America’s Exceptional IndependencePosted by admin on July 6th, 2009
Certain occasions, including the 4th of July, offer us pause, a moment (or a whole hotdog-bingeing day) to consider the historical context for our celebration. Beyond a fireworks-induced pride, though, few of us feel staunch emotion over the long summer weekend that seems, 200+ years post-independence, to have been made for lovers of flag cakes.
Having studied and written my thesis on American exceptionalism, I think I am more conflicted than most. I still feel like I did the day that I landed back on U.S. soil after studying in Italy for three months: unsure of what my American identity means. While abroad, I discovered that I felt a certain security in having an American accent and presenting myself as a product of America’s revered educational system. My Asian and European peers expressed a fascination about U.S. culture that baffled me, but also instilled in me an awkward smugness. I expected to be shamed as an unwilling representative of the Bush years, but instead I made quick friends and was told I wasn’t like the other (party-hardy) American kids. So, if I wasn’t like them, did it mean something different for me to identify with my nationality?
I am now wholly appreciative of that seed of internal conflict because it launched me into a research project that required as much introspection as library time. I unearthed the uncanny coexistence of good and evil in America’s record on human rights at the same time that I fought with my own desire to belong to a people, a government, with which I didn’t always agree. One hundred pages and two years later, I still have the same questions. To me, that’s a blessing, for it will hopefully propel me into a satisfying career as an ever-curious academic. It is less clear how this plays into my life as a wife and mother.
To immigrants like my in-laws, the American flag symbolizes something much more layered than it ever will to me. I have no other way to identify myself than as American; I am not directly connected to my ancestral culture and only know where half my family came from. Liberal democracy is the status quo for me. For those who can compare our freedoms to the lack thereof in an anecdotal way, America truly is the beacon of liberty it claims to be. Those of us who do not have that point of reference seem to be more apt to critically appraise life and politics in this exceptional country. From an academic standpoint, that is what we should do. We are the governing body, according to the philosophical beating heart of American civic life, and have responsibilities along with rights.
Yet, that is not what I felt in the pit of my stomach when I stood in an anonymous crowd at Saturday night’s Shindig on the Green. Holding my son on my hip as he gawked at his first fireworks show, the part of me that is hooked on tradition rose up and erased the guilt, the critical student of political science. It was like American exceptionalism was once again showing me the other side of its face, the side of which I had first caught a glimpse amongst my international friends. I am sure everyone around me felt it, too.
Whether it is something in the air, water, or fireworks, none of us knows. Americans are individuals with radically varied experiences and opinions, but all that seems to matter is that we can stand side by side and sing along to patriotic songs (albeit drunkenly) without factionalizing our differences. There are moments when we put all political passions and social causes aside and just stand together, and that is something that doesn’t happen consistently in any other place on earth.
It is that ability to blindfold ourselves that can sneak around the corner and surprise us with its capacity for malevolence.
We have to make a conscious decision to define what it is to be American for our children. Will we do that by handing them sparklers and clothing them in red, white, and blue or by thoroughly informing them of America’s precarious role in the world and how they fit into it? Can we achieve both?
