A couple weeks ago I said to Amy, “This is the longest period of time that I’ve been out of the United States.” To which I quickly added, “Except for the four years that I lived in Canada.” When I was in Montreal (1993-97), I remember having a few conversations with Canadians about travelling abroad and invariably someone would state that Canadians were lucky because they could just slap the old maple-leaf flag on their backback and people wouldn’t think they were American and hate them. To this, I would invariably reply, “Americans are perfectly capable of pinning Canadian flags to their backpacks and many of them do, not that it does them any good because Americans and Canadians are the same as far as much of the world is concerned.”
When I came to Lebanon the first time (in 2002), the first time someone asked me where I was from (a security guard at a bank), I said Toronto. I instantly and permanently regretted it.
Going back again a couple of weeks, we were out with our friends Lisa and Carrie, both Americans, both well-travelled, both formerly in the Peace Corps. We discussed the topic of being American in a foreign country and to what extent you show (or hide) your Americana. I guess I’ve kind of been thinking a lot about it since then.
When Amy and I were preparing to come to Lebanon this time, several people gave us some variation of this “advice”: try not look or act too American. This confused and irritated me. It confused me because I have no idea how to look or act like anything other than American. It irritated me for two reasons. The first reason is the implicit assumption therein: you are going to the Middle-East and everyone in the Middle-East hates Americans (and may or may not be prone to responding violently to your presence). The second reason is that people seem to feel that you can’t go out into the world and represent America.
Now don’t get me wrong, I realize that there are people who hate Americans all over the world. Hell, after George W. Bush was re-elected, even I hated Americans. But I think that you’ll find, especially in a place like Lebanon, there are people all over the world who also have a profound understanding of being under/mis/not represented by their country’s administration. I’ve heard time and again here, “We love Americans, we just hate your government.”
But so far as the second reason goes, I think that not only should people not hide that they’re American, they should feel at least some responsibility to represent Americans as decent people. If decent people who happen to be American (of which I count myself to be one) don’t feel they can be “out” in a foreign land, then the only pedestrian spokespeople America will have abroad will be obnoxious assholes who don’t really care one wit about what the rest of the world thinks about Americans. I’ve met plenty of these people abroad, and it’s pretty grim.
End of sermon.
As a coda, I want to say that I am totally digging the new $50 bill with the stylized full-color stars and stripes on it.