were liberal democracies, I wouldn’t care that much about who the toughest kid on the block was. But when all the other toughest kids are bullies, it’s good that the toughest isn’t a bully.  

Not so, say the America Firsters. We need to be a bully, too. 

Now, some of Donald Trump’s defenders say that’s a misreading. Trump is just delivering the long-needed tough love our friends need to get their acts together. And if that’s all it turns out to be, that’s fine. 

But whatever four-dimensional-chess theory you want to deploy to defend Donald Trump’s rhetoric, it should account for the fact that a lot of his superfans don’t see, or care about, any alleged subtext. Just text. They don’t talk like this is all an effort to beef up the defenses of the free world. They talk like the free world doesn’t matter—unless it pays up. They think it’s great for America to bully allies and talk about using force for territorial expansion. They think, as podcaster Matt Walsh put it, “the moral of the story is that we can and should simply force lesser countries to fall in line.” 

This week, Sen. Mike Lee tweeted, “If you could snap your fingers and get us out of NATO today, would you?” He has taken to arguing that NATO is a “raw deal” for America. “NATO members must pay up now,” Lee declared. “If they don’t—and maybe even if they do—the U.S. should seriously consider leaving NATO.”

This is embarrassing. The “pay up” thing in particular is a sign of how Twitter rhetoric can break the blood-brain barrier. Pay up to whom?  The issue isn’t about paying dues or tribute to America, it’s about NATO members spending more money on their own defense—which they’ve been doing. 

Even if Trump doesn’t understand how NATO works, Lee does. But he mimics Trump’s mafioso-protection-racket rhetoric all the same.  

There was a time when Mike Lee would have been appalled by Donald Trump because Donald Trump doesn’t behave with honor, dignity, or integrity. And I’ve talked a lot about how the right has bent its definition of good character to fit Donald Trump. Apparently it’s too much to ask that Trump conform to the preexisting definition.

The NATO talk is just how this dynamic gets applied to foreign policy. The currency of life and politics for Trump is domination, intimidation, subservience, and transaction. Now we’re told that’s how America itself should interact with the world. 

To come back to Mackie, my problem with his statement and apology is that he still seemed incapable of understanding—and articulating— that there is no contradiction or inconsistency about a character defined by honor, dignity, and integrity being called Captain America. After all, in the comics and even in the Marvel movies, Captain America was never a “love it or leave it,” or “fight for it wrong or right” guy. He stood up for American ideals and American decency. When America was in the right, he fought for it. When America—or the American government—was wrong, he still fought for what is best about it. As Cap once put it: 

Doesn’t matter what the press says. Doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right.

This nation was founded on one principle above all else:

The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world – “No, YOU move.”

This gets to my whole thing about the difference between nationalism and patriotism. The patriot sides with what is right, the nationalist for “the nation”— or its leader—right or wrong. America is not just an idea. But it is a nation formed around one. 

When it comes to foreign policy, my problem with Trump, Lee, and that whole crowd is that they’re bending American idealism to what is really just nationalism, rather than trying to guide the nation in the direction of American ideals. And it seems to me that the patriotic thing to say in response is something like, “No, YOU move.”