Politics & Power Quote by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Ferlinghetti’s line is a dare disguised as a shrug: go ahead, try to staple the infinite to a passport. The comedy is in the premise itself. “Waiting” turns the speaker into a bystander watching a predictable circus act - the kind of public performance where politicians, preachers, and flag-waving pundits all audition to ventriloquize God. He doesn’t argue; he lets the claim collapse under its own absurdity.

The specific intent is to puncture American exceptionalism at its most sanctified point: the insistence that national destiny has divine endorsement. “Prove” is the scalpel. Faith doesn’t operate on evidence, but propaganda does, and Ferlinghetti forces the reader to notice the category error. If you need proof that God is “really American,” you’re not defending religion so much as laundering nationalism through religion’s aura.

The subtext is Beat-era suspicion of institutions that package moral certainty for mass consumption. Ferlinghetti, a civic poet as much as a countercultural one, saw how easily spiritual language becomes a solvent that dissolves complexity: wars become “missions,” inequality becomes “God’s plan,” dissent becomes heresy. By framing the claim as something “they” must prove, he sketches an us-versus-them landscape where authority tries to draft the divine into its PR department.

Context matters: mid-century America’s Cold War piety, “under God” added to the Pledge, and a marketplace of belief that often rewarded spectacle over humility. Ferlinghetti’s wit isn’t cute; it’s defensive. He’s protecting both democracy and the sacred from being turned into a brand.