REALLY REAL AMERICANS

Any typical Troy and Trudy Trumphumper would probably say Im a real American. My pilgrim ancestors came to the Massachusetts shores on a ship called the Increase in 1635. (Well, my mothers people did; my fathers family were Irish-French-Canadians who may well have snowshoed across the border one step ahead of a Royal Canadian Mountie.) But the truth is, even with my Old World pedigree, Im no more American than the Iranian-American contractor or the Mexican-American handyman who just repaired the wall (irony noted) in my backyard.

Because what, really, is America?

Heck, thats easy. Its the LAND! This sacred plot of Earth we plant our two feet on and defend against Non-Americans, or whoever, to our dying breath! Its the God-given ground we plow and harvest and mine and pave with Wal-Mart parking lots from sea to shining sea!

Well no, not really. Because the borders of whatever physically constitutes the United States have changed something like 198 times since those 13 colonies were consecrated in 1783. And not just because of Alaska and the Louisiana Purchase. The land that is America has sometimes included dozens of unpronounceable islands in the South Pacific and then not, because some other country said they wanted them and we said okay. For a while one acre of an underwater rock in Lake Erie was Great Britain but after 1850 it was America. The Quita Sueno Bank in the Caribbean used to be America, but because it was underwater during high tide we gave it to Colombia in 1972. As recently as 2009 about 11 islands and bancos (those little spits of land formed by the Rio Grandes curving riverbanks) were Mexico but now are America and vice versa. Im not sure anybody really knows which is what half the time. Theyd have to have a flag raising and lowering ceremony every time it rained hard. By the way, good luck with that Wall, fellas.

Okay, so maybe its not the Land exactly. What America really is is the PEOPLE! Yeah! The liberty-loving, right-thinking, God-fearing folk who founded this great country with their blood and sweat and prayers! Yes, America is its People!

Well, sort of, but not really. The last American who actually founded the country was probably Daniel F. Bakeman, a Revolutionary War veteran who died in 1869. Since then, all of us have been coasting downhill on grandpappys push. Or to borrow Al Frankens line, were all standing on the shoulders of people who stood on the shoulders of people who stood on the shoulders of people who stood on the necks of Indians. And anyway, almost every real American has a healthy dose of some kind of Not-So-Much-American mixed into their DNA by now. Starting with our namesake, Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian sailing under a Portuguese flag who later became a Spanish citizen while the Latin version of his name got stuck on us by a German named Martin Waldseemller. A lot of American People have trod the Land since then who dont love liberty or fear God or do a damn thing for their country or anybody or anything else.

Fine! Then what is America?

Simple. Its not the Land or the People or the Flag or a Fence. Its an Idea.

Starting with one sentence written by that undeniably real American, Thomas Jefferson: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Say what you will about T.J.s significant failings as a person, he did write the single most important sentence in human history. Its so powerful, the descendants of the slaves he held in bondage are still paraphrasing it every time they say to a cop or congressman: You have no right to do that to me! The idea transcended the guy who wrote it down.

And that idea got codified into a Constitution in an attempt to ensure it might have a fighting chance of surviving the inevitable onslaughts against it by future real Americans. Which is where we find ourselves now. Staring down the greatest assault on the Idea of America since it got scrawled on a piece of parchment in Philadelphia.

I personally have lived through five Constitutional crises the Kennedy assassination; the forced resignation of Nixon; the power vacuum following the attempted assassination of Reagan; the impeachment of Clinton; and the disputed 2000 Presidential election but a thick-witted, thin-skinned, narcissistic authoritarian who conspired with a foreign enemy to gain the Presidency is the greatest test ever to Americans. Real Americans. The ones who share the idea of America and are willing to work for it. Like my friends, the Iranian-American contractor and Mexican-American handyman. Hard-working, honest and ambitious, they refresh the re-circulating water of Aquarium America thats been befouled by rich, over-privileged, overgrown frat boys, like, say hmm. Who am I thinking of? Starts with Duh.

Im proud to take on this threat alongside them and the men and women of every race, ethnicity, class and background who make up my Indivisible Group here in Sherman Oaks, California, and others around the country. Whether we or our parents crawled here, swam here, or crouched in a car trunk 2 years ago, or squeezed into steerage on a ship from Eastern Europe in 1905, or huddled in a hold aboard the Increase in 1635.