The Fanged and Warlike Mistress
The youthful energy of America.
O you youths, western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the
seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
- excerpt from "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" by Walt WhitmanMarch 14, 2026
Saturday morning. Hayley’s out shopping with a friend. I’m reading poetry and sipping my second cup of coffee. It snowed again yesterday, just a minor spring setback, I hope, after the warmer weather last week. Duke and Cleo are curled up on the couch.
Meanwhile, the United States is winning handily in Iran. It’s tough to keep things straight, definitions and rationales shifting as they are. But among other things, “winning” means that the Strait of Hormuz is closed to traffic. This has significantly increased the cost of oil worldwide. In response, we paused sanctions on Russian oil, providing an infusion of capital to further support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and support of Iran. The President of the United States, who has spent the last 14 months denigrating countries that we’ve been allies with since World War II or longer, is begging for naval help while talking shit about those same allies.
I read another article, listen to a Josh Ritter song. Another article. Dave Van Ronk. Pete Seeger. Springsteen. I look up from the phone screen. The dog stares and pants. Still in my pajamas, I go downstairs and work out hard for 12 minutes.
When I was a kid, my brother and I engaged in a multiyear limited military operation against the boys across the street. Our battlefield was a cluster of houses in a country neighbourhood outside of Farmington, Minnesota. Alliances were made and broken at a dizzying rate, the four of us shifting teams so fast that it was hard to know who the good guys were. In the combat era of the “Across-the-street Wars,” hockey sticks were rifles, baseball bats machine guns, and any old twig could be a pistol or a knife. Water balloons and snowballs served as grenades. The neighbours benefitted from a row of evergreens at the top of their trench. Kool-Aid and apple slices were served in the mess hall, cookies after an especially dangerous mission.
Between battles, we played roller hockey in the street and jumped bikes over the dirt driveway in the neighbours’ backyard. On rainy days, it was GI Joes and Nintendo. There were bruises and scrapes. Some scuffles. A few fat lips.
“Boys will be boys,” our moms would say as we crashed through the door hollering for snacks or band-aids.
As a lifelong reader and college English major, it’s with no small degree of sheepishness that I admit I was introduced to one of my favourite poems through a Levi’s commercial. Then again, what a perfect encapsulation of American life that one of its most celebrated poets—the voice of a new age, the personification of American rebellion, the bard of independence and contradiction and self-absorption—would have his work commoditized to sell a product. Truly a chef’s kiss to capitalism.
Then again, it is fitting. “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” can serve as a rallying cry to the idea of manifest destiny,1 the belief that America is divinely blessed and charged with expanding the nation’s territory, ideals, and resources.
If you believe in manifest destiny, you can argue that anything that America does is righteous. This is a dangerous philosophy.
Anyway, I don’t mean to get down on Walt Whitman. He was a wonderer, an innovator, a legend who redefined American literature.
A writer, not a president.
A man. Not, you know, a nation.
We would do well to remember that these are separate things.
May 2000
The neighbour kid and I were playing in his back yard after school. We’d just arrived home on the bus and had an afternoon snack. It was a couple of weeks before we finished fifth grade.
I grabbed a water blaster from the garage and filled it in the dog’s water bucket outside the back door. The neighbour kid gave me a confused look. We were still wearing our “good” clothes from school. I pointed the gun at him.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“We’re playing!” I called back.
He leaned over and picked up the other water gun with one hand. He pointed it at my feet.
“C’mon!” I said, jabbing my barrel towards him. He didn’t move.
I jumped to the right and brandished the weapon again.
He slowly raised his gun. We circled each other.
I realized I didn’t have a plan for what happened next.
We circled some more.
I had to do something. I blasted him in the chest.
He didn’t shoot back.
“What the heck, man?!” He dropped the gun and stretched his arms to the sides, soaked from knee to neck.
I guess I’d expected him to shoot back.
“You were going to shoot me so I shot you first!” I said.
The longer he stared, the worse I felt.
“Dude, go home,” he finally said. “I didn’t even want to play.”
June 14, 2026
Flag Day in the United States. The official proclamation for 2026 is available here. Note the references to the country’s “dependence on Almighty God” and “divine destiny.”
Over the last few months, the President of the United States has told us dozens of times that the war with Iran will be over within days. We heard it again today.
Whatever happens, it was meant to happen. Manifest destiny. Part of God’s plan.
Today is also the President’s 80th birthday. They’re celebrating with a UFC fight on the White House lawn.
Or maybe it’s just that boys will be boys.
On a straightforward read, that is. Art is in the eye of the beholder. Remember, Whitman is a study in contradictions. Even as he rallies the pioneers to the expansion of territory and the exploitation of resources, he calls out “workers,” “prisoners,” “daughters,” “mothers,” “wives,” “masters,” and “slaves,” taking an expansive view of who counts as an American. He refers to the United States flag as the “mother,” “delicate,” “stern,” “fang’d and warlike,” and “weapon’d” “mistress.” America, Whitman argues, is all of this—always complicated and always ambitious.
I am impressed that you have remained so productive with your writing during fishing season. I am glad. I learn something with each submission.