It’s been a year of parades. Twelve-year-old Jake plays the trumpet in his middle-school marching band, and, having heard each showpiece evolve in my living room from embryonic efforts to cadenced melodies, I must attend their culmination in the streets.
By now it’s a routine: I arrive a little early, worried about missing Jake’s turn in the spotlight, and crane my neck every time I see flags spinning to music, blocks away. I frantically scan the kids to find my boy’s combination of adolescent height and diffidence. He acknowledges me with a raised eyebrow; I follow for a few blocks, taking pictures, and watch him march out of sight.
I’m always impressed by this peculiar American tradition. Parades, of course, aren’t unique to this country; I grew up watching May Day extravaganzas in the Eastern Bloc every year. But in Colorado, sometimes, a float consists of just a few veterans riding in the back of a pickup decorated with a sign and crepe paper. Some entries feature decorated bicyclists, or crowds of corgis bravely trotting on their short legs, or smiling moms with strollers, taking the opportunity for non-toddler conversation. The feeling is homemade and heartfelt, and always, at some point, the tears in my eyes acknowledge the innocence and passion of the evident effort.
Cañon City’s Apple Blossom Parade last Saturday was a sterling example of all this. It was long and leisurely, with space between the entries to cross the street to meet a friend; spectators dressed in jeans and often in cowboy hats. The kids were patient, and the prices of the food and drink weren’t outrageous.
And the entries were marvelous: the Division of Wildlife folks with their stuffed animals and the 4-H kids with their live ones, all kinds of beauty queens, several generations of the Republican Party, businesses, charities, and bands, bands, bands.
When the red, white and blue Tea Party pickup rolled up, with posterized images of the founding fathers and feathery bunting, a strange thing happened: the crowd quieted, and nearly everyone stood up. The spectators’ sporadic attention seemed suddenly focused, alert, mobilized.
I thought of the movie “Atlas Shrugged.” Unlike the well-to-do suburban burghers who surrounded me, I spent most of it restlessly tapping my foot in response to its ham-handed propaganda. When Tim reminded me, “It’s just a movie,” I clipped, “So was ‘Triumph of the Will.’ ” In one extended scene, the steely-eyed hero and heroine, having outwitted the wormy government officials and clingy relatives who sought to control them, ride a bullet train through the fall-bright Colorado hills. It’s a stirring paean to capitalist know-how, and ignores the historical fact that, had unbridled capitalism had its way, those forests would have long ago been cut down and divided into fiefdoms for the lumber and railroad robber barons.
But on that bright Cañon City afternoon, I understood the movie’s appeal. We Americans like to apply the small lessons of our lives to the principles that run the nation. If unregulated capitalism helped me find the right plumber or computer technician, we reason, why can I not rely on it to educate my children or manage the competing priorities of the oil industry and the environment? If I can balance my checking account, why is the government having so much trouble keeping the debt down?
The reason, of course, is that the system’s integrity breaks down once people stop interacting face to face. Anthropologists say that human beings are wired for about 150 friends; get much beyond that, and the Golden Rule just isn’t enough to keep people honest.
Members of the Tea Party would like the country to be like a parade: get along with every face that passes, even the fellow whose half-open shirt reveals a swastika tattooed across his chest.
But there are too many of us, with needs that are too divergent. The parade would take too long, and we’d stop paying attention long before it was over.
Eva Syrovy (evasyrov@) of Colorado Springs is a special education teacher.
