Family members building the basement

This blog was supposed to describe my coming to terms with living in the US: the differences, similarities, surprises, eye-openers and frustrations. However, until today, I've been postponing a post about one of the essentials of American culture - and one that confuses me terribly: the Founding Fathers (not my capitalisation).

Of course one would expect some level of idolatry - after all the country that gave use Hollywood is very proud of its independence, unlike countries like Australia and Canada who claim independence while being pervaded of nostalgia for Britain, clinging to an anachronistic monarchy like a toddler to its mother's apron. But idolatry isn't a sufficient description of what's going on here: the fact that you find the founding fathers everywhere (banknotes carry their images, cities, newspapers and universities carry their names) is only part of the issue: the thing that really amazes me is that everyone - without exception - seems to think them infallible and whatever side of the political divide you're on, you'll call on the founding fathers for support.

The unquestioning adoration of these guys seems ultimate. In his political manifesto ("The Audacity of Hope"), Barack Obama writes how he looks up to them and how he studied their (and Lincoln's) writings in a bid to gain insight into politics and into what course the country should take. The one thing Fox News and John Stewart (respectively the default source of news and information for the political right and left) seem to agree upon, is that the founding fathers are untouchable: you don't ridicule them, you don't evaluate them, you don't question anything about them. The independent podcast commentator Dan Carlin whose main selling point is that he is so independent that he upsets both Democrats and Republicans, does exactly the same: whatever the founding fathers wrote, is scripture and untouchable. Even - and now it's really starting to sound like a rosebud-and-moonshine-everyone-is-happy Disney film - even the ever-shocking, inexcusably obnoxious animated sitcom South Park, who drag everyone through the dirt in ways unthinkable only ten years ago, even they do not question the founding fathers. The only episode I've found where they make an appearance, states (Episode 701):

This country was founded by some of the smartest thinkers the world has ever seen.

That particular episode (broadcast on 9 April 2003) discussed the Iraq war and the way in which both pro-war and anti-war groups claim the founding fathers to be on their side. To solve this conundrum, one of the kids travels back to 1776 and hears the founding fathers debate whether their country is to be a warmongering or a peace-loving country. They decide it should be both. At this point, I would think the moral of the story could easily be that the founding fathers were only human after all and that a constitution that was set up over 200 years ago to organise a limited number of colonies focussed on manual labour and trade, that such a constitution and the people behind them, could hardly have an opinion - or any guiding thoughts for that matter - on 9/11, Al Qaeda or going to war in Iraq. Interestingly, that's not what the moral of the episode turned out to be at all: they pointed out that the government had been given the power to go to war whenever it felt the need, while the people had been given the freedom of speech to voice their anger at the government, thereby putting the blame if anything went wrong, on the president instead of on the country. Of course there could be sarcasm in there and we may not have to take this at face value: the episode could easily be interpreted to be an attack on Bush - or on rednecks or on peace-demonstrators - you could really go just about in any direction you like with this, except... it really does not criticise the founding fathers, however easy that would have been.

Seeing all these agreements and realising that the American constitution has guided this country from its humble beginnings (demanding independence because they were taxed without being represented in parliament - inhabitants of DC must see the irony in this) to two world wars and throughout the cold war as one of only two superpowers in the world - while only being amended 27 times since 1776 (12 of which were proposed before the end of the 18^th century!)... that makes me very suspicious. If apparatchiks, presidents, comedians, independents, intelligent people and idiots all agree without a single note of dissent, that really brings the 1984 feeling home to me - surely there must be something really wrong, really dangerously wrong and some horrible creature will eat me if I think of telling the wider world?

Luckily for my peace of mind, I stumbled upon Gore Vidal and the first book ("Burr") of his series on the history of the US of A. I had read the last book of that series ("The Golden Age") years ago and it painted a really positive picture of F.D. Roosevelt, so I had no reason to suspect this book would be all too critical. Yet it was. It painted Washington as in incompetent fool and most of the other founding fathers as insubstantial minions doing his bidding. It doesn't leave any room for doubt when stating that the French won the war of independence, in spite of the founding fathers, not because of them. It goes straight against everything I had always heard and in doing so, it was very much a refreshing read.

Now I guess the truth lies in the middle as it always does, because the founding fathers were human after all. However, to slightly misquote the Simpsons (Episode 144): who cares if the founding fathers weren't what we believe them to be? If it makes people happy and allows them to live in peace, then why not settle for a white lie?