Monday Morning in America

The Chrysler Super Bowl ad narrated by Clint Eastwood is a “Halftime in America” spirit booster that captured the nation’s imagination.

We watched last week’s Super Bowl (Monday in the CNMI) in Honolulu where competition is deeply ingrained in the UH Rainbow football, baseball, volleyball, and basketball. Cheerleaders, however, recognize that the Pacific islands’ culture is less about winning as it is about playing the game; participation to the full extent of one’s expenditure at a given moment is a kept intent before worrying about the competition. This is not too far from the Olympic Games’ promotion of athletes competing against their own last record or performance.

Much of the gladiatorial flavor of American sports is out to “kill” the competition. This is high on emotional content as across the country, from kiddie to grown-up sports, when one plays the field with the intent of annihilating the other side. That language is also used in various marketing and sales’ game plans.

We caught a subtle change in tone in the “Halftime in America” ad with its focus on the inner resolve of a nation to excel in its own game plan.

Hegelian dialectic rationalizes the competitive spirit. Life, it assumes, stands as a declarative thesis that is always confronted by its opposite, or that which it is not, its antithesis. Sic et Non to Anselm, echoing Aristotle. The intense clash between the two unto death results in the elimination of both and the creation of something new, the melding of both in the heat of struggle to produce a synthesis.

There is nothing wrong with the theory; it is rather dynamic and very useful in planning methodology when one determines blocks and constraints, with the possibility of change through proposals against contradictions to enhances the desirable IS, or banishes the unwanted IS-not. This is efficient in dealing with bricks and mortars, soils and nutrients, waters and canals. It is deadly when applied to people.

When Eastwood intones that “it is halftime America, and our second half is about to begin,” the message is not to annihilate anything but to polish and enhance one’s own performance, that of Detroit and the rest of America!

The Giants v. Patriots game was very telling about the ethos of playing well rather than bashing the competition. There were no primo dons whose primary acts were to hog the limelight. Fair and square, the players rated their own performance, and no one was heard bashing the other team for infraction of rules or display of inappropriate behavior. Wes Welker’s missed catch might have cost the Patriots their game but it only broke Wes’ heart. Save for media thrashing, remorse and recrimination were sparse.

Detroit was the recipient of Obama’s massive bailout on the notion that assisting the auto industry was also assisting the ancillary industries related to it. The people ate crow, $1.3 billion worth that it did not get back. The resurgence of the Detroit theme missed one side of the reality about the city.

“It’s halftime. Both teams are in their locker room discussing what they can do to win this game in the second half,” says Eastwood in his singular voice. “It’s halftime in America, too. People are out of work and they’re hurting and they’re all wondering what they’re going to do to make a comeback and we’re all scared because this isn’t a game. The people of Detroit know a little something about this,” and then touts Detroit’s comeback.

My Chinese spouse and I were in Detroit in the winter of 2005 to visit my daughter’s family and firstborn. My purpose was less than noble. There is no worse time to see the blight of inner city America than on winter, and with my spouse’s understandable rush to get to America, Detroit played its expected role, temporarily dampening the enthusiasm.

Now, something is happening in many neighborhoods, wards and villages in the city. Reformulation of local structures and behaviors is taking place. Local gardens are sprouting, community assemblies are being held, and neighborhood associations are being organized. People gather around tables to figure out what they can do for themselves, and strategically map out how. There is a new America emerging, indeed!

We recently noted in an article of Japan’s Arigato that the behavior of our Armed Forces was faithful to its heritage of officers trained as practical engineers, visionary builders, and construction commanders. It also promoted a leadership quality exemplified by West Point’s well-known Cadet Honor code that includes: a cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”

Perhaps America at the level of intuition is naïve; ditto for this immigrant who was pumped up full of Americana’s homegrown virtues from VOA and USIS, but who became an American with open eyes rather than subservient gratitude; it is the old-fashioned American values of equal opportunity and fairness, liberty and freedom, adequate rewards for healthy toil, that made us raise our hands to become part of the family.

That’s the Team America I am playing for, and in the CNMI where America’s morning begins, we are going to win! Are you in the team?