The American Idea
Imagine walking the streets of Washington D.C. and finding a high security ID badge on the side of the road. You flip over the badge, and on the back are a set of directions. Intrigued, you quickly take out your phone and find a satellite view of the area. You click along the road following the steps: left turn here, right turn there. Eventually the path takes you way out into Virginia, dead-ending at a mountain. What kind of thing could possibly be located in a mountain that needs a high security badge?
In the Radiolab podcast, Atomic Artifacts, producer Simon Adler tells the fascinating story of historian and journalist Garrett Graff and the ID badge that led to the discovery of the U.S. Government's elaborate doomsday planning. Born from the 1950s era nuclear threats, detailed maps and systems were created in the event of an atomic bomb attack. After all his research Graff uncovers what he calls "the heart of doomsday planning," which he says is "not for any single American to survive nuclear war. The goal is for America to survive nuclear war…. [and] America is an idea."
To save the idea of America, a task force was created and they came up with a list of artifacts that needed to be saved. Some of the artifacts included obvious things like The Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. But then it also included some confusing things like the log of the USS Monitor - a Union Civil-war era battleship that was sunk. Simon speculates with Radiolab host Jad Abumrad why the log of this ship, along with several other odd choices, would be worth saving. Why do those things represent America? If we made this list again, today in 2023, would we choose the same things? Do we choose artifacts for what America actually is? Or do we choose them for what we strive to be?
I admit that hearing about the Artifact Task Force made me a little angry; that the government would choose to prioritize saving things over people. Who cares about the Constitution of the United States if the United States are gone? So I dwelled on that a few minutes: why should you look back at all? Why not just look forward? While I don't know if I'd create a whole task force for it, I can recognize that there is value in reflection; when we keep certain things it can help us remember what we are capable of as a Nation - the good, the bad, and the ugly.
We look back so we can hope to not repeat the bad, and strive to out good the good.
On the other hand, there is also value in a fresh start. Arlo Iron Cloud of the Oglala Lakota Tribe was asked what he would take with him if he knew an atomic bomb would hit. What would he want to preserve? There were many things he valued, things that had been passed down for 27 generations. And yet, he said he probably would not take anything:
"You know, we don't have anything written down. Our forefathers didn't write anything down, and that's probably the best thing for us…the United States of America, the people that belong to it, sometimes I think they take the things that were written by your forefathers too literally and they can't adapt it into the future…And that's what we're doing. We're adapting everything that we know and we're moving forward into the future."
It's an interesting question for America. An interesting question for our own lives. Are we holding too tightly to the ways of the past? Are we missing out on what's possible because we're stuck in traditions? Is it worth preserving? Or is it time to let it go and move forward into the future.
