Happy Birthday America. 250 years have passed since July 4, 1776, when thirteen British colonies got tired of paying taxes without receiving adequate services to the British Empire. And that experiment, which at the time perhaps seemed like an exploit without rhyme or reason, eventually became the most important country in the world. The one who dictates the economic and military line, beyond Trump. The one who dictates the line on customs and consumption. The one that arrives first and that tells of new worlds. All that glitters in the United States is not gold, of course: the death penalty is still present in many states and weapons can be bought at the supermarket.
But this is also synonymous with democracy. A revolutionary democracy.
Two and a half centuries ago it was blasphemy in church to suggest that ordinary citizens chose electors, who then in turn nominated the president of the United States. An electoral system still in force, despite the inevitable adjustments, which is not afraid of changes. Indeed, the very alternation between the two great parties that were formed especially in the 19th century is the spice of novelty.
Every presidential candidate promises, but not for pretense as often happens in Europe. He makes promises and tries to keep them because otherwise, after four years, he really goes home. However, the executive president does not have full powers. Over the decades, counterweights have arisen, the result of the pragmatic experience of politics and the need to solve problems. Just the fact that midterm elections exist, like this year, gives the idea that it’s fine to have a leader who decides, but dictators, princes, kings are something else, which is not for Americans.
What then, who are the Americans? The paradox is that we could all be Americans. The melting pot, the melting pot of people from every continent who have emigrated to that vast land between two oceans, is the fuel for the Stars and Stripes boom. Then the rules are the engine, otherwise the car wouldn’t have made it that far.
Those who arrive in America know that they must show respect, enter on tiptoe, and integrate. Not that those who are already there are distorted to make room for the latest arrival… The latest arrival has the duty to fit into society, even if it is difficult. We generally start from the bottom. But, but… there is the dream: the American dream. Everyone can do it. It is full of human beings who ended up in remote places and then became world gurus.
Like Jensen Huang: born in Taiwan to a simple family, sent at the age of 9 by his parents to live with his uncle in Tacoma in Washington State, in the deep North West, and in turn catapulted into a dormitory in Kentucky.
Bad moments, almost bullied. The young Huang then returns, as soon as he can, to Washington State, where his parents have arrived in the meantime. He works in a fast food restaurant, graduates, creates a company, fails and then invents the currently most important and capitalized company in the world, namely Nvidia valued at around 4,800 billion dollars, more than double the Italian GDP. Donald Trump also went bankrupt at the end of the 1980s after buying the casinos in Atlantic City. Nos are the basis of American growth: when Elon Musk was looking for financiers for PayPal he received around 100 negative responses. Think about it: 10, 20, 30, 50, 80, 100 investors don’t believe in your idea. But you move on. And in the end you succeed.
Risk, the tolerance of failure, or rather the sacredness of failure help sustain the American dream. If you failed, it means you tried.
And if you try again you will certainly make fewer mistakes because you have gained experience. This is the underlying mentality. Which is that of the former colonies… going further, trying, conquering new territories, new economic spaces. The Race to the West. A race that never stops. Everyone aims to improve. A sort of value-religious push, where the role of Calvinists is predominant: if you are good it means that God loves you and vice versa. And we must thank God for the values and possibilities he gives: Thanksgiving comes from those pilgrim Fathers who gave thanks to the Lord for the harvest, after years and years of climatic and agricultural disasters which had brought illness, death and hunger.
The religious aspect then intervenes in another characteristic of those who live in the USA: intolerance to lies.
See Bill Clinton.
When the Lewinsky case broke out, people couldn’t stand the fact that the then president denied sexual relations before being overwhelmed by the evidence of the facts.
The American is unscrupulous, in some ways, but woe betide you if you tell him one thing for another.
Unscrupulousness which, yet another moral-religious peculiarity, derives from the fact of feeling part of an almost chosen people. A unique patriotism because it is strange to see people of all colors and all religions, united under 50 white stars on a blue background and thirteen alternating red and white stripes.
Patriotism, however, derives from an institutional setting that is intended to be streamlined. Seven articles of the Constitution and that’s it.
Then 27 amendments. Stop.
Great division of powers with the federal part becoming increasingly imposing, but without affecting the autonomy or at times the independence of the individual states. It is no coincidence that the Senate is made up of two representatives from each state, with Rhode Island having the same senators as California. And then again a judicial model where the prosecutor, the prosecutor, is elected by the citizens: he campaigns to ask for a specific mandate. Very clear separation of careers. True independence of the judging judiciary between prosecution and defence, with the popular jury guaranteeing that justice must also be democratic. Given that respect for the law, for the rules, is the foundation of integration. Few simple rules, therefore, because the primary objective is one: freedom.
Freedom of opinion, of enterprise, of growing, of trying. In our country, everything is regulated sometimes before the phenomenon establishes itself, just think that the EU has regulated artificial intelligence when we in the Old Continent do not have AI samples. Instead, it is precisely the idea of freedom that attracts people from all over to the States.
The USA became an economic and military power, ultimately because it fused the Roman and Greek worlds, peppering it with the examples of the Republic of Venice and the French liberal ferments. They inherited and made their own a thousand-year-old tradition, revolutionizing it on a human scale. And the incredible thing is that the new world has the oldest Constitution, which is based on the words signed by Thomas Jefferson on July 4, 1776 in the Declaration of Independence, defined as “truth”, that is, that “all men are created equal, are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these rights are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. Of course, in America there are 100 million people who are not doing well, there is a public debt that is close to 40,000 billion, there is still racism in certain areas, there is violence, there is an unbridled rush to consume with credit cards, in short there are excesses in every sense. But for 250 years and probably for the next few as well, America has always aimed at “freedom”. And to “happiness”. This is also testified by the Pope who received the Medal of Freedom from Philadelphia and, connected online with the National Constitution Center, said: «As a son of this great nation, founded by courageous men and women who dreamed of freedom and a better life for themselves and their children, I join you in asking God’s blessing on the future of America, so that the high ideals enshrined at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence continue to guide the prosperity of the nation in unity, justice and peace».
