Curating the national character

The United States is solidly, as a former history teacher might say, in the half of the world that makes the top half possible when it comes to scientific literacy–and when we can't reach consensus on matters of empirical fact, what makes us think we should be scripting in stone definitive historical narratives of events that are still politically relevant, disputed and incendiary, not to mention still remembered by their original actors and audiences?

According to this New York Times editorial, that's precisely what's being proposed for Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.:

Its eloquence and its terseness – both a product of its simplicity – have moved nearly everyone who has ever been lucky enough to visit. But why stop with perfect? The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, established to raise money for the memorial, has proposed a new visitor center to help "interpret" the memorial and the war. The center, some 25,000 square feet in size, would be built underground just north of the Lincoln Memorial. The site was approved the other day, with many restrictions.

Never mind the politics of placement–what versions of the story would such a center possibly present? As it stands, the ambiguous and elegant memorial conveys a more authentic sense of what Vietnam means to American history than any literal attempt at explication ever could.

It begins with one name etched just above the ground, but before you know it you've sunk down until you can't see the sky above; only more names floating out from the blackness amid reflections of all the chattering national indifference and idiocy and insulated naivete that helped perpetuate the entire mess and its present progeny. Visitors walk through it starting from the "wrong" end, toss out half-brained theories of how the seemingly random names are patterned (it's by order of death), walk carelessly in front of others, fill any silences with whatever meaningless commentary comes to mind–for it's uncomfortable, and that's precisely the point.

I don't know what schools the Times' editorial board talked to, but there's a reason why, even at the legendarily "liberal" UW-Madison, I had to specifically seek out a course on the Vietnam wars (which I couldn't get a seat in until my senior year) to hear anything at all from the public education system about the entire period, or anything else after World War II for that matter.

In many ways Vietnam represents the most fatal fallibilities of the American spirit: blind arrogance, willful ignorance, hostility to learning and adapting, misplaced and excessive violence backing up misguided and skeletal ideology. Not that it's stopped us from doing it to every other war, but whitewashing the entire conflict to fit in with the other gleaming monuments to national righteousness speckling the capital is dishonest to all involved, not the least of which to the design integrity of the memorial itself.

An oft neglected component of any effective human creative or intellectual endeavor is knowing when to stop tacking things on and just be still, be quiet; watch, listen and be moved by what you've made or discovered.

That's precisely why the Vietnam memorial stands out among all the ostentatious, alabaster odes to one-dimensional patriotism that surround it: A work of art more than a carved decree, it's just about the only one that invites and accommodates multiple interpretations.

It doesn't mask or deny the dissonant reality of what it represents, but its design is so evocative that it leaves any visitors who are even marginally engaged with no choice but to call it out for themselves. And for everybody else who prefers to treat visual simplicity as a metaphor for substantive vacuity, it's not going to cast a big black cloud of complexity over a star-spangled tour of the monuments.

But when we let that mindset take over and have the last word on our history, we acquiesce to closing important avenues of discussion and evidence.

And at a time when justice officials are talking about looking into just how constitutional it might be to detain citizens for weeks without charge on suspicion of terrorism and the president is speaking of Iraqi civilians like they're a bunch of insolent children refusing to clean up their toys because for some reason they just don't seem to really, truly be getting on board with his supposed strategy for stability, we need all the argumentative ammo we're still free to stockpile.