Okay, okay. What was it? The odd juxtaposition of finding myself watching a PBS piece about the Aztecs after viewing over the last few weeks, America, The Story Of Us, that the bell went off, something about human sacrifice demanded by kings and priests and the culture in general. What was it that had begun to turn me off about the fine production, grandly and carefully done, bringing out the best middle brow minds, I mean, the ones who we recognize as being able to speak for 'us.'

First of all, what's not to like about Liev Schreiber's narration... a newscaster voice, bottled John Chancellor and Cronkite, Reasoner, etc. Different than Peter Coyote. This is a bigger, deeper instrument, weighty and solid. We're meant to trust it. Throw in a patchwork of diverse commentators who peek in from time to time. Meryl Streep. Henry Louis Gates. Donald Trump. Michael Douglas. Tom Brokaw. Martha Stewart.

Okay. It's clear. Here are the voices of Authority. Here are people who have been there, it seems. At least that's how it sounds. A theme emerges. "Time and time again, Americans have picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, persevered through difficult times, not given up, kept on, discovered, invented, a new way."

One can see why they chose a variety of people to step in and tell us, through their personality and authority, what happened in the nation's space at a particular time. A professional actor, now with the gravitas of grey hair, inhabits the lives of many Rosie the Riveters. Brokaw is, with grand burgundian voice, an elder statesman of historians, knowing the national pulse.

Well, you're clearly a shit if you have any complaints, if you have any inner 'hmmm, there's something about this that makes me not so sure about it all.' How can you be critical when Mr. Brokaw--always liked the guy--delivers that handy 'here's the meaning, the neat clear-cut happy ending' stuff? After all, he did a great job with his series on the Baby Boomers. It must be that the edited-down soundbite style of this piece didn't suit his more complicated understandings, as he gets different sides of a thing.

But, there's something here that's making me highly suspicious about the whole series. To qualify, you can't argue with timelines, or with an analysis that boils down pretty much everything into "modern marvel" model. Technology.

It's a neat story. You can't argue with it. Hey, we all lead material lives. Here's a Civil War Colonel who figured out a brigade to sweep the shit off of New York's streets. Here's how the American militias fought, here's how the great dams were built, here's the outcome of technology.

A pean to technology and the economy, played on brass. As interested as I was, and engaged by it, I don't know... what's making me feel weird about the whole thing?

Technology, apparently, will always be, if we work hard enough, if we take enough risks, the thing that saves us. Ingenuity like the Romans had building aqueducts to feed fresh clean water to a city. America needs something to be invented and carried out in order to survive, hey, we will do it.

Yet, it all could potentially come across as a form of propaganda to invest in a certain kind of spending. A building of some kind of might. Like maybe the sort of thing that happened in Germany after the hard deal of WWI.

Turning the channel, one could imagine a faithful subject being led up the long steps to the altar where hearts were cut out with obsidian knife. Listening all the while to an interpretation spread by sponsored voices mellow and soothing and informative, convincing in their storytelling.

But of course that comparison falls apart. Many of those dragged up those steps came from subject states, prisoners of war. That we are not here, so we hope, in this story of 'us.'

There is an intellectual story, an artistic story, a cultural story, a people story, a spiritual story, one of deep soul-searching, going on here in a rich multi-cultured, maybe too hard and complicated to tell, but indispensable. Yes, that soul-searching, that looking for broader deeper meanings took hold here from the start, and we are not the same people without that, without Lincoln and Gettsyburg, without the Civil Rights Movement, without unions and child labor laws, on back to the basic documents of inalienable rights and equality, things which happen to jive with the spiritual, with the golden law toward neighbors.