The America I believe in.

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            The other night I watched “Rendition,” probably one of the most politically relevant films to come out of Hollywood in recent years. While Reese Witherspoon sobbed into her cell phone lamenting the suspicious disappearance of her Egyptian-American husband, I noticed something else about the film that grabbed my attention, behind the A-list actors and their cinematic gestures. The cinematography in many of the scenes set in Washington D.C. was particularly intriguing; national landmarks, such as Congress and the Lincoln Memorial, sat quietly and persistently in the background, shrouded in fog or set so that only the tip of a building was visible while minimalist modern concrete and glass architecture dominated the frame.

            This subtle factor led me to the special features section of the DVD, where I found an interview with the director talking about how he wanted to give the feeling of a “New Washington” made of cold and calculating modernism, encroaching on the established and respectable city (along with all of the core American values that it represents). The idea was to evoke the sense that there are new rules to the game of democracy and governance, where clear moral or ethical lines are covered in a veil of fear and secrecy. This is the story that I’ve heard time and time again at college in New York, but I always respond to it with an air of suspicion. When did those monuments ever stand for something more than hegemonic imperialism? What history of America are its dutiful and dedicated citizens reaching for? And, most pressingly, do they actually believe that the “candidate for change” will bring them back to it?

            Amnesty International ran a campaign last year called “The America I Believe In”, including posters and petitions where people could sign their names denouncing torture as a national security measure on the grounds that it went against their personal vision of a morally upright “America”, a beacon of freedom and global leader in the struggle for democracy. I find it interesting how even the liberal, anti-Bush campaigns seem to fall back on this idealized Statue-of-Liberty mentality when countering the actions of the current administration. Patriotism seethes out of every political corner.

            I realize that as a Canadian citizen, I sit on a high horse with the burden of the November elections off of my shoulders. I can criticize the nationalist rhetoric that I see in all the campaign speeches without ever having the imposition of having to eventually choose a candidate to vote for, the “lesser of two evils”.  What really perturbs me, however, is the way that Obama speaks of restoring America’s role as a global leader. He claims that he believes wholeheartedly that the American moment has not passed, and that the role of the president is, in effect, the leader of the free world. I think the issue that needs to be examined is less the atrocities committed by this particular administration, but rather the relentless arrogance that underlies the words of both sides of the political equation. Those gleaming white monuments in Washington may very well have been built with something more sinister than liberty. 

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