El Norte?

Gringos often get a bad wrap. We are loud, we eat a lot, we don't speak foreign languages that well, we expect and complain when we don't receive the highest quality services at hotels and restaurants; we can be fairly picky and demanding. In terms of global issues we've been referred to as ignorant, imperialists, with a knack for causing more harm than good by meddling in other peoples affairs. Somehow we moved beyond Theodore Roosevelt's "speaking softly and carrying a big stick" to "speaking loudly and beating people over the head with a big stick when we don't get our way."

To make matters worse, we even pompously adopted the name two whole continents to describe ourselves: Americans (I had to stop myself half way through this post to correct that!).

It's easy to be unforgiving in any case. I myself have had to defend United States international politics, healthcare issues, corporate culture and waist sizes from other students, friends, professors and casual observers in the past, and have to say that it becomes an exhausting task to be caught between an innate sense of [global opportunism] with personal desire to blend with my surroundings and an equally strong and innate sense of American patriotism that seems to somehow developed over the course of spending so much time abroad.

I admit that, for my part, I am only now beginning to wrap my head around the laundry list of United States offenses abroad. It appears to be fairly long by all consideration, especially taking into account the fact that friends from Vietnam, Argentina, Colombia, Iran (to name a few) have somehow ALL been impacted by United States foreign policy abroad. Helplessly, when I was informed that a friend's family was displaced from Buenos Aires to Patagonia simply because they were communists and the newly elected, American-backed, military regime at the time was not having anything in the way of dissent in matters of domestic politics in Argentina resulting in he and his family being forced to move, I was left in the very awkward position of shoulder shrugging while wimpering a soft, but sincere, "I'm sorry", knowing full well that we had never quite touched upon THAT injustice in world history class.

People make it real. Just listen.

In any case, the purpose of this post was not to rail into the inequities of Americanism. I'm certainly not going to try to add to an already growing laundry list. However, my question to myself in all of this listening and understanding about the States' impact abroad is: are we all really that duplicitous? Are we really that bad?

What I do want to do is present you with a small exercise in subjectivity to ultimately say to everyone else outside the States "give us a break, we are human too" and to those of us from the States "wake up and take some responsibility". We, collectively, the common guy, the average Joe, on a day to day basis have little to no conceptions of the "big stick" that we are wielding and probably in the grand scheme of things would resemble a child clumsily swinging an incredibly heavy metal poll rather than a majestic eagle or Theodore Roosevelt effortlessly himself carrying his "big stick" while single handedly carving out the Panama Canal.

Let's take a look at the facts (sorry but you're going to have to do some cutting and pasting until I can figure out how to imbed videos on this)

Exercise A.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continents
The continents, there are seven, right? Wrong. I fell into this conversation with a number of friends from South America and Europe over apperitivo in Milan. After two caiparinhas I admit that at first it was somewhat difficult to keep the story straight, but in the end my other friend from the States and I were surprised to learn after a heated discussion that maybe there are only six or five continents. In some parts of Europe and Latin America, the Americas are combined, whereas in China and the English speaking world, we always learn that there are seven continents. "Eurasia" exists in Russia and Japan, but not in South America or the States.

My point here is that our concept of place is somewhat culturally subjective, with early education strongly framing how we view the world. Thinking back to World History again, we did do a good job of dissecting Confucianism, but often fell short in discussions of United States incursions in Latin America. Educational baggage is a hard matter to contend with, so it looks like I'm going to have to take two continents for your one.

Imagine the subtle implications though. Suspending gringo continental reality and looking at real geography, why is it that WE make the difference between North and South? Is it then easier to "other" since we don't share the same "continent"? See how that subtle difference already sets someone else "down there" a world apart?

Exercise B.
http://www.ted.com/talks/alisa_miller_shares_the_news_about_the_news.html
This is a video that talks about the United States media that I pulled from TDE [see Tools for Opportunity]. Miller's point is that our opinions are distorted, in a big way, by our media. In her studies she notes that United States media coverage this past year has focused primarily on two places: the US and Iraq. She created a map of "perceptions" to understand American conception of global issues based on number of reporting from abroad.

I'm not going to solely blame the media for the "ignorance" of the United States populace, as it's fairly easy in a blue state world to pick up a New York Times or listen to NPR, but it is interesting to think that how we are somewhat collectively narcissists within all of our own national boundaries. Maybe the "I" in America should be capitalized to reflect this distortion of our relative importance in the world, but isn't the media alway somewhat problematic and skewed. In the end, though, I think the most salient point is that, much like saying "you are what you eat", what we consume collectively and mentally in terms of media coverage does have an affect on our national conscious and may in fact distort our perceptions of what really is the outside world as much as Texas size portions distort our waist bands.

Exercise C.
http://www.elmalpensante.com/index.php?doc=display_contenido&id=1265
This is a view from the other side of our apparent Great Wall of Education and Media escrito en español. El Malpensante is a Colombian literary magazine that posts commentary on culture and politics. It's well-written and it's authors are not afraid to voice seemingly "alternative viewpoints".

In this specific article the author makes the point that United States' prohibition style drug war in Latin America is causing more problems than solutions. The "war on drugs" in his opinion is the exportation of American domestic struggles with drugs abroad (coupled with a rampant abuse of far-reaching military power). The solutions are simple; rather than destroying and trying to restrict and control the drug trade, the author and many Latin American leaders have flirted with the idea of legalizing the drug trade. Not being such a high stakes game, a price deflation would eventually occur and defer future traders. The author also encourages taking a look at other foreign models of drug policy, such as in Canada and Europe, where the debate is more open and alternatives to American interventionism seem to exist in relative peace. Although the risks associated with social problems associated with such a legalization, as well as the insurmountable power of certain individuals and lobbyists to keep prices high, the idea is interesting.

Unfortunately, "thanks but not thanks for the help" is not a response our government in the States takes kindly to.

The recipe for seeming disaster of miscommunication and misunderstanding is impressive when you fit these three puzzle pieces together. The gaps between what we're taught, what we read, and what the other guy REALLY thinks, in whatever country we or you come from are somewhat shocking. Unfortunately, change in the States comes like turning a cruise ship; slowly and with precise and calculated micro-moves that eventually move the whole ship around. We can change educational curriculum, encourage people to read more and maybe listen once in awhile to what the rest of the world has to say, but unfortunately the cumulative affect of such change doesn't happen overnight, and we are a fairly impatient populace.

This all of course, what I've written, isn't a sorry so much as an explanation for US. To say sorry would be an easy way out. THIS requires a larger effort to fix a bigger problem. In the mean time, friends from elsewhere, be patient with US. We're doing the best we can with some admittedly distorted tools in the mean time. We're only human. Everyone in the States, read more, ask more questions, listen. Good Morning America rolling stories about "dog showers" and the amazing products that you can have to satiate your canine's tiny heart's desires for dog food in the shape of burgers may not cut it when in other parts governments are collapsing and people are starving.

Hopefully the rest will fall in place in time.

So after all that, maybe, just maybe, we en el norte aren't that all bad guys like we're made out to be.