I came into the world a United States citizen, a daughter and granddaughter and great-granddaughter of United States citizens. I remain a United States citizen, and for the most part, I enjoy my United States citizenship. I take pride in the good parts (free speech, baseball, the Grand Canyon, ketchup) and cringe at the bad parts (guns, the Bush family, our tendency to stick our big old Scud-firing noses in where they don’t belong). And I feel sad when I realize how many people in other parts of the world think that the United States sucks the bag.

It’s not for no reason, the bag-sucking stereotype. A lot of Americans have behaved badly a lot of times over the years. Americans have shot civilians, expected Parisians to speak English, bombed federal buildings, inflicted Ben Affleck and Pepsi on the rest of the world — I mean, it’s a big country, folks. You get 265 million people in one place, you’ll have more than a handful of idiots and psychopaths running around, and bad shit’s gonna happen. But I still resent it when, say, an ordinarily well-meaning and fair-minded Canadian reacts to yet another school shooting by sniffing, “Fucking Americans.” Well, okay. But we don’t all barge into schools and open fire. A few of us do, and that’s sad and horrible, but — well, you know, we know that already. We live here, so trust us — we know. I hate hearing comments like, “Oh, just look at your president.” Huh? Yeah, he’s the most visible American, but he’s just one American, and we don’t all like him; in fact, a majority of us voted for the other guy. I don’t want to “look at” him, thanks very much. I think he’s a moron too. He is a moron. But he’s not my fault, y’all, because I voted Libertarian.

I just get really really tired of apologizing for the United States, and for Americans, because it’s not like we don’t have plenty of things to apologize for, but it’s not like I personally had anything to do with most of those things either.

Fast food, for example. I’ve never set foot in a KFC in my life. I can’t remember the last time I ate at McDonald’s. I don’t have anything against fast food, God knows, but most of us don’t eat fast food very often. And I had nothing to do with opening a Burger King on the Champs Elysées, okay? I can understand why you don’t want American fast-food chains coming into your country, but you’ll have to take it up with your own government. I can’t control the spread of capitalism. If the French wanted the Whopper, the French wanted the Whopper. Write a letter. No, not to me. To Burger King. Tell them to fuck off. I’ve got no control over that situation.

Same thing with the rest of American culture. I do not sit behind a giant Citizen Kane-style desk, decreeing the export of craptastic films like Titanic. It’s not exactly news to me that Titanic sucked, but the whole country didn’t hold a referendum and decide to inflict it on the rest of you guys. Not my decision. American TV, American movies, American cola and jeans and pop music — I don’t control any of it. I don’t think Micronesia really needs to buy the world a Coke, or fall into the Gap, or see what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. I don’t make these decisions. Your local government does. Your local economy does. You, the consumer, do. I don’t think the US has done the rest of the world a favor by bestowing upon it Levi’s 501 jeans. Don’t blame me for Baywatch-related anorexia in Fiji.

I don’t own a gun. I’ve never seen a gun, except in a police officer’s holster. If I happened to come into a possession of a gun, I would pick it up with salad tongs and try to flush it down the nearest toilet. I have never shot anyone, I do not plan to shoot anyone, I do not like the idea of other people shooting each other (or, for that matter, deer, who in my opinion have enough aggro, what with getting hit by cars and having traumatic Disney movies made about them), and I do not approve of the part of our Constitution which allows all the shooting in the first place. But I did not draft the Second Amendment. I did not put a gun in anyone’s hand. The violence in the US is appalling by any standard, but I don’t practice it, or condone it. My parents raised me in a gun-free house, and I’ll do the same with my kids, if and when the time comes. That’s all I can do. I don’t sit on the back porch in my bib-alls, drinking moonshine and shooting willy-nilly just because I can. I see the anti-gun ads with the videos of the four-year-old kid whose six-year-old brother found their dad’s gun and shot his little sister’s face clean off by accident, and I feel like crying. I know. I live here. I hear about it. I hate it too. It makes me sick too. A few of us have guns, and of those people, a few of them don’t know how to manage the guns, but that’s not me. That’s not most of us.

I don’t think that Budweiser is the king of beers, or the breakfast of champions. I think it’s disgusting. Yes, your beer is better. No, I don’t know why your country imports Bud and charges more for it than for your local stuff. Again, I had nothing to do with it. Neither did anyone I know. Many of us will cheerfully acknowledge that Budweiser tastes like freeze-dried ass. I could apologize, but again — not my decision.

I don’t make foreign policy. I learned in school why the US went to Vietnam, and I get it, and yet I don’t get it. I agree that the US is frequently arrogant in matters of foreign policy. I think the US should have stepped in sooner than 1941, instead of waiting until a bomb went off close to home. I don’t know that the US should have anything to say about the Balkans. When that US soldier got dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, I felt so sad for him and his family, but I said to myself, “You know, we probably asked for that shit, and unfortunately, we got it.” I don’t like that “great white Satan” business so much, but I can see how the Iraqis might feel that way. I don’t labor under the delusion that the US stomped into Kuwait all outraged that the Kuwaitis got punted from the country and righted a wrong; I know Bush The Elder only cared about our oil interests, and I know that that’s kind of cynical and more than kind of scary. I don’t think dropping two atomic bombs on Japan did anything good for anyone, anywhere. But I didn’t get to decide that stuff. I still don’t.

I didn’t put the Japanese in pens, either, or give the Native Americans diseases and guns and booze and herd them onto reservations, or keep slaves. Well, an ancestor of mine way way back in the line might have kept slaves, and if that’s the case, I’d like to apologize on behalf of that guy. But let me tell you something. Schoolchildren in the US do not learn about the (sadly, many) atrocities committed by the US or in the name of the US in history class and then swagger out into the hallway all, “Yeah, we KICKED some Indian ASS!” like it’s a point of pride. Schoolchildren learn about the World War II internment camps and sit there, agape, unable to believe that the same government that allegedly came to the dashing rescue of Europe turned around and treated Japanese-Americans like crap. Schoolchildren learn about slavery and raise their hands and ask, “But — why? How — how come we did that? Because that’s really wrong. Right?” One child in particular got saddled with the South’s position in her fourth-grade Civil War classroom debate, and she went home from school and slumped, despairing, at her desk, because how in God’s name did Mrs. Stropp expect her to defend an indefensible institution that killed millions and degraded millions more? Schoolchildren read about Custer’s last stand and say to themselves, “That’s GODDAMN RIGHT, Chief Gall.” Because schoolchildren learn about these awful, shameful things the same as other schoolchildren outside the US do — lynchings, assassinations, massacres — but US schoolchildren have to face the fact that our country did these things, that we have a disgustingly racist history in many ways and yet still think we can tell other countries how to act, that the men in charge made stupid decisions and terrible mistakes that cost lives, that that’s part of our legacy as Americans, just as much a part as the Boston Tea Party or storming the beach at Normandy. US schoolchildren learn that justice triumphed in the Revolution, that the US stands for truth and right. And then US schoolchildren learn otherwise. And then a lot of the schoolchildren feel incredibly sad in their bones, because Americans fucked up big-time and there’s nothing the schoolchildren can do about it now. I feel terrible that Americans did these things, that Lindbergh turned into a Nazi sympathizer, that nobody believed the reports coming out of Poland, that African-Americans got sold and traded and beaten and raped and split up from their families. I know that stuff went on. I learned about it in school, just like all the other kids. I’d go back and change it if I could, but I can’t, and I know it’s disgraceful, but that’s all I can do — know it, close my eyes and sigh when citizens of other countries bring it up, concede that Americans can and often do act like complete barbarians.

That’s the thing. I know. I know the capital, and I know all the words to the national anthem, and I know that the United States isn’t a perfect place to live. I know that other countries find the United States bossy and annoying and rude, think we don’t know about bread, loathe us because they know all about our government and culture but we seldom know as much about theirs, resent us for dominating their imports and their domestic policy. I know we’ve got a bad reputation (and it isn’t just talk talk talk). But it really doesn’t help the situation when all Americans get tarred with the same French-fry-eating, fanny-pack-wearing, retarded-president-electing, Bible-thumping, American Pie-watching, Coke-guzzling, sawed-off-shotgun-waving, who-the-British-PM-is-not-knowing brush. I will not deny — have never denied, will never deny — that the United States has a few big problems with racial divisions and guns, and a whole gaggle of little problems with eating too much and producing too many talk shows and barging around Italy like it’s a theme park and sometimes thinking we know fuck-all when we totally don’t. We wasted two years dickering over a blowjob, people. We’ve got issues, here. But, well, I know that. Most Americans know that. Most Americans know that we act like jackasses sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that we all do, or that we’d all argue with you if you pointed out the more egregious examples of jackassitude, or that we don’t cringe when that Swiss guy at the end of the bar bellows at us for still having the death penalty in a so-called civilized society. We live here, and we see it up close every day, but that doesn’t mean that we take part in it, or approve of it.

The United States is, by and large, a pretty swell place to live. Okay, I’ve never lived anywhere else, so I don’t have much to compare it to, but I like it here well enough. I don’t have to wear a chador when I go out. I have a good job. I can vote without getting shot at. If I write that George W. Bush is dumber than a box of hair, I won’t get arrested. Coke is, at the end of the day, a delicious beverage. It’s a big country, it’s a relatively young country that still has to sort its shit out in a lot of ways, and it’s not a perfect country or even the best country, but it’s my home. I know it’s not perfect. I can see that, probably better than someone who doesn’t live here, and if you don’t live here, don’t assume that you know everything about Americans — or that Americans don’t know anything at all. Because if you lump us all in together, well, then you’re no better than you think we are.

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