DEPORT STEPHEN MILLER

"In any discussion of the problems in our world today, racism must rank high. Not because we are soft-minded liberals obsessed with countless crimes throughout history induced by colour, religion, tribalism or chauvinism of one kind or another. But because the poison which we hoped and believed had been eradicated in our own time by the knowledge of the ultimate evil- the gas-chamber murders committed by the Nazis--is in fact still present, not in any one area of discrimination or racism, or in a restricted number of specific rulers or governments, but in all humankind. I call it "Inner Racism."-

Gitta Sereny, "The Healing Wound"

Saturday, April 13, 2019

DEPORT STEPHEN MILLER

FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA

As a word it can refer to a particular time and place (though as we’ve seen a wide variety of particular times and places), legally binding as a definite location but also as a quasi-mythical realm, and it can function as the grammatical intensifier of “America!” That process of the name being shouted out as mere orgasmic intensifier is what lends itself to being utilised in hawking beer under the brand name “America”, to the charlatan’s call to “Make America Great Again.” Used cynically, the word “America” is conceptualised not as that

undiscovered country yet to be born on maps yet printed, but rather it is to employ the word as simple superstitious talisman. They take the Lord’s name in vain.

Orthodox Jews write the name of “G-d” with a dash of negation, a type of apophatic punctuation that acknowledges that the written Lord is never the real Lord.

The stipulation on taking great care in writing the Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton was in part so that the pious were careful not to see mere crafting of ink and manuscript as replacement for ultimate reality. Without suggesting that “America” is an equivalently mystical word, I do wish to propose that it’s a term which endlessly defers and gestures towards something much greater than and beyond itself.

“The United States” may be a country bound in history and time, and by space and geography, like all countries which exist before it and which will exist after it.

That “America” is in her title is a function of historical contingency, but we should be careful not to reduce that particularly mythic place to simply the nation which most prominently displays her in her title. Do not misread this as pedantic argument that the word “America” also encompasses a variety of other

places, for as true as that may be, it is not the focus of what I claim here. Rather it is that the word “America” may be decoration or adornment for the names of various historical polities, but the actual location of a place called “America” is in a Republic not of this world. There is the semantic meaning of the word, and then true to a four-fold hermeneutic there is an anagogic

meaning of the word. “America” may have first been printed on Waldseemüller and Ringman’s map, but its truest location in an atlas not available in our reality, for “America” is a place as mythic as the previously mentioned Eden or Utopia. But though she may not truly exist, this understanding of a New World that is full of equality, liberty and freedom is an Arcadian belief which not only can, but must structure our own yearnings towards a more perfect union.

This America is not on any map, and yet necessity requires us to set our course towards her and sail in that direction regardless.

America may not be real, but we must always be in the process of discovering, and more importantly creating her.

About the Author:

Our text was joyfully mooched from Ed Simon, who was described at the time as a doctoral candidate in English at Lehigh University/