A young bald eagle has taken its first flight in California, and the media is spinning it as a 'symbol of American resilience'. How quaint. As if we needed a bird to remind us of a greatness we seem hellbent on dismantling.
Let us consider the bald eagle, a creature that nearly vanished from the Lower 48 due to DDT and human carelessness. Its recovery was a triumph of conservation, a rare instance of collective action. But today, the same species is used as a fluffy totem for a nation that cannot agree on anything. The eagle soars, while Congress squabbles over debt ceilings. The eagle hunts with precision, while our electorate is fed soundbites and clickbait.
This is the classical pattern: a people in decline celebrate symbols while ignoring substance. The Romans paraded eagles too, but their empire rotted from within. The Victorians revered the lion, even as their factories choked the air and their children worked in mines. We now witness the same cognitive dissonance: a nation that canonises a bird of prey while its own infrastructure crumbles, its education system sputters, and its civic fabric frays.
The timing is ironic. California, the state that gave us Hollywood fantasies and Silicon Valley disruptors, is now ground zero for the very decadence that historians will chronicle a century from now. Homelessness, catastrophic fires, and a political class that can hardly govern a school board. Yet there is the eagle, lifting off, as if nature itself mocks our pretensions.
Resilience? Nonsense. Resilience is not a viral video; it is the grind of rebuilding after a hurricane, the quiet courage of a teacher in a crumbling school, the dignity of a worker who refuses to retreat from reality. We have forgotten these forms of resilience, preferring the cheap symbolism of a bird's first flight.
Let the eagle fly. But let us not mistake it for a prophecy of our own renewal. Unless we recover a sense of national purpose beyond consumerism and identity politics, the only thing taking flight will be our delusions.
Arthur Penhaligon
