By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday,
January 29, 2025
A video of Anthony Mackie, the African American actor
tapped to take over the role of Captain America, appeared on a panel in Italy
to promote Captain America: Brave New World. “To me Captain America
represents a lot of different things and I don’t think the term ‘America’
should be one of those representations,” Mackie said. “It’s
about a man who keeps his word, who has honor, dignity and integrity. Someone
who is trustworthy and dependable.”
Much like the influenza in my bloodstream, it went
viral.
By Tuesday, Mackie tried to clarify.
“Let me be clear about this, I’m a proud American and taking on the shield of a
hero like CAP is the honor of a lifetime,” he wrote on Instagram. “I have the
utmost respect for those who serve and have served our country. CAP has
universal characteristics that people all over the world can relate to.”
I’ll be honest. I don’t think it’s a great mea culpa.
The issue wasn’t that he insulted “those who serve and have served our
country.” The issue was he insulted America itself. We’ll return to that in a
moment.
I’m happy to take Mackie at his word, that he didn’t mean
it to sound the way it did to some. I should also say that I’m also incredibly
tired of these sorts of controversies. We went through this when Superman
dropped “fighting
for the American way” from his motto. In 2021 it was “Truth,
Justice and a Better Tomorrow.” In 2006, it was “truth, justice, and all
that is good.”
Now, I didn’t like that stuff very much back then, and I
still don’t. But I will say that the case for Superman going full
cosmopolitan—citizen of the world and all that—is much stronger than the case
for Captain America. Superman isn’t from here—Earth, I mean—and you
could tell he was already
trending globalist by 1987 in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (known
in my corner of the world as Superman IV: Quest for My Money Back):
The culture war fights over these things can be
exhausting, even for people not sweating Theraflu. It’s a bit like the war on
Christmas or the Gulf of America: The point is just to make people angry as
simplistically as possible. By the way, there are arguments other than
“Hollywood hates America” that explain why an actor promoting a movie in Italy
might opine, clumsily, that you don’t have to be an American to like Captain
America. But, for obvious reasons (or at least once-obvious reasons), blaming
capitalism is less fun for righties than blaming America-hating Hollywood libruls.
Now, let me be clear: I am not saying that there isn’t
ample anti-Americanism, from subtle to strident, in Hollywood fare. There is. A
lot of West Coast progressives are, or have been, quite hostile to America. And
I don’t just mean Oliver Stone or Jane Fonda, or the aforementioned Martin
Sheen. I could give you a few paragraphs on my contempt for Adam McKay’s contempt for America and capitalism, the two things that made
it possible to translate his talent into fabulous wealth. But my tank is
running low.
Suffice it to say, I think a lot of prominent Hollywood
types are uncomfortable talking about America in basic patriotic terms, never
mind making a good case for America as an indispensable nation and force for
good in the world. Some can: Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise come to mind. And some
of the right-wingers in show business can go too far in the other direction,
thinking that defending your country to foreigners means pointing out that
without us you’d be speaking German.
That’s one reason I hate these fights. The loudest voices
are more scared to concede a point to the other side than to take a reasonable,
nuanced position. Saying America has fallen short of her ideals more than once
doesn’t make you an America-hater. And saying that Americans should be proud of
America’s ideals and her commitment to them, no matter how flawed, doesn’t make
you some jingoistic freedom fries gobbler or the closeted Nazi dad in American
Beauty.
The point is, Hollywood needs to get over its reflexive
discomfort with basic patriotism. Saying this is a good country and a force for
good in the world isn’t the same as saying it’s perfect or that it hasn’t made
mistakes. And saying it’s better than a lot of authoritarian
countries should come easily—if you’re not worried about box office returns in
China or Iran.
But let’s get back to America. Mackie says that the
defining characteristics of the character he plays are “honor, dignity and
integrity. Someone who is trustworthy and dependable.”
Is it so hard to add “patriotism” to that list? And is it
too heavy a lift to concede that being patriotic isn’t at odds with those other
virtues? Indeed, should patriots, regardless of where they are on the
ideological spectrum, think that honor, dignity, and integrity should define
America’s conduct whenever possible?
Yesterday, I had a great conversation with Francis Dearnley from the Telegraph. He closed with
a dire warning about the direction some fear America is going. Geopolitically,
America’s strength doesn’t just come from our military might. It comes from the
fact that our allies want to be with us for other reasons, starting with the fact
we are a good country. They are our friends, and they look to America for
moral, principled leadership. Lots of countries have superficial alliances—formal
or informal transactional relationships with other powers. These are mercenary
relationships.
America has real friends who see America, for all of its
flaws, as a nation that stands up for certain American ideals. They
expect an America that conducts itself—or tries to—with honor and integrity.
These friends organize their foreign policies around the idea that America is
trustworthy and will honor her commitments. And we reap enormous benefits from
that.
I want America to be the preeminent global superpower not
because I love being the strongest. I want America to be the preeminent global
superpower because that’s good for America and the world. And, more
importantly, the alternative contenders for the job all suck. If China, Russia,
Iran et al. were liberal democracies, I wouldn’t care that much about who the
toughest kid on the block was. But when all the other toughest kids are
bullies, it’s good that the toughest isn’t a bully.
Not so, say the America Firsters. We need to be a bully,
too.
Now, some of Donald Trump’s defenders say that’s a
misreading. Trump is just delivering the long-needed tough
love our friends need to get their
acts together. And if that’s all it turns out to be, that’s fine.
But whatever four-dimensional-chess theory you want to
deploy to defend Donald Trump’s rhetoric, it should account for the fact that a
lot of his superfans don’t see, or care about, any alleged subtext. Just text.
They don’t talk like this is all an effort to beef up the defenses of the free
world. They talk like the free world doesn’t matter—unless it pays up. They
think it’s great for America to bully allies and talk about using force for
territorial expansion. They think, as
podcaster Matt Walsh put it, “the moral of the story is that we can and should
simply force lesser countries to fall in line.”
This week, Sen. Mike Lee tweeted, “If
you could snap your fingers and get us out of NATO today, would you?” He has
taken to arguing that NATO is a “raw
deal” for America. “NATO members must pay up now,” Lee declared. “If they
don’t—and maybe even if they do—the U.S. should seriously consider leaving
NATO.”
This is embarrassing. The “pay up” thing in particular is
a sign of how Twitter rhetoric can break the blood-brain barrier. Pay up to
whom? The issue isn’t about paying dues or tribute to America, it’s about
NATO members spending more money on their own defense—which they’ve
been doing.
Even if Trump doesn’t understand how NATO works, Lee
does. But he mimics Trump’s mafioso-protection-racket rhetoric all the
same.
There was a time when Mike Lee would have been appalled
by Donald Trump because Donald Trump doesn’t behave with honor, dignity, or
integrity. And I’ve talked a lot about how the right has bent its definition of
good character to fit Donald Trump. Apparently it’s too much to ask that Trump
conform to the preexisting definition.
The NATO talk is just how this dynamic gets applied to
foreign policy. The currency of life and politics for Trump is domination,
intimidation, subservience, and transaction. Now we’re told that’s how America
itself should interact with the world.
***
To come back to Mackie, my problem with his statement and
apology is that he still seemed incapable of understanding—and articulating—
that there is no contradiction or inconsistency about a character defined by
honor, dignity, and integrity being called Captain America. After all,
in the comics and even in the Marvel movies, Captain America was never a “love
it or leave it,” or “fight for it wrong or right” guy. He stood up for American
ideals and American decency. When America was in the right, he fought for it.
When America—or the American government—was wrong, he still fought for what is
best about it. As Cap once put it:
Doesn’t matter what the press
says. Doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn’t matter if
the whole country decides that something wrong is something right.
This nation was founded on one
principle above all else:
The requirement that we stand up
for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and
the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself
like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world – “No, YOU
move.”
This gets to my whole thing about the difference between
nationalism and patriotism. The patriot sides with what is right, the
nationalist for “the nation”— or its leader—right or wrong. America is not just
an idea. But it is a nation formed around one.
When it comes to foreign policy, my problem with Trump,
Lee, and that whole crowd is that they’re bending American idealism to what is
really just nationalism, rather than trying to guide the nation in the
direction of American ideals. And it seems to me that the patriotic thing to
say in response is something like, “No, YOU move.”
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