In case you live under a rock, or
in a submarine, there is an upcoming election happening in America right now.
If you don’t live under a rock, or in a submarine, or high on a mountain, in a
village where there is no such thing as the internet, and the villagers still
rely on a combination of smoke signals and carrier pigeons for communication
with the outside world, then you’ll know what I’m talking about; you can’t
escape the Romney vs Obama Presidential race going on right now, it’s
everywhere. It’s even all over the BBC so I’m sure the rest of the world is
watching in almost as much anticipation as the US is, to see who the next Prez
is going to be. Personally, I’m rooting for Obama.
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| Barack is in the house! |
This whole situation made me
think about what it means to be American,
to an American, and whether people
from other countries feel as strongly towards their homeland as people from the
US do. (Of course, I don’t have access to people from every country in order to
question their feelings towards their country, so I’m going mainly off my own
observations and viewpoint. It’s my blog.) American
identity, and more importantly, ‘patriotism’ is important. Patriotism is
defined as ‘love of and devotion to one's country.’ I totally understand the
‘love of’; I love England. I love that it’s my home, and that I can mostly
identify with its culture, whatever that may be. I feel a sense of belonging
when I think about it, although I would add that this feeling of pride in my
country has definitely increased since living in the States. However, ‘devotion
to’? I’m not devoted to my country. I moved to another country, for starters
(although I am moving back I suppose). I wouldn’t die for my country. I’d die
for certain people, or individuals, if it ever came down to it. But my country?
I don’t know if it’s just the wording that bothers me, but how can you be so
devoted to a place that you would die
for it? I don’t know, maybe I’m not that much of a patriot. That doesn’t mean I don't love my country though, I still care about it,
and its citizens, and its welfare. I want to make sure children get a great
education; and the poor have access to healthcare and housing; I want to make
sure that, when the time comes, I can have a decent job, to be able to support
my family. I’ve never been accused of being ‘un-British’ for complaining about
my country, or its people. Being ‘un-American’ however, is a whole new ball
game. You do not want to ever be
accused of being ‘un-American’ if you are from here.
To most Americans, there is no
better country to live in, or be from, in the world. This is obviously very different to the UK; you would never hear a Brit assert our nation to be the
greatest country on earth, a fairly regular declaration made on this side of
the Atlantic. This is partially why, of the 308 million-plus citizens in the
United States, only 30% have passports. The number is rising, and according to
a recent survey, 78% of Americans have travelled to a foreign country, but an
overwhelming majority of these trips were to Canada, or Mexico. Until 2007, you
did not need a passport to travel to either of these countries, so to me,
that’s like saying you’re from London, but you went to Scotland last summer. Of
course, and
I’ve said it before, America is the size of Europe (more or less)
so if you live in Pennsylvania and you really want a week in the sunshine, why
fly to Costa Brava when you can go to Miami? I do understand that. But what I
suppose confuses me more, is there seems to be a huge lack of desire to go out and explore the world. It’s an
exciting place, and there is so much to see, to uncover, and most importantly,
to learn. Different cultures that you would never have dreamed of exist out there,
and Wikipedia will only get you so far on learning about them all. I’ve been to
18 countries, which to an American sounds like a lot. To a British kid who did
a gap year, 18 is nothing. To me, it’s no way near enough. The
Traveler’s Century Club lists a total of 321 countries in the world, so by their terms,
I’m at about 5%. I’ve got some work to do!
Coming back to the election,
Obama said something during the final debate that made me think: he declared,
‘we will have the best education system in the world’. Why? Why not just aim to
have the best education system for the children in your country? The USA currently
sits in 17th place in the world education ranking, judged on 15 year
olds’ reading, maths and science levels. Finland is first; Japan 2nd;
the UK is 11th. America wants to be the best in world at everything,
but I don’t know why they can’t just strive to do what’s best for the children
first. Try getting them up to grade level before graduating High School first,
and then you can think about being the best of the bunch. Competition can be
healthy, and can definitely lead people to improve in leaps and bounds in order
to be considered ‘winners’. However, a lot of things need refining before
competition becomes the reason behind further improvement.
Despite being a world player, sometimes the culture here can be very
insular, with very little awareness of what is actually going on in the outside world.
To use an example, I would say that nearly all English people have heard of the
terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, and to hear the term ‘9/11’ would be an
instant synonym for the event. In contrast, the terrorist attacks in London in
2005 are not widely known of here. This is not a criticism, or at least I’m not
trying to spark a debate from that statement, but it is true. I mentioned ‘7/7’
to someone once, and got a blank look. I corrected myself, thinking that the
term ‘7/7’ may not be widely used here, and just said 'the London terror
attacks'. Still nothing. An apologetic shrug and a ‘I didn’t know that happened,
sorry’. This may seem extreme, but the very fact that during the Olympic
Opening Ceremony, the channel covering the ceremony in the US (NBC) chose to
air an interview with Michael Phelps instead of showing the tribute to those lost
during 7/7 because ‘it did not cater to the US audience’ is evidence in itself.
Can you even begin to imagine the uproar if we cut out a 9/11 tribute to show
an interview with Mo Farah?? No, because it would never happen. In the defense of many, many Americans, when they learned what NBC had done, they were outraged on behalf of the UK. But for a national
news company to make a bold assumption that US citizens are not interested in
events that take place outside their country is one that supports the international stereotype that Americans can sometimes consider
themselves superior to the rest of the world. (This is also more amusingly
portrayed in the baseball tournament, ‘The World Series’; a contest solely
competed in by American teams!)
A final point about patriotism,
or pride in your country, or whatever you want to call it, is one that always
amuses me; so many people here hang American flags outside their houses! The
flag is the most symbolic representation of America in all its glory, school
children pledge allegiance to it every day, and to deface a flag, or to
vandalize or misuse its image is a mortal sin. I know the Union Flag has been a
popular icon this year, because of the Jubilee and the Olympics, but really,
you don’t often see people hanging a flag outside their house in the UK. There’s
really only one thing that excites patriotism in England and that’s sport. If
you ever drive down a street and a lot of houses have England flags hanging in
the windows, you can bet your ass that the World Cup is coming up! (Please
note: the World Cup has more than one nation competing it in.)
Despite what you may think, or
interpret from this, I am not condemning patriotism. If you want to be proud of
your country, then I support and admire that in you. However, I personally
believe that in order to have an esteemed opinion of which is the best country
in the world, you firstly need to have visited more nations than
just your own.
