I Hate Americans
Well, that's kind of an overstatement. I think Trevor's pretty cool, and there's this one missionary in Southern California I kind of like. Oh yeah, and there's Joe, Sarah, Dot, mom, and pop...and Cindy, and Emily, and Greg, and and and and and....
Maybe it's just these Americans? I don't know. I don't hate them specifically, in fact, sitting with almost any of them by themselves is fine. It's just the group.
It's more like, the situation in general.
What was by far the most awkward dinner conversation I have ever had started with the topic of Iraq. The idea was presented that our troops are doing a great job and Iraqis love us. I ventured to speak, thinking my time having to be in a situation where my job was to listen WA BAS (ONLY) had been served. I talked about how from the Arabs I have talked to, most of them tend to feel that Saddam was better for Iraq because at least under him there was as strong central government, not utter chaos and calamity.
I wasn't even making a statement of my own political views, just reporting what I had heard, and suddenly the table seemed to collapse in, "I think that's an over generalization," and, "Jimmy Carter this, Jimmy Carter that," and, "Saddam was responsible for the deaths of over 2 million." I didn't want a political argument, and the way it happened, I was the only one supporting my argument, which was that many to most Arabs currently prefer Saddam's iron fist to "American-born anarchy and civil war".
That argument isn't even that radical. It's an argument of who thinks what, not what is what. I still don't know what I think about this, exactly - but I know what other people told me.
Disgustingly huge houses, huge meals, no love - I can't even tell you.
3 comments:
Alright, Kate. If I'm hearing you correctly, you feel shut out. You had ... not even an opinion, yea, just a comment to offer... and it was not listened to. Those *^%#$ Americans were so wrapped up in themselves and their provincial understandings of the world, that they shut you out of their earshot all together. You sounded frustrated. I hope you remember this feeling and take great care in your conversations with others. Sometimes, you have been known to shut out others so that you were the only one heard. I tell you this in love. Either I'm way off base, and you can ignore me; or if I'm right, learn from your experience and change yourself.
Love,
Papa
Kate - You'll get over it. I promise.
Disgustingly huge houses, huge meals, no love - I can't even tell you.
Kate, what you have here is an opportunity. An opportunity to start examining the American soul, and as much as you'd like to distance yourself from your own inner American, your own soul, from the outside looking in. I can empathize with your experiences to a certain extent. Not in content but in form. I've also spent year-long (sometimes more) stints studying abroad. And I can tell you, it felt more foreign and alienating coming back to America than it did leaving.
I was shocked by Americans when I came back. Their tone, their dress, their eating habits, everything. How could they just carrying on like they do, ignorant of everything that was going on in the world? It made me angry. It made me disgusted.
But then I realized that I had a lens that most of my fellow Americans did not have. I had a view or a perspective on the world, that they did not have. At the same time, that perspective gave me a view back on American and back on myself, that my fellow Americans also did not have.
Knowing that the Americans around me were not able to share my perspective made the anger go away. Anger gave way to pity.. pity gave way to resolve. Resolve to be more patient with them, resolve to turn that same lens on myself every once in a while, and see where I was also "acting a little too American" in my own life.
This all did not come immediately, mind you. I wrestled with it for a few years. And I have no idea whether you will have the same takeaway from the whole experience I did. I simply want to open you to the realization that you have an opportunity to gain understanding that you never had before. Not understandings of the middle east. You already know that you have that opportunity. But you have the opportunity to turn your new-found lens back on America and back on yourself and discover things about both that you could otherwise never have known.
Post a Comment