First Known When Lost

 I had to go to England to realize I was an American. This statement of mine is "paradoxical" only in the sense in which Cleanth Brooks used the term, in the context of poetry: namely, in the sense of "compression." For, expounded at greater length, my point becomes much more banal. All I really mean to say, after all, is that, prior to my recent stay in London, I had always idealized the UK from afar as a kind of ancestral homeland. I had thought: there is the true mother country; and if ever I were to live there, it would feel like a homecoming. Yet, once I actually spent more than a week or two in the UK, I found it inordinately stifling. Only once I came back to the U.S. did I again feel free. 

One of the first things I realized, after coming to the UK, after all, is that British society is a vast apparatus for sorting people; and, what is worse, I had no place within it. Or, if I did have a place, it was among the lowest of the low. My ancestry is Welsh and Scottish, after all. 

Of course, all the people you meet in the UK these days are cool and sophisticated enough, at least in lefty circles, to claim that they don't believe in the class system. But, despite their protestations, they are plainly still competing for position within it. They are still scrambling for a place within the country's elaborate and overlapping prestige hierarchies (if you aren't born into the aristocracy, you're out of luck in that regard, but you can make up for it partially by attending the right university, becoming a barrister, being admitted to the bench, joining the right Inn of Court, being promoted to King's Counsel, getting to wear the silk leggings, getting to wear the big wig, getting to carry the red bag instead of the blue bag, etc.) 

This spectacle—everyone fighting for a spot in the hierarchy while purporting to disdain it—makes the stock lefty claim to find the whole British class system rather "silly" sound like little more than an elaborate humblebrag. One is reminded of the character in Whit Stillman's film Metropolitan, who clarifies to his listeners that he is a titled member of the nobility—a baron, to be precise—but who then adds, with a self-complacent chuckle, "not that I take that sort of thing seriously." 

I realized for the first time in my life that my ancestors were all refugees from the English class system. This is what we came to America to escape. And as soon as I'd had this moment of enlightenment—gone forever was any lingering nostalgia I might have felt for the monarchy; gone was any catch in my throat at the thought of raising a toast to the King, long may he reign, and thinking wistfully—if only we had never left; if only the U.S. were still a commonwealth nation... Wouldn't our unruly democracy be just a little bit more restrained? Doesn't tradition provide at times a valuable check on the excesses of republican governance? Couldn't the king and the aristocracy be defended on Burkean grounds? 

All of that was banished from my mind. As terrible as American democracy is, I realized, it's better than all the alternatives. The United States is the worst country that there is, except for all the other countries, to modify a well-worn line. This is what I realized, upon coming home from the UK. Here, in this land, I am relatively free. Here, I can define myself how I choose. Here, my future and destiny are my own to make. Subject to limits, of course. We are far from having achieved the fully just society we ought to have. But still—all that rhetoric and windbaggery that one hears about American freedom, it turns out, is not entirely based on nothing. 

I know, because I have seen the alternative: the world of the class system. It now can only bring to mind for me the same mental image that a character's father conjures up, whenever he thinks about Europe, in a novel by Gerald Murnane. The book, Inland, is set partly in Australia (and the Australians are, in many respects, refugees from the English class system too). When he is told about the noble heroes of the past from Europe, he retorts, "Such countries had no heroes [....] if he and I had been born in any such country [...] we would have to bow and scrape and doff our caps right and left." No doubt this is painting with too broad a brush. But, I'm telling you—after my short time in the UK, I can see exactly what he's talking about. I could feel it there; it's true!

And so I came back to the United States like a repentant ex-lover, seeking forgiveness—I was wrong before; I've seen the error of my ways; I've seen what life is like without you now, and it is terrible; it stinks! Oh, take me back, America, please! 

And yet, I am realizing all of this—I am realizing just how much better and freer life is in this country—at the very moment in our history when we are about to throw all that in the toilet, by installing Donald Trump as our dictator-for-life. I have realized at last the inestimable virtues of American democracy, at the very moment when everyone else has started to take these things for granted, and to consider frittering them away. 

At the very moment that I have realized how much better life is without a king, Donald Trump is starting to install his family members in key roles within the GOP party infrastructure, setting up a kind of hereditary dynasty and personalistic rule. At the very moment I am realizing how good it is not to have an emperor, even the more reputable Republican senators are starting to adopt the same strategies of rhetorical deference toward Trump that people in less democratic countries typically adopt only toward czars and other autocrats. 

I came back to America to escape the autocrats; I realized about America what the father in Murnane's novel realized about Australia—that here, in this country, I don't have to "bow and scrape and doff my cap" to anyone, and that is exactly what makes it so free and wonderful. And yet, I come back to find all of these fools already bowing and scraping and doffing their caps to Lord Trump—as if democracy were not a thing worth defending—as if it were not a fragile jewel, almost unique upon the earth, that we must cherish and watch over as is it were the most precious cargo imaginable!

I was explaining the irony of my situation to a friend—how I only realized at last the beauty of American political institutions at the very moment when they seemed most threatened, when they appeared to be tottering on their last legs—and he sang the words of the Joni Mitchell song back to me—of which he remembers more lines than I do. "Don't it always seem to go," he quoted, "you don't know what you've got till it's gone." They paved over American democracy, you might say, and put up a Trump tower in its place. 

As soon as he said it, it occurred to me that this was the same message contained in a poem by Edward Thomas: "First Known When Lost," which I had read while I was in England (I do appreciate the second-hand bookshops in London—that part of the country, at least, won my approval). Thomas is reflecting on a small hedge that he had always passed on the road, and which represented to him—without his being conscious of it—the life of wild green things that still existed in the English countryside. It was only when it was cleared, to make way for further development, that he became cognizant of what he had lost. "I never had noticed it until/ 'Twas gone," he writes—presaging Joni Mitchell. 

And yet, for Thomas the image represented the England he had lost—the England he had learned to appreciate only when it was too late to retrieve it. Whereas for me, it represents the America I've lost—the country that I only realized was exceptional in the world at the moment when its institutions and future seemed most endangered. You don't know what you've got till it's gone, Mitchell sang. American democracy was, for me, first known when lost. 

I never had noticed how good we had it in this country—what a bright idea it was to grant no titles, to have no king, to make no formal legal distinctions between human beings—until the very moment when the Republican Party seemed most inclined to install a new king (and the worst one imaginable, at that—a "rat king," as Lars von Trier once aptly called him). I never had noticed the worth of American democracy "until 'twas gone," to echo Thomas. 

"Oh come back," I call out to American democracy, as a character says in a W.S. Merwin poem. The piece conjures the haunting image of a house filled with people, who are strangely able to witness the return of a lost loved one, but who for some reason cannot open their mouths to cry out to her until she has left again. 

That's what it was like with me—"Oh come back"—as I watch American democracy departing from these shores. It can't be that I missed my chance! It can't be that I finally learned the error of my ways, finally repented, finally understood how great this country's promise is and how worthy its political institutions are of protection, only to see them sauntering away at the last minute. It can't be that I was ready to open my mouth to summon them only after they had already left—perhaps forever. 

And there we will be, bereft, having to learn how to doff our caps again, and mouth the insincere words "yes, of course, Your Majesty."