Chris Jepson: Whammy Burger nation

@@“The Platonic idealist is the man by nature so wedded to perfection that he sees in everything not the reality but the faultless ideal which the reality misses...”@@ - George Santayana

Irony, of late, has garnered a bad name. Sincerity is the valued coin of the realm these days. And so it is with the burgeoning secessionist movement, where disillusioned Americans petition to withdraw from the union. My inclination is to ridicule such sentiments particularly since the location of secessionist rhetoric is centered in the Heart of Dixie. I do attach racist and nativist underpinnings to the secessionist “argument,” but I think something else is going on as well.

An appropriate illustration of where a number of our fellow citizens find themselves (me, too, at times) is in our sympathy for the character Michael Douglas plays in the 1993 movie “Falling Down.” Douglas plays recently laid off defense contractor employee William Foster. Foster is divorced, disillusioned, depressed and in despair. All he wants is to attend his daughter’s birthday party, but has a restraining order against him by his divorced wife. Caught in Los Angeles freeway traffic, he abandons his car and begins the long walk across the city to see his daughter.

Foster has many run-ins on his journey crossing a modern American hell, but the classic confrontation (for me) occurs in a fast-food restaurant featuring the ‘Whammy Burger.’ Foster orders off a visual menu showing the quintessential perfect hamburger—The Whammy Burger—photographed in steaming culinary perfection. Alas, when it arrives, it is anything but. It’s pathetic. Soggy bread, wilted lettuce and a piece of meat the size of a burnt quarter. What happens next is what all of us have all dreamed of—Walter Mitty-like—doing. Worth a look-see.

I liken the secessionist mindset to Foster’s viewing of the perfect Whammy Burger. In the back of the secessionist’s mind is some ideal of an American golden age, a blessed America, of that “shining city on the hill.” Yet the reality of our pluralistic democracy, with all our diverse constituencies vying for power and preference is, well, a shockingly rude slap to the face to those who have an idealized (or infantile) conception of American history. As has been observed, the making of slaughterhouse sausage and representative democracy have much in common.

Secessionists lament the loss of freedom. I am unsure of what loss they mourn. I recently attended a private ‘Shoot’N’Annie’ along the St. John’s River with enough guns and ammo to have respectably defended Stalingrad in 1943. I do not see any loss of freedom when it comes to the Second Amendment. No one is requiring anyone to attend a specific church. You definitely can speak your mind in America.

No, Jepson, loss of freedom when it comes to taxes and onerous regulations (like being required to contribute to your healthcare). Ah, taxes and regulations. “Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly” to again have an American population of 3.9 million, as was the United States in 1787, with an entire continent at your feet, virtually vacant, to exploit. Just over the next hill, the long arm of “that” onerous government nonexistent. America was never the “faultless ideal,” the most perfect of Whammy Burger Nations. And this, dear reader, is what is. A diet of illusion and ignorance are always menu options in a democracy. What’s the tagline? “Tastes Great! . . . Less filling!” Not very sustaining in the long run, however. For the individual or the nation.