Every time I take a new look at Dr. Seuss I fall even more in love. While rethinking identity it's difficult for me not to attach Yertle the Turtle to the identity of the United States of America. Yertle is a turtle who is anything but nice. He deems himself king of kings and rules with a grip like a vice. This cartoon is a political commentary, one of many, that Dr. Seuss has made. Even in the modern era America is still following imperialistic ideals that we claim to fight against. While we may have 50 states we have many territories that we claim.
As Americans I really don't think we know who we are, this last video was a glimpse of what it means to be an American. We see cultural turns towards sex, fantasy, ignorance, laziness, selfishness and consumer production/consumption, little do we see the fight for freedom. Not to say that we don't value our freedoms, today we fight for the right to smoke cannabis, to keep religion from overwhelming political endeavors, to be able to marry who we love, but we don't stand up to our own country when it comes to taking over other cultures.
For a large portion of my life I have lived in Wisconsin, which has a member of the United States for over 100 years. We are known as the drinkers, the cheese heads and the foot ball freaks. This is just our culture, it's accepted and when people come to visit they must see some of this "culture". The documentary we watched on the annexation of Hawaii shows me even more so that the American culture that prides its' self on being a mut, is hypocritical. The native Hawaiian culture is all but snuffed out, leading to the appropriate name of "Then There Were None". To be quite honest, I wish we could give Hawaii back to its people. I really do.
