Michael Tyler is Equal Justice Society’s Poet-in-Residence. Image is Pan American Unity by Diego Rivera.
The moral rot of colonization has been permeating the cobblestoned creases of this nation’s foundation and invading the roughhewn lumber of its framework, since the first pavers were laid and the first nails were hammered by the immigrants who conquered this land and its indigenous people. For centuries and decades we’ve been applying a chauvinistic sealant on our independence roads and painting a red, white and blue stain over the slats and planks of our constitutional institutions, to slow the widening fissures and conceal the decaying discoloration of our disintegrating democracy.
Instead of cautiously and continuously inspecting the structural integrity of our principles for the toppling hazards of instability, we’ve elected only to occasionally resurface the façade of Americana with our shingled exceptionalism. For too long, we’ve been ignoring the ever discordant and unsettling creaking caused by the terrorizing winds of a monocultural rancor, rattling the infrastructure of our multicultural society. We’ve been driving around and dodging the theo-Nazi potholes pitting the pavement of our patriotism. We’ve been overlooking countless collapsed bridges of civility and sensibility, instead of rebuilding them with the I-beams of dignity.
Now, nearly 250 years later that rot, like water erosion, has washed out the highways of our high ways and like termites, it has eaten away at the propaganda of our exceptionalism to the point of plummeting decay. It has also disintegrated the mettle of our principles, fating them to the scrap heap of our corroded virtues. Our foundation has caved and our framework has fallen. The girders and joists of our integrity, decency, rectitude and respectability have buckled and tumbled and now lay amongst the ruins of our dilapidated dream. Every day we see the ground of our beleaguered beliefs crumbling into a further state of disrepair, and every day we hear the ear-splitting shattering of our idealism falling all around us.
In this moment, the United States doesn’t need more cratering contempt from partisan politicians, or more destabilizing diatribes from huckstering hypocrites, or more imploding impulsivity from a kakistocratic, kleptocratic, counterfeited king. We need a new generation of riveting Rosies and building Bobs, the architects of a new aspiration, the engineers of a new morality, and the ironworkers of new principles who will design with a new vision for democratic intent; construct with new methods of collaboration; and build with new materials that are impervious to the seeping deterioration of divisiveness, flame retardant to the accelerants of autocracy, and shock resistant to the tremors that quake and cleave our constancy.
Then we can call upon the new poets of a new era, who will rewrite the words of Lazarus to rededicate The New Colossus:
Unlike the idols of iniquitous veneration
Raised and praised for imperialistic claims,
At the harbor of our most honored promise will stand
A beacon brightened by the glow of an eternal flame,
Held by the Mother of Freedom for all the world to see.
And from her eyes will beam the path between
A people lost and a city found.
And from her trusting lips, she will call out to all realms:
“Give me your tireless and determined, your poor of hatred,
Your determined masses yearning to break free;
The rejected and refused teaming up shore to shore with adamant resolve;
The huddled hopefuls banded by their uncommon courage,
Tempered by the belligerent blast of bias they’ve borne,
Steeled by the restored resolve of their humanity;
Send them to build a new conviction
And they will erect a new golden door to a new nation,
For a new people to enter, together.