American Pride

Believe it or not, I still tell people I’m American, although I make sure no one sees my red, white and blue “Property of the USA” briefs. During the 1960s the French coined the word “coca-colonization,” but what we see today is flat out aggression. Americans living abroad are not unresponsive to this new climate. Last week in a suburb of Mainz, a GI stabbed someone to death in a discotheque. Before that there was a case of American teenagers dropping stones from an overpass trying to hit cars speeding by on the Autobahn—they got one and managed to kill a woman. This was all well publicized, and at parties I politely retreat to the corner and press my nose to the wall.

There was a time when Americans could visit a consulate without waiting an hour to get in, but nowadays applying for a passport renewal is akin to entering a war zone, demanding nothing short of dodging searchlights, jumping fences and crawling under barbed wire to get to the lady behind the window: “The eagle has landed,” now means, “my son is at the cashier,” and making it back to neutral territory in one piece is considered a successful mission. It is difficult to come to terms with the collective force of one’s compatriots in an era of war. We either shun them, as if they were from another country, or we find ourselves defending them against our will. In both cases we are under their control.

I am not what one could call a “proud American.” It’s not that I’m ungrateful for the environment in which I grew up—I am—but for me pride is not an emotion arising from nationality. After all, at least etymologically speaking, nationality is linked to birth, and how can one be proud of being born? When visiting the maternity ward of a hospital, I have never thought: “Look at the babies wiggling proudly in their cribs.” To be honest, I wonder from where this emotion arises. When does it develop? Like most people, I’m familiar with the feeling that accompanies the satisfaction of accomplishment, and yet for me this feeling is not without ambiguity: I feel the warmth of contentment with myself and the world, but also the shadow of an inflated ego. I fear that pride is nothing more than the hot air filling my balloon of self-deception, and the moment I’ve succumbed to it, I’ve become silly—like a baby wiggling proudly in its crib.

It is an exaggeration to speak of war in the context of this essay, and the fact that this subject has slithered its way into my mundane discussions is evidence of its allure. War, for the most part, exists for those who participate in it and those who are affected by it. For the rest of us, life plods along at its usual pace—that is, uneventfully—and the latest James Cameron movie garners more attention than the casualties in Afghanistan.

But something has changed: a visitor has stepped up from our midst. In our moment of crisis we were, of course, happy to see anyone, and if in our confusion we didn’t offer a seat to our visitor, we didn’t have to rack our brains about how to handle the situation because the guest, slipping in uninvited, sat down comfortably, staying longer than expected. We reassured ourselves with the thought that there was something good in this, that unification was what we needed, and this new explosive energy, our visitor, would pull us through. But after the first surprise visit passed, we became aware that it wasn’t a well-meaning interest that prompted this unexpected guest to knock on our door. The reason for the visit became apparent from our agitated debates: it was hatred.

For a time, as collective angst drew people closer to each other, in the sham solidarity of fear, this psychosis abated. But soon after the attacks on our “enemies,” hatred erupted again with its noxious and searing breath from and against human beings during conversations, between father and son, husband and wife, just as when one, unguardedly careless, opens the door of a hellishly overheated furnace. Why this hatred? Because in a moment of self-assuredness we lost our grip on what made us strong from the start, our freedom, and in turn we confirmed what the world did not necessarily want to hear, that we had become inferior. The confession sparked resentment, partly against our allies, but mostly directed toward ourselves. We did this out of pride.

There had once been something in America—though it had passed by the time I was born, but thanks to Walt Disney and Frank Capra I’ve felt its reverberations—something that could be, perhaps naively, called a “sense of mission.” The notion is pompous. Still, for a generation of immigrants there was some kind of reality in it; the consciousness that coming to America, being an American was not only a physical or political condition but a creed. They believed in America, resolutely, sincerely, just as they believed in Santa Claus, angels and Uncle Remus. They acquired a reputation for being childish, naïve and happy—and this didn’t bother them in the least.

Today politicians lie when they attempt to patch together power systems and flutter the slogans of the American mission over the barriers. They sing the grand aria about democracy and values on TV and in the senate, on platforms and barrel tops, decrying dictators, delineating axes of evil, as if it were the elixir of life inside that little bottle they’re trying to peddle. But where is the “idea”?—the good news (or even the suggestion of it) that is more and something other than words promoting an eroded civilization?

I was born without a sense of mission. The idea of it will always strike me as absurd—after all, I did not seek out modernism, I was born into it—and yet I long for that special something that, despite the growing size of bookstores, resides in books and films ever more difficult to find. I need that belief like a plant needs water, and, like the boy in Song of the South, upon seeing Uncle Remus leaving my world, I will blindly sprint toward him not giving death a second thought.