(Why) America (is) the Beautiful

Greetings. Long time.

So, I'm home from D and T Icehouse, a great craft beer bar which is a reboot of an age old neighborhood ice house in the Houston Heights, where I watched the Super Bowl between the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos tonight.

I'm seeing numerous posts on Twitter and other social media outlets about an ad for a certain soft drink that featured several people singing the song "America the Beautiful" in several different languages.

Predictably, the ad has resulted in numerous passionate  responses.

The ad and commentary can be seen here: http://crooksandliars.com/2014/02/coke-super-bowl-commercial-causes-right-0?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

I'm not going to try to dissect what the original intent of the ad agency and the soft drink company was in making the choices about the script of the ad. All I can comment on is how I interpreted it:

It was fine.

All the languages that verses to the song were sung in are spoken in the U. S.

There is no official language in the U. S.

If an official language is ever declared in the U. S., it better be two languages, because Spanish has always been a secondary language here, and may soon be on an equal footing with English.

THERE IS NOTHING THAT CAN BE DONE TO STOP THIS.

The current immigration and economic policies of the U. S. dictate this. People can talk all they want about (predominantly) Spanish speaking (illegal) immigrants "taking" jobs from honest (white) Americans, but they are jobs that no white American would last a week at (just ask Georgia farmers).

This country was founded on the principle of it being a haven for prosecution of many types. Predominantly religious prosecution, but also economic, social, etc. Of course, the founders continued the fine traditions of European prosecution on the Natives of this land, but that's a subject for another post.

The point I want to make here in my post Super Bowl more than slightly buzzed state is that if we as a nation are going to start acting in a Draconian Nationalistic Isolationist manner, we need to redefine ourselves as something other than a country that welcomes with open arms your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Yes, the United States was founded by a predominantly White, Protestant  majority. But the structure of the ruling coalition is bound to change, and the worst (yet unfortunately easiest) reaction to this change is resistance, which only brings about strife and makes the inevitable change more contentious and difficult.

There is nothing wrong with diversity. There is nothing wrong with people speaking different languages. If something needs to happen badly enough, the lines of communication will be established to make it happen. And the sooner it is accepted that the U. S. is a bilingual society (and it is already), the more smoothly and efficiently it will operate as a member of the global community.

I know it's easy for me to write these sentiments living down here in the Gulf coast region of Texas, but I'm pretty sure the conditions are the same in varying degrees throughout the U. S. The sooner we all let go of any preconceptions we hold of the U. S. and (maybe) take a Spanish (or other appropriate) language course, the wider our eyes will open and the smoother our paths will seem.