Make America Usonia

Trump may be ironically correct in naming it the “Gulf of America” in that the Gulf should be for all the Americas as the US should henceforth be referred to as Usonia.

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“Why not use the name? It expresses well our character and is a noble word. That I presume is why no one uses it. It is truly significant. Therefore objectionable if not painful.”

So wrote the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright a hundred years ago about the prospect of people using Usonia to refer to the United States of (North) America rather than America.

Wright didn’t coin the word but brought it some prominence, using it to describe all things related to the nation as well as the architectural style of his which aimed to provide unique homes springing from Nature to Usonians for a modest $5,000, beginning in 1936 till his death in 1959.

On the subject of “The American Way” Wright said: “Nationality is a craze with us. But why this term ‘America’ has become representative as the name of these United States at home and abroad is past recall.”

In his book A Testament, published two years before his death, Wright stated:

Imagine for a moment what fertile Usonian manifestations of well-disciplined human imagination our environment might be today if, instead of the panders to European dead-ends, creative thought and feeling had been encouraged, the creative sense of space in architecture properly recognized — and now become intrinsic! If teachers had become enriched by such experience, and cultivated it as basic element of their own education, they would have been free to cultivate our democratic vision, might have buttressed our American spirit against the confusion and conformity that beset us now. With their help we might now be able to see spiritual entity as beauty — beauty as ethical — and ethics as more important than morals, or money, or laws. If the meaning of the word Usonian had only thus become truly characteristic of the unity of our national life we would have earned this title and Usonia would be ours.

Indeed, we’ve seen the use of “America” pile still more confusion and conformity upon the nation in recent years.

Trump may be ironically correct in naming it the “Gulf of America” in that the Gulf should be for all the Americas as the US should henceforth be referred to as Usonia.

Wright was a pacifist and if anything the use of the term Usonia would be a turning away from the imperial use of the word America, to refer to the US alone. He abhorred war and the notion that the US had unique rights or privileges to beset other countries in this hemisphere or any other.

Rather than unending bullying, Wright would argue, what’s needed is for Usonia to develop a culture of its own. It will then be at peace with itself — and with the rest of the world.

Trump has demanded the “magnificent classical style of Western civilization” be the model for Federal buildings.

It was exactly that vision of “Western civilization” which repelled Wright.

Early on, he was disgusted by the “Classic” architecture venerated at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. In A Testament, Wright attacked “The ambitious ignoramus in the architectural profession throughout America was captivated. The old, old story! By this overwhelming rise of grandomania I was confirmed in my fear that a native architecture would be set back at least fifty years.”

Rather than “grandomania” — or cold modernity for that matter — Wright favored human scale, adopting influences from around the world, including indigenous and centering Nature.

It’s a symbolic thing, but this country — if it’s to survive, and not ravage the rest of the planet with it — needs a different sense of national identity and a genuine organic culture. Not a mockery of culture in service of the officious state, a civilizational appendage of imperial Europe.

The name Usonia can be a modest but real step.

This piece itself sprung organically from my prior pieces on Wright and a recent discussion with David Swanson. The origin of the word is full of some confusion, which I will write about. See interview of Wright by a young Mike Wallace shortly after his book A Testament was published and transcript.