"Whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure"

Perhaps I am an agnostic heathen. But my viewpoint can only be understood through my upbringing and the way in which I interpret society and even more important, history. But first let me divulge my patriotic upbringing. For the longest time, up until a year or two after September 11^th, I was like any other young American boy. I was proud and happy with my country. The families of my mom and dad migrated here to befriend opportunities that they had heard of. I had ancestors from Sweden that went straight to New Sweden, Maine to start a farm. I had ancestors from England that became familiar with the lovely program of Indentured Servitude. I also had a few relatives from Ireland as well as from France that I’m not too familiar with. The point is, that I had long thought of myself and of my family as living in what America is supposed to be: a place where persecution does not exist, where the struggles of common people are heard, and given aid—where opportunity is always in constant bloom.

But until very recently, within the last few years, where I have discovered what is right and wrong, I have become something different. By state and federal standards I am an adult. And now that I am an adult I want to voice what I have to say. I am no longer proud of being an American. And I know it sounds very unpatriotic and harsh, but it is the truth. My state worries that people like me, the youth, will be leaving to find jobs elsewhere. I sometimes wonder if the federal government thinks this. Will there ever be large migrations of Americans to other places in the world? Well, lately—it seems as if I might be one of the first to say: the way in which the United States is going, I don’t want to be here in twenty years when we finally anger the entire world population. Perhaps I will go south and sip on cocoa milkshakes with my communist friend Fidel. Or perhaps I won’t. My point being, I will begin to strive to make this place better. I will not give in to the accusations of, “If you don’t like it here, then get out!” At least not yet. Now, getting back to my childhood. Yes, those grand times of being an American, puffy coats in the winter and ice-skating with friends. Watching the tree get lit in downtown Bangor, and many other “American-movie” moments, I experienced. And it isn’t until now that I’ve really begun to understand my Anglo-Saxon heritage or to put it more bluntly, my very “Caucasian American” upbringing.

I remember my grandfather very well. He died when I was ten but I still remember so much about him eight years later. He was a Swede and I called him Papa. He was in the war— the big war. With the big guns, the big risks, the war that would prove it all. Stop Hitler, Stop Nazism! The type of things that still make the hair on my neck stand up. It is now that I realize who he was. He was in two major battles, the battle of the Bulge and Normandy. People shot at him and he shot back. I’m not really sure if he killed anyone, but I’m sure he wasn’t picking daisies with the Nazis. I knew he sympathized with the German army. I knew he never talked about it. I knew he had seen the camps. But what he wanted most from his sons and his grandchildren were for them to never join the military. It wasn’t until I started puberty and began the phase of being a teenager that I learned what it had done to him. He would wake up in the night strangling my grandmother convinced she was a Nazi. Before he passed he had dreams of being caught in fences of barbed wire and girls helping him. The war had affected him greatly. He wasn’t spacing out into the memories of seeing his six children born, he was stuck in the memories of past aggressions, places that he would never want me to see. And perhaps you do need to see some of these things to understand what they’re really like. But I don’t want to be blessed with such an opportunity. I was always proud of my Papa. But I started learning of this and it began to change. I didn’t feel pride that he had saved an English pilot or that he survived the war. He was lucky. And so I feel lucky now. Because I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him escaping those circumstances.

I had always known my Papa’s story. Not so much the finer-details, but that he was a true “American hero.” I even wrote an essay on him in middle school. It was school that I felt great pride for my country. I remember in 2^nd grade, every morning we would sing songs like, “God Bless America, “My country ‘tis of thee,” and we would end it with the pledge. Now I look at this as extremely weird. Learning about nationalism, and how the Nazi’s inducted the youth into their campaign, I have become scared. I feel strange when I see support the troops ribbons, I feel awkward when I stand for the national anthem at the smallest of sporting events, and I feel outraged that people might say I’m not an American because I feel this way. And what are the statistics anyway for being American? Out of billions of people globally, what’s the chance of someone being born a US citizen? Perhaps you need to look at the demographics of your area and compare them to the birth rate of the world in general. But to me, it makes no sense to be proud about something that is pure chance. My point being is that we are all socialized to think a certain way. Either by our family—or by institutions that try and influence us. And now that I have started to review our history, to see the bigger picture of the US on international terms, I feel no patriotism for this country. It seems the smallest of instances where one might feel pride, can be tainted by the smallest of contrasts. To me, I have began to feel strong opposition to what reasons the US has had wars. The Civil War to me isn’t a war for the abolition of slavery. It seems that it was a struggle to keep a union and to create a strong, growing economy. The result was the end of slavery. World War II even makes me question things sometimes. Knowing the CIA had detailed photographs of camps such as Auschwitz, and still a decision was made to “stay the course” and defeat the Nazi’s. Why not destroy or slow down the process of the genocide that was going on? Why not stop genocide in Africa today!? Other things, lead me to question the Cold War. Did we always dislike Stalin? Have we always disliked Osama Bin Laden and Saddem Hussien? Have the ways in which the United States government goes about doing things, created the same “evils” that these types of leaders or organizations have created? It all comes back for me, on the basis of what freedom is.

By what means do we obtain freedom? Is freedom the right to an abortion or is it the right to economy, the right to have an international capitalistic market? What is it? And by what means is this freedom obtained? I recall the famous saying by Malcolm X: “By any means necessary.” It seems ironic that a converted, black Islamic man’s beliefs embody what I think the spirit of American patriotism is. We don’t care what happens as long as our interests are protected. And to me, it always seems odd that it’s never the right to universal health care, or the right to free education. It is the right for a man and woman to get married, or the right to have a gun. The current foreign policy or perhaps this brings falsehood to what I am trying to say: the foreign policy of the United States has always been to protect these American interests. And with the absence of universal healthcare, free education, and other social programs that bring help to less fortunate as well as common-middle class John Doe—one can only guess what the interests of this country are.

So there you have it. I have been angry for a while. And just now voiced what has been on my mind. I have much more to say, but I’m afraid that it perhaps may be a little too radical even for what I have written thus far. Then again I have nothing to hide. I am tired. Tired, tired, tired, tired tired…and of many things. But here I am. Born an American but a citizen to the world. And I will not support or take my hat off, for a country where my beliefs are not accepted. And if you feel as I do, then perhaps we could stand together sometime, and be the liberal-crack pots, American haters, and red-communie socialist bastards we are. Well, if George W. Bush gets to read this, or perhaps the CIA, I wish that you simply knock on my door to take me to Guantamano. And to let you know, I am a pacifist (so guns or great swat tactics aren’t needed). I hope you don’t get offended of what I have said, because you are all-powerful and I am but one voice.

“Cuando la injusticia convierte en ley, la resistencia convierte en obligacion.”

-Viva Ernesto Guevara