"(Americans) have the air of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors"
This sense of innate freedom and the perseption of having a part in government made Whitman antsy. He said that "America is a place where the president takes his hat off for them, not they for him". This is the popular belief of American democracy but in reality, even in Walt's time, the aristocracy and social class have more power on social, political and economic events of the lower classes. Walt Whitman considered this to be one of the most important characteristic that set America apart from its competing nations. If he were to realize his oppression would he still find America so beautiful and perfect.
The answer is yes because he is the optimist of the optimist and his love for the country would still be intact for the remainder of its history and even then his love will be present in its reminiscence.
Class of Kids actively listening to man talk about freedom while stuck in the prison of their desks
"To him complaint and jealousy and envy are buried and rotten in the earth... he saw them buried"
Walt Whitman predicted the extinction of his beautiful species but also predicted the rearrival of the species. In his book Democratic Vistas, written in 1871,he said (I would not care to paraphrase it because it is beautifully written)that is though is deep love for the country that “I look for the counterbalance and offset of our materialistic and vulgar American Democracy, and for the spirituality thereof. Many will say it is a dream and will not follow my inferences: but I confidently expect a tie when there will be seen... threads of manly friendship, fond and loving, pure and sweet, strong and lifelong...refined self.” There is a hope that our handicapped society and capitalist ideals will reach its climax and we will restore the species of singing, bearded men.
Tupac sprung up from dust like a rose
"Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost"
The Reservoir give too much thought to money and they all die grotesque deaths
‘The Americans... are glad to pass on anything to anyone’.The selflessness of Americans, discussed by Walt in Leaves of Grass, has either dissolved or has never existed. He saw an innate good-will tendency in the American species and failed to acknowledge otherwise. He managed to look past aristocracy, slavers, and other selfish cogs of society to subscribe to the idea that, in general, we are selfless and kind to all. It seems as though, in this dazzling century, that Americans are tippy-toeing on the apex of selfishness and personal profit than ever before in our four centuries of western existence and a million years of existence itself because that is what a modern American society demands of the individual.
Each American is like its own craft, obsessed with its own model and personal preservation. We weave through tree branches in an exhausting, lifelong effort to surpass our adversaries, lovers, family, friends, and co-workers. We have all pressed our names in a system of hierarchy and we are all delighted by it. In this capitalist American society, it is impossible to devote yourself otherwise and to do so would be a permanent seal to nakedness and vulnerability. To be simple and moderate is to be untouchable. The height of American picturesque happiness is unattainable because the American citizens are always reaching for something higher and more unattainable.
The contrast between the vehicle that is modern America and the Wagon-life of Walt may not be unfathomable but are drastic. There were still bearded men living Gnostically, axe-handedly, self-sustainingly whistling folk to the trees in the woods and planting their cabins in its hearth.
“The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature... (they) themselves are essentially the greatest poem.”
This is how Walt opens up the second paragraph of his Leaves of Grass poems. He goes on to say that the genius and poetic nature of America is not figureheads and not the things people would recall as its defining characteristics but that it is the common people. The people of America had a moderate attitude towards most things and a limp, careless gait while walking down streets.Things like freedom and novelty were just accepted as as a trait in the individual and the power of these carefree, common people is more powerful than senators or priests. This was Walt’s manifest dream that was soon to be destructed.
The first point Walt makes is that Americans emanate a sort of carefree attitude and a beautiful kind of laziness: "The picturesque looseness of their carriages." In a way that still exists, but in a different kind of way. The American species acknowledged that they were lazy creatures and became enveloped in lazy ordeals such as video games, artificial suns (lightboxes) and television. With the evolution of the species, laziness evolved into something Walt would've disapproved off and a laziness that lacks all beauty.
Americans, as Whitman puts it in his opening paragraph, are content and live in accordance with the 'old, simple ways of life'. He is also extremely intrigued by the way Americans integrated the old ways with the new ways of life in a perfect recipe. And that observation is also as true today as ever before in the government. Our laws, ideals, religions all stem off of archaic ideals and we are now haunted with a thing called Conservativism, where people believe in morals and norms that no longer line up in the culture and state of the modern world.
It is my belief that Walt grayed faster than the typical human, or maybe even the modern day stock traders that have a hard time juggling all of the day’s chaos, balding at a premature age. Railroads were drilling tunnels though his forests, and towns and cities were being erected in mindless balk. Western expansion and industrialization were both strangling the environment that he praised as being beautiful and necessary; while Indian Relocation and Civil War served as a beautiful example of the American Coldness. A hard burden to bare, but he carried the burden with an indescribable optimism that was pushed forward in all he did, the poetry that he wrote.
JIM JIM
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