There is a certain dissatisfied type who hates
Those perceived as superior—saddest of fates!
All strive to be better, comparing themselves to others,
And some compete with love and good will, but others
With resentment, whine and hide, behind mentors and mothers.
And someone who blurts out in public life,
“America was never great” reveals at once his resentment, his pathos, his strife.
But since all of us struggle against this truth
That we are inferior, and constant proof
That we are inferior besets us each day,
We must forgive, and we must actually say
What does make America great,
And what this might have to do with our fate.
First, the obvious: a country is a home
Which we share with citizens; to roam
Among the dark hills, the wandering sea
Always implies a safe return; to be
Homeward bound is to know the great
As your place, your green shadow where loves wait.
Your home yesterday, today—this is why America for you has always been great.
Next, the martial, mixed with pride and pain,
The wars won for necessary gain.
An international war is how America was born,
A child, from a world Empire torn;
We were an Indian land worked by slaves,
The resource-heaven which the workshop craves,
And the British were this close to taking over the world,
Until comedy intervened—the Yankee flag unfurled.
Yankee Doodle Dandy boldly entered, and then,
A few battles, a contract—and the world would never be the same again,
And soon it was an America where all came
To be famous in a new and faster definition of fame.
New nations build new circuses and new devices to find
The empire was at once the consciousness of races and almost kind.
But the world will always be the same; different men
Love different women and different women love different men. The world follows the same plan,
Feeling itself as one—one creation, one message, the same man
Building the telegraph—which announces to himself the Civil War,
And a woman, seized by opium, coughs, and America is not America anymore.
The Victorian Christmas, with its beautiful lights,
Gave way to louder and quicker and lovelier delights,
And strange gods with beautiful eyes whispered to us our future fate:
“All is theft and illusion, and America was never that great.”
But let us return. Can we return? Who are we? If there is a flag that waves
From sea to shining sea, who will fight wars and take care of the wage-slaves,
And get up each morning to love what should be loved, and not what the infinite confusion of the infinite universe craves?
I look at what is not that great and I see you,
But I’m not that great either, and I’m hungry and I’m mortal, so what do you want me to do?
I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, I’m a deplorable, and I’m going to make sure
You don’t get rich off government, and home will be these trees, these factories, these shady houses clinging to this shore.