SONI: Where there’s smoke…

I have this recurring nightmare about my citizenship test. In it, a stern, glasses-clad judge stares down upon me from up high in a dark and desolate court room. A lone spotlight illuminates my prison garb while I am forced to answer questions about my previous incidences of unpatriotic behavior. A scathing jury comprised of Glenn Beck, Mitch McConnell and the dead corpse of Ronald Reagan, among others, looks on taking notes.

“Why, Mr. Soni, did you claim, and I quote, that, “We Yanks get boners when we talk about freedoms’?”

I stare down at my shackles, “Well, um…I know, sir, it was tasteless. But I was just trying to make a point about chauvinism in American foreign po…”

“Lies!” he shouts down. “Why, too, did you make such vulgar comments about then-Govenor of Alaska Sarah Palin in the race leading to the 2008 presidential election? Comments so sexist I dare not repeat them in a court of law.”

“Right. Well firstly, sir, I had no idea the Tea Party would win the 2012 presidential election. I honestly thought John McCain was just playing a practical joke on the whole country.”

“That’s Vice President John McCain to you!” the judge yells back. The jury shakes their heads. “Young man, do you honestly consider yourself an American?” the man adds.

“Yes sir! I love this country wi…” Bang! The gavel slams down.

“Denied!” the judge calls out. “I sentence you to double deportation. And four waterboarding sessions using Dick Cheney’s bedpan!”

It’s usually around this point that I wake up in a cold sweat clutching the covers.

I have grave concerns about these columns. I always wonder whether all the misguided and crass criticisms I have made about America and its people will come back and bite me in the ass in the future. I’m not a citizen, and people may claim that I have no right to talk smack. But I really do love this country very much, and because of this, I feel somewhat obliged to speak out when the rosiness of my American Dream is shattered by the nightmarish onslaughts of others.

In the America of my imagination, I see a country where thousands of ethnically diverse people can live and thrive amongst each other. Kind of like Allston without all the knife fights and shirtless bro-offs.

In the America of my imagination, I see a country with a sense of community amongst all &- where there is a common regard for one’s fellow man, both within and outside of the nation’s borders. I see a country where creativity and individuality thrive within an open-minded and ethically conscious society.

No, dear readers, I have not been smoking PCP with Libertarians. I’m just an idealist.

But our world today does not seem to take too kindly to ideals. Over my four years in college, I have slowly begun to understand the discrepancy between the way I wish things would be, the way they are and the ways things can change.

• • *

“The woods are burning, boys. You understand?” These are the desperate words of Arthur Miller’s protagonist Willy Loman in “The Death of a Salesman.” “There’s a great blaze going on all around us,” he adds.
Miller’s play is a poignant requiem for the American Dreamer at-large. Willy, a once-well-known salesman, slips into insanity as he is unable to grasp his personal inadequacies in the face of his changing workplace and society. Grappling with financial problems, the guilt of infidelity and the apparent unsuccessfulness of his sons, a disillusioned Willy resorts to suicide for life insurance money in a last-ditch attempt to leave his family something valuable.

Willy held his ideals so dearly that they ended up suffocating him. He falsely believed that a salesman was first and foremost selling himself, that charisma was the key to American success and that American success was pegged to the dollar.

While his descent invokes pity, the way in which Willy brushes aside his emotional obligations in favor of chasing his monetary American Dream does more to ridicule him than to idolize him. In the end, Willy isn’t a fallen hero, he’s just another stubborn victim of American greed &- a good guy who got eaten up in the rat race.

“The woods are burning,” Loman’s dire statement and the name of this column, is not so much an indication of a personal apocalypse as it is a running question about the society we inhabit. It symbolizes the encroachment of malicious outside forces on our individual principles and ways of life.

So, are the woods burning? I wasn’t sure at first, but I can smell smoke.
I don’t mean to overstate the case. I’m just pointing out that there is indeed a great blaze all around us. We’re all fighting for something, and I can feel the collective fury of an entire nation.

The continual changes to our society force us to readjust our conceptions of what America is, what it means to be American and, in turn, compel us to compare those new conceptions against the ideal worlds we want. If we refuse to acknowledge change and fail to adapt accordingly, we end up outcompeted by those with different viewpoints. We end up, ultimately, like Willy.

What makes the story of Willy so eerily befitting today is his underlying belief that his American Dream would only be fulfilled through the acquisition of wealth. Greed is his ultimate downfall.

And if you want my opinion, I think greed will be our ultimate downfall, too.

In the America of my imagination, I see a country full of people who aren’t so hell-bent on buying Escalades, Coach bags and bedazzled BlackBerrys. I see a country in which life does not constitute an individuated struggle to climb a futile ladder, but, rather, a collective effort to raise the quality of life for all. It sounds hopey and changey, but it’s the only way.

After having bred a new beast of capitalism from the ashes of World War II, that beast has finally broken free and turned on us. As the recent Great Recession proved, something needs to be done.

The financial oligarchy that continues to laugh while robbing the taxpayer blind, the military industrial complex that does the same, the polarizing political media and the effect these factors have on a populace increasingly obsessed with capital and consumption are all factors that gravely impose upon my ideal society. If you can’t beat “em, they tell me, join “em. But that just seems like a willful concession to one’s principles. I’d rather keep fighting.

The woods are burning, and Americans as individuals must decide what to do about it. We can either go out there with a lighter and an aerosol can and keep burning this whole thing down &- forgo any rational temperament and give in to the mad beast in all of us. Or, we can walk out with buckets and hoses and calm the violent blaze down together.