(Transcript) Ep 7: America’s Greatest Export
Noor Tagouri:
Three, two, one. It's Memorial Day and I'm in Woodstock, New York. It's a town that locals and local gift shops refer to as the most famous small town in the world, famous for the music festival that happened 60 miles away. The message of the Woodstock music festival was clear: peace, love, music, and ending the war in Vietnam. 53 years later, surrounded by tie dye, peace signs, and today in particular, lots of American flags, people are still fighting for a story of peace and love, or at least their versions of what those words mean.
Mary Poppiins:
My name is Mary Poppiins and I live in Beacon, New York
Noor Tagouri:
Is your name Mary Poppiins?
Mary Poppiins:
That's it. P-O-P-P-I-I-N-S.
Noor Tagouri:
I approached Mary Poppiins because she is decked out for Memorial Day. She has on a bedazzled American flag hat with matching American flag sunglasses. Her fit is topped with an American flag bomber jacket, and underneath that she's wearing a long leopard maxi dress. And of course the leopard print is red, white, and blue.
Mary Poppiins:
Well, I love this country and I love the flag. My father fought the Nazis, and I think we need to realize that this country was founded on peace, love, and belief in God. Unfortunately, a lot of people forgot about God. That's why the country's fallen apart, but I will always stand up for peace, love, joy, and my creator, God. God bless you.
Noor Tagouri:
Mary believes America was founded on peace, love, and belief in God. Historians have a different understanding of the founding of America. But what's important here is the story she believes, the story she tells herself because that is what's shaping her individual perspective. So, what is Mary Poppin's story of America?
Mary Poppiins:
Well, I believe the story of America, the reason people came here, and not everybody's right, everybody makes mistakes, but they wanted religious freedom from tyranny. Unfortunately, the nation and the people ruling the nation want to go back to tyranny. The people that are woke, woke. When you just come out of being a woke state, you're in confusion. But people that are awake know what's going on. So we just pray that those people that call themselves woke that they wake up and realize if they don't like this country, they can go somewhere else. If this wasn't the greatest country in the world, why does everybody want to come here? It's because it's the greatest country in the world.
Noor Tagouri:
It's kind of surreal to hear such an aggressive bedtime story from a woman named Mary Poppiins, but this is what she believes is the story of America.
Mary Poppiins:
And you know what? We're all one race, the human race. We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we're spiritual beings having a human experience, and people need to remember this. So we need to get along with everybody and realize we're all the same. We bleed the same, and there's only one race, the human race. I know that if God had a refrigerator, everybody's picture'd be on it. God bless you.
Crowd:
(singing)
Singer:
Thank you. [inaudible 00:04:08]
Noor Tagouri:
When Poppiins says we are all spiritual beings having a human experience, I am physically taken aback. This is the line Maimouna Youssef mentioned earlier in the series. The phrase I always go back to for comfort on this journey. But is it possible Mary Poppiins has considered those words the same way, Maimouna a Black Muslim Native American has? As I reflect on this, my co-writer Zaran reminds me the same words don't always mean the same thing coming out of two different mouths.
Noor Tagouri:
What's that?
Jeff Davis:
Amen. She said it, everything that I believe in.
Noor Tagouri:
At this point, I meet a man named Jeff Davis. Jeff and Mary are both waiting for the Memorial Day parade to begin. He overhears our conversation and Jeff Davis says he agrees with every single word that Mary Poppiins has just said.
Jeff Davis:
America's crumbling. Something's going to happen.
Person in Crowd:
Okay [inaudible 00:05:13]
Jeff Davis:
There's too much hatred.
Noor Tagouri:
Can I ask you about that?
Jeff Davis:
America's scary right now. There's too much hatred. We're too divided. Like, when I saw 9/11 happen, I saw everybody come together and now it's always... Majority of the people, now it's one against the other. It's either you're Republican or a Democrat, and that's it. There's no in between. There's got to be an in between. There has to be, or this country is going to be divided. You shouldn't get rid of your history. It may be evil, but that's how this country was brought up. It will repeat itself.
Noor Tagouri:
We hear this a lot, a call for the middle ground, complaints that we used to be more united. Now we're too divided. But our nation has never truly been united. Jeff mentions 9/11. And as an American Muslim kid growing up in that era, I witnessed and felt a clear divide, the creation of an us versus them.
Noor Tagouri:
To many of us in different sub communities who have been on the other side of Jeff's version of unity, the United States has always been a divided place. And now we celebrate that the nation's collective voices have gotten louder and more stories are being added to our shared history, knowing each other, really knowing each other is a major step toward actual unity, and knowing each other also means we have to know if someone's goals actively oppose our ability to fully live and exist as ourselves. So when someone is fighting against your human rights, they have signed you up for a fight even if you hate to fight, and we have to act accordingly because acknowledging the fight is how you and me and we can end it. At the end of the day, it's going to be over stories that our conflicts occur, which is why we have to intentionally focus on the stories we are telling.
Person in Crowd:
John Alexander [inaudible 00:07:50]. Charles Benjamin [inaudible 00:07:51]
Noor Tagouri:
Seated next to Jeff, listening to every word he's saying is his son Caden.
Noor Tagouri:
How do you speak to your son about the story of America today?
Jeff Davis:
I always tell him the truth. I always let him watch the news. I don't hide anything from him. We don't hold the truth from him. We let him know that the world is a dangerous spot. It's not all rainbows and unicorns. At any time, any moment something can happen. And you got to be aware of that, but you got to keep up in the news. It seems like even the news has gone so political. I'm a conservative and I'm in the biggest Democrat... I'm in Ulster County. Everything is run by a Democrat, but I'm conservative. I stand by my values.
Noor Tagouri:
How old are you?
Caden Davis:
I'm 11.
Noor Tagouri:
Caden reminds me somewhat of my brother, Yesin, 11, wide eyed, glued to his dad's side. Caden wears an American flag emblazened across his little chest.
Noor Tagouri:
In your 11-year-old world today, what is your story in America?
Caden Davis:
Well, when I was really first born, I thought the world was like a good place and everything could be okay, nothing bad will happen.
Noor Tagouri:
This is how each of us starts out. And then we learn stories about the world and about people, and just like Caden Davis, the stories become the world we live in.
Caden Davis:
But as I'm progressing and getting older, I'm realizing what's happening in the world and how it gets cruel. If something bad like that happens, well, you won't be prepared and anything could happen at any moment, any time.
Noor Tagouri:
What is the America that you want to grow up in?
Caden Davis:
Somewhere where you can go to school and not worry about a shooter.
Noor Tagouri:
I really hope that that is the America that you get to grow up in. And it's going to be up to you guys.
Noor Tagouri:
It's at this point that a woman approaches Jeff and I, and before I can process what she's doing, Jeff gets up and walks away. But first he says...
Person in Crowd:
[inaudible 00:10:04]
Jeff Davis:
I don't support you guys.
Person in Crowd:
[inaudible 00:10:07]
Noor Tagouri:
"I don't support you guys." That's what Jeff Davis just said to an older woman who's wearing a bright, hot pink shirt that reads Planned Parenthood. Mary Frank is an 89-year-old artist. She's also an activist.
Mary Frank:
If you don't like abortion, don't have one. Okay.
Noor Tagouri:
Mary Frank is at the parade with a friend passing out handmade buttons she made herself. She sports a few on her outfit. Mary's buttons feature a flaming torch with big, bold text handwritten across that simply reads the word "Truth."
Noor Tagouri:
Can you tell me about what you believe the story of America is right now?
Mary Frank:
It's a major disaster for the country and for the world because it's becoming a fascist country full of hate and obviously violence and crime, and we could be together and do extraordinary things.
Noor Tagouri:
Hate. It's the same problem Jeff mentioned he was concerned about, too. Mary has her version of hate, and she tells me the hate is a result of fear. As I watched these two Americans literally cross each other's paths, both expressing to me similar sentiments, but too different to engage, I realized how can we ever communicate? How can we ever heal if we can't even agree on what a word means? Whether that word is hate or in this case, abortion.
Noor Tagouri:
It's important to note, I write these words the day after the Supreme court overturned Roe versus Wade. This moment between Jeff and Mary Frank was a microcosm of the current state of our country. It was also a missed opportunity for meaningful interaction because like Jeff, we so often assume we know what the other person will say. Now we are a country of people overfilled with opinions and anger left with no room for nuanced conversation.
Noor Tagouri:
Meanwhile, as I was out reporting on the public opinion of my fellow Americans, I just happened to be wearing a bright yellow shirt that simply says, "Listen." And that seems the best place for all of us to begin.
Noor Tagouri:
At your service and iHeart media present Rep chapter six: America's Greatest Export.
Crowd:
Woo! Woo! [inaudible 00:13:08]
Noor Tagouri:
After the parade, everyone moved to the Woodstock cemetery where we were all gathered for the Memorial Day service. I wonder how many of the people celebrating Memorial Day know that the holiday first began with formerly enslaved people who wanted to honor the US veterans of the Civil War who gave their lives so that they could be free. That's how Memorial Day began.
Noor Tagouri:
Right in front of me is a tall man with a freshly groomed white beard. He has perfect posture and in one hand holds a small American flag. He's wearing a perfectly fitted blue denim jacket, and on the back is a huge yellow circle. It's a patch that reads Republic of Vietnam Service and those words are stitched right below a big red dragon. I know as soon as this Memorial Day service is over, I have to speak with this veteran. As someone who has served the country and advanced the American narrative, I want to know about his relationship with the nation's story.
William Charles O'Neill:
I enlisted with the Marine Corps in 1967. I was trained as a Marine and here I am wearing my history.
Noor Tagouri:
I love that you wear your history. My name is Noor. I'm working on a story about the story that we're telling of America. Would it be possible to ask you a couple of questions?
William Charles O'Neill:
Go right ahead.
Noor Tagouri:
Can I get your first and last name, please?
William Charles O'Neill:
William Charles O'Neill. Well, I originated on Long Island, but I've been living here for 40 years.
Noor Tagouri:
You enlisted in the '60s. What was going through your mind then? Do you remember?
William Charles O'Neill:
Yes, I was obliged to do so. It's my duty. So I did it.
Noor Tagouri:
What was the story of America that you were telling yourself at the time?
William Charles O'Neill:
That we were terribly flawed, but we were sure getting better. I really liked the anti-war protestors. I said, "I'm fighting for that right. I love what they do."
Noor Tagouri:
Really?
William Charles O'Neill:
Oh, yes. Well, that's a whole idea of you're defending the constitution. Constitution says these people should do this. They felt that was their duty. I felt I had mine. We were brothers in that, just on two different sides of the issue.
Noor Tagouri:
As someone who has served all over the world, how has that story evolved into what you believe the story of America is today?
William Charles O'Neill:
I think we're starting to get out of denial about our past and who we are, and that getting out of denial is the first thing to solving our social problems, particularly rampant established racism, the old redlining of neighborhoods, that problem's still with us all the way.
Noor Tagouri:
Out of everyone I've spoken with today, William has the broadest sense of his American story. He's able to diagnose the trouble and talk about treatment and cures.
William Charles O'Neill:
The one thing that I always love about Americans still do is that we're constantly able to better ourselves. I'm very optimistic that we will continue to do that and continue to strive for a more perfect union.
Noor Tagouri:
When you were abroad, what was the story of America that the people around you believed who were not American? And what do you think that story that we project to the rest of the world is today?
William Charles O'Neill:
Oh, well, at the time, because it was so heated in Southeast Asia, that the people that I was talking to, particularly in Japan were asking me, "Do you really think this is the right thing for you all to be doing?" And I said, "That's not my business. My business is to win the battle. I'm not going to question my American leaders outside of the country. That's an argument we can have back home." What do I think we project to the world now? Well, that we're a very violent society and highly divided, but again, we're also still the essential country. The world needs America, and God knows we need the world.
Noor Tagouri:
Thank you so much.
William Charles O'Neill:
You're welcome.
Noor Tagouri:
Have a great day.
William Charles O'Neill:
You too. Beg your pardon, but should I be saying to you [Arabic 00:17:18]?
Noor Tagouri:
[Arabic 00:17:20]
William Charles O'Neill:
Ha! How wonderful!
Noor Tagouri:
Thank you so much.
Noor Tagouri:
William ended our conversation with a greeting of peace, the Muslim one, [Arabic 00:17:31]. I hope that he learned that phrase from a Muslim friend.
Noor Tagouri:
Here in Woodstock, trying to understand the story of America and us Americans, I was taken aback when William immediately said that he liked the anti-war protestors and that he fought for their rights to protest. This is the story of America and Americans that I'm curious about. I think that this is where we find the connections that counter the divides.
Podcast Narrator:
Rep.
Noor Tagouri:
I'd like you to meet a friend of mine, David Eisenbach. He teaches US presidential history at Columbia University. I first met David a few years ago. I'm friends with his wife, and we arranged a double date at a vegetarian spot in Greenwich Village. The dinner turned into several hours of energetic conversation that mainly consisted of me asking David questions about things I didn't learn in my AP history class. There was one thing he said that totally changed the way I perceive the concept of story in America.
Noor Tagouri:
You mentioned a phrase to me a few years ago in passing that really stuck with me, which is that the United States's greatest export is its story. What is the story?
David Eisenbach:
The story is that you have this place where there is this unlimited frontier, unlimited possibility for creating a society that provides opportunity for anybody with a gun and with some bravery to go out there and work the land and to take the land. Along with that is a legacy of conquest, a legacy of bloodshed, a legacy of racism, but also a legacy of democracy and that all of these factors that come to kind of define where America is coming from and where America is still struggling towards our part of the story.
Noor Tagouri:
But how and why did our country, our story really begin?
David Eisenbach:
If you just think about Columbus and his plans and hopes for getting that trade route to Asia as a way of countering Islamic expansionism, you then see that the tie-ins with this sort of missionary messianic mentality, that again, it's just at the beginnings of America, right? At the very beginnings, in the DNA.
Noor Tagouri:
Let's go back to the Ottoman Empire. They've just shut down the Silk Road and the main trade routes to the East. Now it's far more difficult and expensive for Europeans to acquire their beloved spices, their precious gemstones or other fine goods. With their standard Eastern route closed for business, Columbus is economically incentivized to set out and find an alternate route to the East, and that is how he mistakenly discovers what gets called the New World. He was headed for India, but he missed.
Noor Tagouri:
The most important point, though, is that the driving reason Columbus "sailed the ocean blue" in the first place and began the very foundation of the West as we know, it was based on the threats of Muslim expansion. This means that Islam and a fear of Muslims was a primary factor of the foundation of the dream of the West, which later became the American dream. The US history I learned in school omitted a lot of details about our nation's origins. I definitely didn't get any stories about Columbus reacting to Muslim expansion. So to get more context on the story of Muslims in America, I ask our oral historian Zaheer Ali.
Zaheer Ali:
I think the story that we're told rests on three pillars, right? That Muslims are a new people here. That Muslims are a monolithic group that you can easily identify by a singular profile, and that to speak of Muslims and Americans is to speak of two different people. So whatever the story is, I think that's the framing of it. I think that's the container in which most people receive their stories about Muslims in America.
Noor Tagouri:
Including Muslim Americans?
Zaheer Ali:
I think we slip into that logic.
Noor Tagouri:
How does that compare to the actual story of Muslims in America?
Zaheer Ali:
The actual story is that one, Muslims have been here before the founding of the country, at least. There's some early records of explorers of Moorish lineage, but we know that at least amongst the enslaved people who were brought from Africa, a significant portion were Muslims. So Muslims have been here for a very long time. We also know that Muslims constitute a very diverse community, that there is no one singular profile, no one nationality, no one ethnicity, no one tradition that you could say "this is a Muslim," that we are a plural people that have come in waves over time and still continue to not just come to America, but populate America as Americans. The third is that Muslims have been integral in the formation and in the flourishing of America as Americans. And I guess I want to put a little asterisk. Sometimes we think about this reframing of history as a means by which to convey value. So it really shouldn't matter whether Muslims have been here for 500 years or 5 years.
David Eisenbach:
I think it is valuable for us to understand that the United States does not begin in 1776. So much of who we are goes back to the early 1600s in Virginia, in Massachusetts, and the relationship of whites with non-white peoples and how that is both creating this legacy of racism, of white supremacy, of vicious oppression and murder, but also a sense of social equality, of political participation, of economic opportunity if we suddenly kind of start the narrative in 1619 rather than in 1776. If you acknowledge it, then you understand it better, then we can actually have a discussion about history and out of this discussion and debate about history, A, you're going to learn something; B, you're going to now understand something better about who we are now.
Noor Tagouri:
So why is it so hard for us to acknowledge a collective history that doesn't erase anyone's truth? We all just have different versions of the story, or maybe not enough. I think that's why it's so important to really consider who is actively engaging in America's story and enforcing it from the inside out, like the military.
Noor Tagouri:
William from Woodstock, his conviction and his principles reminded me of another veteran I know. He was the first person I ever interviewed for a published article. His name is Mike Prysner, and Mike became famous for how he spoke truth to power. He's also a veteran, an American who understands the cost of freedom.
Noor Tagouri:
Indulge me in a trip back to August, 2009. We're in Washington, DC. I'm 15 years old, and I just locked in an internship with a local paper. My first assignment is to cover an event where a United States Iraq War veteran was going to be sharing an eyewitness report from his recent aid convoy to Palestine. And 13 years later, I've reconnected with him for Rep. Meet Mike Prysner.
Mike Prysner:
I'm a Iraq War veteran, anti-war organizer and journalist producer for a show called the Empire Files. I went to Gaza in 2009. It was a extremely life-changing experience. This was right after the brutal Israeli siege on Gaza that left thousands of people dead, amputees, permanently disabled. There's the blockade was so brutal. Like, the main thing we brought in were truckloads of wheelchairs because the Israeli weapons were causing so many amputees and the Israeli blockade would not allow in wheelchairs for all of these people who had newly lost two legs or one leg and couldn't get around.
Noor Tagouri:
I still remember him sharing the story vividly. As a teenage journalist, I couldn't believe a story about a US Iraq War veteran going to Palestine on an aid trip was going to be my first published article.
Mike Prysner:
I think that played a big role in keeping me on the path that I was on of feeling that I needed to try to do something about all of the things that made me mad in the world. For me, I felt that I stood out in basic training as like I'm here because I'm a true believer. I mean, I was 17 years old when I joined. So I was as political as or smart as a 17-year-old can be at the time with a Florida public education. Really, I went in on my 18th birthday is the day I started basic training.
Mike Prysner:
So for me it was this belief that everything we were told has been right, that we free the oppressed around the world. I even had a notebook in high school and on the cover of the notebook, I had cut out pictures of like Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro and all the bad guys in the world with like little bull's eyes on their heads because I was like, yeah, these are the bad guys that we got to go get, having no idea what I was talking about or why these people were considered bad or anything, like that was just the way that the propaganda impacted me as a young person. It was that these are the bad guys. We are the good guy. Anytime we go, we go help people that need to be helped, get rid of the bad guys. So that was the myth that I believed in when I joined. Of course, 9/11, things changed really quickly. That's when the lie kind of started to fall apart for me.
Noor Tagouri:
It can be maddening when your reality doesn't match the story you believed, especially when it's a story you are fighting on behalf of. That's what happened to Mike when he was sent to Iraq, and it's what motivated him to do the anti-war activism work he does today. He expressed his anger to the president who sent him to war, George W. Bush. This is Mike disrupting an event in Beverly Hills where Bush was speaking.
George W. Bush:
[inaudible 00:29:29] and [inaudible 00:29:30]
Mike Prysner:
Mr. Bush, when are you going to apologize for the million Iraqis that are dead because you lied.
Crowd:
[inaudible 00:29:38]
Mike Prysner:
You lied about weapons of mass destruction. You lied about connections to 9/11.
Speaker X:
Senator Kerry-
Mike Prysner:
You lied about Iraq being a threat.
Speaker X:
You said you'd behave yourself.
Mike Prysner:
You sent me to Iraq. You sent me to Iraq in 2003.
Crowd:
[inaudible 00:29:46]
Mike Prysner:
My friends are dead!
Speaker X:
[inaudible 00:29:48].
Mike Prysner:
Joshua Castille!
Speaker X:
This is not [inaudible 00:29:50].
Mike Prysner:
You killed people.
Speaker X:
[inaudible 00:29:52]
Mike Prysner:
You lied! You lied about WMD! A million Iraqis dead because you lied. My friends are dead because you lied. You need to apologize. Apologize!
Noor Tagouri:
The pain you hear in Mike's voice reminds me of something. My friend Jack Saul, who's an artist, therapist, and founder of the International Trauma Studies program created an audio experience called Moral Injuries of War, featuring voices of several US war veterans. And the way Jack describes it is...
Jack Saul:
Many veterans, war correspondents, and other witnesses of these wars may suffer from moral injury, the sense that one's fundamental understanding of right and wrong has been violated. They cannot recognize the kind of person that they have become given the acts they have committed or witnessed in war. That shame often leads to a desire to self destruct, contributing to the high rates of suicide among US veterans. They would rather have an honorable death than live a dishonorable life.
Noor Tagouri:
The moral injuries of war are not usually a topic of conversation when we celebrate Veterans Day or Memorial Day, and yet the injuries and fatalities of war are also a result of our greatest export.
Noor Tagouri:
I want us to think about a story as a tool of power. How do we use that tool to build our shared nation? How have our individual stories come together to become what it is we call America? Not a place on a map, but what we mean when we say America and Americans. To best answer that I would like to introduce you to Nadine Naber, a professor at the University of Illinois and an ethnographer.
Nadine Naber:
In general, people tend to think about ethnography as writing about culture by immersing yourself in local communities and participating in their everyday lives. But the problem with that is that the concept of culture that originally came with the first ethnographers developed by European colonizers. So, they went out to study what they saw as the cultures of Black and brown people in order to better dominate them. We could think about like the British in India or white Americans in the Pacific Islands. In fact, the way that we use culture today came out of that history and plays a really important role in reinforcing racism against people of color. So rather than generalizing about people's cultures, when we think about culture, culture is created within people's histories and their politics. And so for me, I think of doing ethnography as a way to more so map people's stories about culture and to think about and show how the stories people tell about culture take place within contexts.
Noor Tagouri:
Nadine has three main principles for collecting the stories of people and cultures. Like me, maybe you want to write these down.
Nadine Naber:
I call them the three R's: responsible, relational and revolutionary. I actually shape the questions that I ask based on a commitment to furthering their community goals and struggles. So that's the responsible part. The relational part is my commitment to view the cultural and political struggles of communities, not in isolation, but in relationship to all other communities. Then revolutionary speaks to my commitment to rely on ethnography, to rely on the stories that people tell as tools that can contribute to social justice, social transformation, creating change in the world, decolonization, abolition, so just really uplifting the power of stories, especially when we're talking about communities that have been grossly misrepresented in our society.
Noor Tagouri:
To understand ourselves and our stories requires that we make commitments to understanding language and meaning, how they affect what we believe. This is what Rep is considering and how language is the bones of a story. The rest comes from the people who tell the story.
Noor Tagouri:
The main thing that we're examining in this series is the concept of story and the impact of how we consume and how we tell story. It's easy to think about story as the things that our parents or our teachers would read to us to help shape and mold our imagination or where our minds were going. When it comes to actually documenting history and archiving culture, what role does story play? And to further that, what role has that concept of story played in building America?
Nadine Naber:
I would say that building America is stories, that history involves struggles over the stories that have been told. I wouldn't say history, I would say histories because there are always multiple stories told about a particular history, but some stories have more power because some stories are closer or more aligned with the goals and visions of those in power. Then there are the stories that haven't had as much access to power, so we might not know much about those stories. So it's not to say there are just multiple stories and they're all equal, it's that when we say that history is, in a way, a struggle or a battle over stories.
Noor Tagouri:
What is your take on America's greatest export being her stories?
Nadine Naber:
I think when I think of the idea that America's greatest exports are its stories, I need to think about the role of America in the world and situate the stories that America has told in the world in relation to what else America has been doing in the world because those stories and the circulation of America's stories in the world is tied up in the United States's empire-building across the world and its interventions, militarily, economically, and politically across the globe. So therefore the stories that the United States has circulated across the globe, in my opinion, contribute to legitimizing and justifying US global power in many ways.
Nadine Naber:
Of course, there are many kinds of stories and it depends on who has told the stories, but here I'm talking about the dominant stories that the US has circulated, the ones that become sort of like mainstream American stories, like the story of the American dream, for example. That story is a created story. It covers up the histories of US enslavement and the problems of police violence and the struggles around homelessness in the United States. But it has power because it reinforces the idea of the United States as the most civilized and the most developed nation state in the world. The stories that America circulates across the globe, they do work. They operate as a form of labor that supports US empire building.
Podcast Narrator:
Rep.
Noor Tagouri:
Mike found himself caught in the story and the war machine of the USA. There was the good guy, bad guy story he and his fellow comrades believed, and then there was what he saw on the ground.
Mike Prysner:
I was there the first year of the Iraq War. The real intense resistance hadn't picked up yet. It was all just very small acts of rebellion, which really were totally justified. Like, even when we did arrest people or whatever who had weapons or had carried out attacks on Americans, I began to really I identify with that because I realized that if I was Iraqi, I would be doing the same thing.
Mike Prysner:
Honestly, maybe a big turning point for me with that was there was a guy that had been shot through the neck at a traffic checkpoint. So it's the middle of the night. I get to the station where they're holding the guy and I see this young lieutenant, who's the guy that shot him. This guy was just so pumped up because when you're in the military, shooting someone is like a really respected thing because there's this prestige around killing and violence in the military. It's part of the culture. He's like, "Hell, yeah." He was all happy and was like go find out why this guy's a bad guy. So I get in this room with this guy. He's just on a table, laying flat on a table, no clothes on at all because they stripped him down. He had a pretty poorly dressed bandage on his neck, but he had a pretty severe gunshot wound.
Mike Prysner:
So this guy was just sobbing, crying and just saying over and over again, "I didn't do anything wrong. I was just trying to go home and see my family." It clicked that the US sets up these traffic checkpoints. People have to wait in these really long lines to get through them. It's just annoying. It sucks. You have to wait hours to go through an American checkpoint with guns pointed at you to be able to go somewhere.
Mike Prysner:
So this guy was tired of waiting in line and pulled out of line and turned around and tried to just drive back the other way to try to find a quicker way home. That's when this lieutenant saw him driving away and just opened up on his car. Hundreds, maybe thousands of Iraqi died in this way. People who were doing nothing wrong in their cars and people at traffic checkpoints, just decided to open up on them. That was one of the big revelations of the Wikileaks Iraq War logs that were leaked by Chelsea Manning, was just this massive number of killings at these traffic checkpoints, just in the first year. Of course, it got worse and worse.
Noor Tagouri:
If story is a tool of power, then how did it and how does it contribute to the justification of war and so much inhumanity?
David Eisenbach:
It goes back to this notion that we are by definition right. It's American exceptionalism. We are the exception to the rule. Other nations have to follow rules. The United States doesn't have to follow rules. Other nations have to follow the Geneva Convention. The other nations have to follow rulings of the world court. We're the exception. We're not a normal country. We're an idea, an idea that's meant to be spread around the world. That's part of our mission that God gave us and that we embraced right from the very beginning before there was a United States of America.
Noor Tagouri:
This is where the idea of manifest destiny comes into play.
David Eisenbach:
The term gets coined in the 1840s by a guy named John O. Sullivan taking the essence of the American ideology, that God has a special plan for the United States of America, that we are meant to be the bright shining city upon the hill for the rest of the world to admire and then imitate. They'll imitate us because of the success of American democracy, because of the prosperity of the American economy, because free trade is the truth; capitalism is the truth and the rest of the world will eventually embrace it because deep in the heart of everybody in the world, there is an American yearning to be free. They just have to be liberated by themselves in imitation of the American Revolution.
David Eisenbach:
The ugly side of that is anything that stands in the way of the success of the American experiment is by definition, if God wants us to win, it is evil. America does not treat its enemies like normal countries. All of our enemies are by definition evil, right? They are working against God's plan and/or they are crazy. They're insane because how could you possibly defy God's plan and the truth unless you are insane? So that's why we have crazy evil bad guys as our enemies, always.
David Eisenbach:
The funny thing is the world knows the story, the real story. The world isn't fooled by this notion that America is always right. Only Americans are fooled by this notion. And that's our problem. We think that the world actually believes our lies. Even before there was an America, I keep on telling my students, there was this notion of manifest destiny. There was a notion of we are white. Native Americans are non-white, and we are justified in clearing them out to fulfill God's mission. And then when we start enslaving Africans, we are white. They are a threat. We have guns; they don't have guns. America's obsession with the gun is intertwined with its racism. And so all these things are connected.
Noor Tagouri:
This is where I think politics and pop culture as a part of the story machine, play a huge role in who we as Americans believe are good people or evil people. One of the conversations I've been having with my baba a lot these days is the difference of American media coverage of Russia and Ukraine versus our coverage of Iraq Afghanistan or even Palestine, Syria, and other countries in the region. I asked Mike about this, both as a journalist and as a veteran.
Mike Prysner:
Well, clearly the biggest difference is racism, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab racism, which is so much a part of American wars. You can't just declare a war in a country and expect everyone to politically agree with it. I mean, you have to demonize the people that you're going to fight. You have to dehumanize the people that you're going to fight. I think that's the big point of the racism that we are indoctrinated with in the military and as a society is you want to see the death on our side as different from the death on the other side.
Noor Tagouri:
So what role does this story play in the daily lives of Americans?
Mike Prysner:
Yeah. I think that it of course affects everyone whether they realize it or not. When I was mentioning all the realities of American life and poverty and discrimination and all of these things, these are all things that exist because we're kind of told there's just not enough money. Like, how can we forgive student debt? How can we give Medicare to everyone? Like, give everyone free healthcare? How are we supposed to afford that? Yet there's just unlimited money for war, for the Pentagon, most of it just buying military equipment that there's just no real purpose for it. There's just going to use it for a couple years, training, blowing stuff up in the desert, and then they're going to decommission it to buy the next line of military gear.
Mike Prysner:
It's just this huge racket where defense contractors are making massive and massive amounts of money funneled from US taxpayer dollars just for this permanent war state. This has been going on for this quite a long time. Definitely since World War II. I think when the Iraq War started, there was a saying that the bombs dropped on Baghdad explode in Detroit, Michigan. This idea was costing in US taxpayer dollars $800 million per day. Normal people, pretty much everyone could probably think of, okay, if I'm a government and I have $800 million a day, what are you going to do to improve the lives of people in the United States? You could think of a lot of stuff.
Noor Tagouri:
According to the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, after 9/11, the United States government spent $5.8 trillion over 20 years on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Pakistan. That doesn't even include caring for veterans when they return home. So instead of spending $800 million a day on Americans, the government opted to flex its power and focus on America's rep over its reality.
Noor Tagouri:
In order for our nation to attempt to justify how we wield our power abroad and at home, America relies on her story. Veterans like Mike Prysner or William from Woodstock have witnessed firsthand how our greatest export currently manifests itself and why we need to actively revisit lessons of the past. Here's William with his take on America's greatest export.
William Charles O'Neill:
But the greatest export of America is the American ideals of self-government, of the people being sovereign, of equal protection under the law, all of these things, of course, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech, a guaranteeing. The problem that I had when I was quite young and growing up and they were trying to teach us this stuff is that I could not conceive of a world other than I was in, that there was a time when class gave you rights, that certain classes didn't have certain rights. I couldn't conceive of that simply because we believe in universal human rights, and that's the one thing we really push hard. It's one of the things that we really don't live up to that well, but we're working on it.
Noor Tagouri:
We're working on it.
William Charles O'Neill:
Yep.
Noor Tagouri:
You know, I'll tell you something. We were sitting during that Memorial service and Adam and I sat under a tree for some shade, and there was a mom whose baby was learning how to walk. She was wearing these little baby Air Force ones. As she was walking back, she stumbled and she hit her knees and her mom picked her up and said, "That's okay, we'll try again." I was looking at this baby while listening to the service and the music. And I was like, "Oh, that's America."
William Charles O'Neill:
Got to get back up again.
Noor Tagouri:
And we're still maybe learning how to walk.
William Charles O'Neill:
Yes. I would agree with that. Again, we're not that far along of getting our heads out of the sand and taking a good look in the mirror and saying, "I really got to have that lump looked at." Well, the only thing that we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.
Noor Tagouri:
I've been thinking about what my new history professor David Eisenbach said.
David Eisenbach:
The world isn't fooled by this notion that America is always right. Only Americans are fooled by this notion.
Noor Tagouri:
So, in Rep fashion, I have found myself in different parts of the world while examining America's greatest export. And I've decided to check in on the story.
Speaker 17:
When I was child, America dream was amazing, no?
Speaker 18:
Growing up in Morocco was also seeing the US as the country where everything that was cool at the time came from. I never heard a single bad thing about America when I was younger.
Speaker 19:
There's still an enormous excitement, I feel, about America, like everything is bigger and brighter.
Noor Tagouri:
These are some perspectives from Italy, Spain, England, France, and Morocco. And to them, our story reads as fiction.
Speaker 20:
I have this idea of American dream. You go there and you will become rich. I saw that the people that get rich when they go to America was the white ones. So now we are seeing a lot of African descendant that are poor. It's most like an American nightmare.
Speaker 18:
The most important thing that I see in America right now is the symbol of an extreme capitalist system that reach its limit and is about to collapse.
Speaker 20:
I think the education there, I can talk about it without being mad because how can people that finish high school can get to the university they want? They have to pay like-
Person with Speaker 20:
[inaudible 00:51:36]
Speaker 20:
-thousands and thousands.
Speaker 21:
You feel like, okay, it's all about appearance. And then there's the violence.
Speaker 20:
Everybody could get like so easily a weapon.
Speaker 22:
I would say America to me now looks very scared and running backwards as fast as it can. Everything from abortion to gun laws, the American brand is always about progression and moving forward. That's not what it looks like now.
Speaker 20:
I think United States are a sort of human tragedy. I'm like, whoa, for example, the big cars, I'm like, why do you need a big car like this? Can't you take a smaller one?
Speaker 23:
When you break it away, you've got incredible communities. Right now you're so polarized. And for me, the only way I can see America working is by breaking it up because the differences are so huge.
Speaker 24:
America is driving me crazy. Like, the contradiction, they're driving me crazy and I can't even sleep on it. I would like to call all of you guys and ask you why are you still there? Why aren't are you not putting up a revolution? Like, you have to.
Noor Tagouri:
To be engaged in revolution means we need to recalibrate the story we are fighting for and what liberation could be. What does liberation mean to you in the context of the story of America?
Nadine Naber:
My hope would be that stories for the purpose of liberation would not only be about dismantling oppressive ideas or stories, but also guide us towards building an alternative world, alternative ways of being and existing in the world beyond war and colonization and racism, stories that can uplift and guide us around what it means to care for each other.
Noor Tagouri:
I do believe that story is the United States's greatest export. And right now, the one Americans are receiving versus the rest of the world doesn't line up. Americans aren't even grasping at understanding the same story, nor do they recognize that it's multiple stories that are braided together into one breathing, living story. I think that's because many of us are not actively engaging with the power dynamics between the different stories being told in our country, and this is exactly what I'm investigating in Rep: how to decode power and uncover the actual stories taking place on every level of our lives.
Noor Tagouri:
I'd like to introduce to you what I've been calling the three Ps: politics, pop culture, and public opinion, a trifecta where each piece serves, strengthens, and emboldens the next. They are a dynamic. And so with any living, breathing story, when you can identify the three Ps and the narratives you tell and receive, they become a new instrument for you. When you open your mouth to share a story, or when you turn an ear to hear one, like music, the three Ps gives the story shape, a way to hear it more intentionally and connect it to the stories you've heard before. It's with the three Ps I believe we can all move a little closer to a more authentic, nuanced version of who we are as a collective. We can better hear each other sing our truths. So next on Rep, we dig to the first P: politics.
Noor Tagouri:
Rep is a production of At Your Service, School of Humans, and iHeart podcasts. This show is written and produced by me, Noor Tagouri, and Zaran Burnett. Editing, production, and sound design and scoring by Josh Fisher. Our theme song is written and composed by Maimouna Youssef, AKA Mumu Fresh. Our senior producer is Amelia Brock. Our associate producers are Tyler Donahue and Betsy Cardenas. Mix and master by Beheed Frazier; audio assembly by Mary Du. Fact checking by Marissa Brown. Our executive producers are Adam Kafif, Zaran Burnett, Jason English, and me, Noor Tagouri.
Noor Tagouri:
Special thanks to Virginia Prescott from School of Humans and Will Pearson from iHeart podcasts. Research consulting by Meha Edhassen. I'd also like to thank Mary Poppiins, Jeff Davis, Caden Davis, William Charles O'Neill, David Eisenbach, Zaheer Ali, Mike Prysner and Nadine Naber. Also, everyone from Europe and North Africa who contributed their voices to this story. Thank you, as always, for trusting me. If this podcast resonated with you and you'd like to support our show, please rate and review and share it with someone else you think may enjoy it. Tune into Rep next time. I'm Noor Tagouri, as always, at your service.
Podcast Narrator:
Rep.