It's a bitch. For six years now I've lived in France and in Spain, and traveled elsewhere in Europe, and it's taught me a great deal about America and its image worldwide.
I'd love to believe that I "fit in" here, and that no one would mistake me for an American, but sadly that is not true. If nothing else, my accent gives me away every time, no matter how much I practice my French or Spanish or Catalan. Things will be going along swimmingly with some new person I've just met at a cafe or a dinner party, and then I'll fail to pronounce Rouen the way Dave Barry learned it should be pronounced, "Woon," and the other person's 'tude towards me will change abruptly. Instead of assuming that I am possessed of above- average intelligence, which they thought a moment ago, they now assume that because I am an American, I am stupid. And not only stupid, but Ignorant And Proud Of It. THAT, my friends who live in America and don't travel much outside it, is the legacy of modern America. THAT is how the world is going to perceive you when you travel, because that is how the vast majority of the people in your country act. They have voted for people who they *know* told them lies about why their country invaded Iraq, and they have voted for them TWICE. Because they wanted the lies to be true. They may have *known* inwardly that the Iraq war was a lie, but they wanted to believe that it *wasn't* a lie so strongly that they voted for someone who just kept repeating the same lie over and over again. They didn't *want* the truth; they wanted the ignorance. They prefer the ignorance of "Global warming is a hoax" to the truth of "Global warming and our contri- bution to it as a nation is going to kill our own children." They prefer the ignorance of "We have the highest standard of living on the planet" to the truth that "We are unhealthy and live in a constant state of fear because we are as bankrupt and living on credit as our nation is." They prefer ignorance. Period. And they're *proud* of thinking this way. And I get lumped in with them almost every time some- one figures out that I'm from America. And it pisses me off and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of having to go back and waste a couple of hours of "remedial education" with these people to clue them into the fact that I don't think like this, even though I'm an American. But that's just the "advance PR" that comes with you as baggage when you're an American living or traveling abroad. It's what people assume about you because you're an American, and it's all that they expect you to live up to, or down to. I, for one, wish that the country of my birth would dump this Ignorant And Proud Of It 'tude about life, and just fuckin' smarten up. For once, America, do something RIGHT, so that those of us out here in the bigger world don't have to keep apologizing for you and trying to distance ourselves from you. Elect someone smart for a change. Please.
