The poem, "Tocqueville", contained within the book with the same title, has many difficult and heavy themes that most people don't tend to talk about. The topics make us feel uncomfortable, disheartened, or just angry at our society as it reflects all of the wretched things that oppress us. As a nation, we like to think of ourselves as one united body held by the values of liberty, equality, and freedom. When we read this poem, it is an introspection of who we are as "The United States" and how our values are sometimes compromised in the midst of a power struggle with our leaders (which at times is the government, and other times economical powers, or sometimes one in the same).
Before reading the poem, I wanted to learn a little bit more about the title. The fact that the entire book has the same title as the poem draws my attention to it. At first, I thought "Tocqueville" would be a name of a place. Maybe an ideal, fictional utopia that Mattawa would contrast with the world. To my surprise, it is a name of a person. After doing some research, and reading the links provided on the class blog page (http://223winter2015.blogspot.com/), I learned that Alexis de Tocqueville was a great French political thinker and historian. In the 1800s, he traveled from a Revolutionary French to America in search of understanding of a democracy, in hopes of being able to establish it back home. What he found had both pros and cons.
The pros Tocqueville saw were equality and individuality. Without the traditions of monarchy, America was able to start anew and create a system without an aristocracy, allowing upward mobility for those who are poor and the downward mobility for those who rich. This is the defining features of democracy, which ultimately creates equality. This is a form of individuality because it strives each person to try their hardest to achieve. Unfortunately the cons are also created because of this. People who strive for their own well-being over those of others hinder equality. It turns into a tyranny. Tocqueville noted that without checks on all levels of government, then a tyrannical society will emerge with the majority oppressing the minority. When we read the poem, "Tocqueville", we can keep this in mind. Mattawa seems to be suggesting that this is what happened to America. The white people are the tyrannical majority while the "brown/yellow folks" are the minority.
The poem is like a loud room filled with people who are having different conversations. They intersect and weave in and out. Some are overtly about the government, while some are subtle. Some are foreigners, thinking about their homes. The whole book is like this as well. While Tocqueville, a stranger to America, came and wrote a book about America, defining it, the people, the culture with all of its' beauties and flaws, Mattawa did the same. The troubles that Mattawa defines are exactly what Tocqueville predicted.
Tocqueville coined the term, "soft despotism". This means a country that rules over people with small, complicated laws that degrade the people, though it may not be obvious to the people. It gives people the illusion that they are in control, but they actually have little power. Mattawa states that this is the current state of the US. He writes on page 28, "It just doesn't look like racism. What do you call it then? A kind of mould, software, bedrock. You can make all sorts of people buy into it. Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Asiatics, Arabs, Indians. That's what happens to them when they're on your side. There's already fear that makes all kinds of violence legitimate, or a desire to kill that rationalizes itself as fear of violence. In the end, it doesn't matter which."
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