Battle for the American brand
In an editorial, today’s New York Times takes issue with political forces attempting to change the American brand from one of freedom and opportunity to a brand of fear.
A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants in bondage, exploiting its labor while ignoring its suffering, condemning its lawlessness while sealing off a path to living lawfully. The evidence is all around that something pragmatic and welcoming at the American core has been eclipsed, or is slipping away.
An escalating campaign of raids in homes and workplaces has spread indiscriminate terror among millions of people who pose no threat. . . .
The politics of identity
There is a real brand identity issue here, too: the possibility that “America” is being subdivided into opposing nations of “Us” and “Them:”
The restrictionist message is brutally simple — that illegal immigrants deserve no rights, mercy or hope. It refuses to recognize that illegality is not an identity; it is a status that can be mended by making reparations and resuming a lawful life. Unless the nation contains its enforcement compulsion, illegal immigrants will remain forever Them and never Us, subject to whatever abusive regimes the powers of the moment may devise.
In recent years we’ve seen how politicians can create and exploit public fears to fracture a national identity for narrow political gain. The results are often devastating to the public and the brand.
“Pragmatic and welcoming”
In many ways the US Constitution defines the American brand. To use a phrase from the Times editorial, that brand is “pragmatic and welcoming.” The Constitution creates a platform of freedoms and rights that enables citizens to make the most of their opportunities, using their initiative and creativity. In many respects, that’s the American Way that sets the US apart. We’re a platform for achievement in a world where too many national brands are little more than ginned up identities used for public control.
Brands as collaborations
It seems to me that the strongest “country brands” are collaborations, where people are on the same page because they’re writing it together. These are places of vibrant culture and adaptation, where tradition becomes a platform for the new. Some elements are frozen in time and kept as static “icons” (often for the tourist trade), but the national brand itself floats upon a living, breathing culture, one that’s encouraged to grow.
