SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS

My grandfather Gordon Ariss from Birmingham UK, boarded the ship HMT Rohna on the 25^th November 1943, along with 1,981 American soldiers.

The next day the ship was attacked by a wave of German aircraft. They appeared to have weathered the attack until they were hit by a recently devised radio controlled bomb. It proved devastating, hitting the ship just above the engine room.

Many things were wrong with the HMT Rohna, and one of those was the inadequacy of its lifeboats. My grandfather perished along with 1015 American soldiers, either by the direct hit on the ship or by floundering around in the ocean trying to get on board one of the overcrowded and under supplied lifeboats. A further 35 US military personnel later died from their injuries.

The scale of the tragedy was covered up until several years after the war and was a source of secrecy that meant it wasn’t acknowledged as one of America’s biggest military losses in the way that it should have been. So my link to the United States was indelibly written many years before I was born. It was linked by the shared sacrifice of a family member without whom I simply wouldn’t exist, his blood shed along with by those on board that ship.

ME AND THE AMERICA OF MY DREAMS

My relationship with America has always been, I believe, a healthy one. I’ve soaked up its endless highways mysticism, immersed myself in its musical diversity when as a working class English lad it would have been cooler to turn to the exciting rich heritage of my homeland, but something culturally always pulled me Stateside.

I dreamed of going there and experiencing it as fully as I could, to see whether the myth was simply that. And when I eventually was able to travel its highways and its cities and towns, I discovered it was anything but myth. Everything I imagined about America was real.

Yet I also saw its imperfections. Its struggling sense of self. It’s inabilities from the vast number of its population to envisage a world beyond its own borders. It’s paranoia about communism lying underneath its society, seemingly always ready to pounce. A constant if sometimes unidentifiable suspicion permeating beneath the surface of its psyche of anything it couldn’t recognise or directly relate to.

But I realise that I come from a country increasingly divided. A country at odds with an imperial past many refuse to acknowledge as brutal, sadistically cruel, racist and wholly self-serving. My father was in the RAF stationed in Hong Kong which was owned, or more specifically leased, as a direct result of British Imperialism. I was born in Hong Kong so I began life on Imperial soil. Our past greatly influences the way many British people see ourselves.

With America I’m not so sure. It still has a feel of a work in progress. But lately, under the current administration it feels like a work in decline. From those of us on the outside looking in, it is becoming difficult to recognise its face anymore. What does it stand for?  Is it friend or disinterested acquaintance?

With its recent willingness to ride roughshod over its constitutional bedrock and relationships with like-minded allies overseas, its ideals are growing less clear daily, both from the outside and from within.

President Donald Trump only in the last few days, following on remarks made months previously by his lickspittle sidekick J D Vance, has belittled the sacrifice made by allied troops in WW2. This is a massively insulting not only to the millions who died defending the freedoms we all enjoy, but to my grandfather and to his continuing family.

What sitting American President would ever consider such behaviour?

OPPORTUNITY FOR CHANGE

The main chance for meaningful change, it appears to me, is in the desire of its millions of decent people, to face down the injustices being inflicted on their society. Not in violence or insult but in deciding where their moral compass is and heading purposefully in that direction. Invoking the laws that were put in place to stop dictatorial leaders and championing those laws, by speaking out in public arenas and online, in their communities and wherever they have the opportunity to do so.

This is not an easy thing to do and is easy for me to preach about sitting safely, but I hope not smugly, behind my keyboard. The problem for reasonable people is that they are inclined to behave in a reasonable way, whereas unreasonable people have no qualms about the ways in which they act and whether truth is at the core of their actions. It takes a fundamental and often uncomfortable shift of approach for a balanced and decent individual to stand up and say ‘no more’.

But the signs are that a shift may be happening. In the deployment of the National Guard and marines in dealing with largely peaceful demonstrations about draconian immigration laws, in LA, people are galvanising. Pushing back. A few days ago I saw a video of a young and morally courageous member of the public stood in front of National Guard soldiers and speak eloquently and passionately against their roles there, and question how it sits with their individual values and beliefs that lay behind their desire to wear their uniforms.

It struck me how this normal everyday individual was able to speak clearly, strongly and with an articulacy his nations leader has never possessed. But then Trump only needs to speak with a level of clarity his audience can cope with.

Remarkably this individual was wrongly identified as Wyatt Russell, son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, even though Wyatt was away filming at the time. This didn’t stop the White House attacking the actor in a typical example of using a lie to further their doctrine.

HOPE FROM NEAR MY HOMETOWN

Last week I attended both concerts from Bruce Springsteen in nearby Liverpool. When I first saw him play back in 1981 he was a scrawny livewire still very much carrying a persona shaped from the streets of his New Jersey upbringing. Now he has grown into an elder statesman not only of rock ‘n roll, but of American values.

To a thunderous chorus of cheers on both of the sell-out nights, Springsteen told the huge audience on Merseyside: “The America I’ve written about, and has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.”

He carried on: “Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voice and stand with us against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.”

I yearn for the imperfect but stridently aspirational America people like Springsteen speak and sing about, to return. I have no idea whether it will. But I know it has the capability to do so. Quite possibly it is still there, just learning how to shake off the smothering bully that is MAGA.

Like all of us trying to understand how a democratically elected administration with such low morale core can hijack America, I’m reminded of a few lines from the Springsteen song ‘Long Walk Home’.

‘That flag flying over the courthouse

Means certain things are set in stone

Who we are and what we’ll do, and what we won’t’

Each of the 26 times to date I have seen Bruce Springsteen I have felt invigorated. Last week I felt galvanised. For the first time since January I feel there is an opportunity for hope. Only time will tell whether that hope will be realised.