American Values

Part of the fun of being a foreigner is the feeling of insider knowledge that you get from truly experiencing another country for an extended period of time. Gone are the familiar stereotypes and even some of the surface observations that you make as a visitor here - the experience of day to day living surrounded by American people, American news and American culture offers an unrivaled view into another way of life. It's fun to be able to offer our visitors some of these deeper insights, such as the earnestness of most Americans I've met, and the social norms such as the traditional American small talk of trying to find some sort of connection through ancestry or social group.

On the other hand, it reveals certain truths and ugliness that are hard to see from the outside, especially with the rose tinted view afforded by holidays. I started writing this post in my head during last week's NFL protests, but I feel compelled to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) after the events in Las Vegas and their dissection by the media and politicians.

The NFL protests - kneeling during the national anthem - were, I think, intended as a way of bringing to focus social injustice in terms of the underlying racism that still exists in large swathes of America. However, the national anthem, along with the flag, is held in high reverence here and to do anything other than stand and remove one's hat is seen to be the height of treason (regardless of the fact that most people sit when they hear it on TV).

The confusion lies in the belief that the flag and anthem stand for "American values" and that all Americans, regardless of who they are or where they're from, should be proud to stand for the flag. Indeed, we start every day at school pledging blind allegiance to the flag, assuming that we know what we're pledging. The issue here is what you consider to be American values (a similar debate has raged in the UK education system about British values, but that's for another post). If you take the pledge of allegiance, the main values (I think) come from the last sentence - liberty and justice for all. In that sense, I agree with the protesters - we don't have either of those, so any way that you can find to raise awareness of this is worth pursuing. If you take the national anthem, the values that come through again stem from the last line - the land of the free and the home of the brave. This idea of bravery runs deep in America, and often the national anthem/flag debate gets wrapped up with veterans and the army, so by kneeling for justice, protesters are seen to be disrespecting the army who protect this land of the free and brave (this, again, is another post in the making).

If you take the constitution as your guide for American values, you end up with a great mix of ideas. On the one hand, the idea that all men are created equal doesn't seem to run true, while on the other there are some knotty issues about the extent of free speech as seen in the recent events in Charlottesville. You are also adhering to a text written 250 years ago in an age where America was being forged against the will of the might of the British empire, so it made sense to amend it to afford a well armed militia with a right to bear arms and to not have to quarter soldiers against your will. I feel that some of these amendments have the same ring that arguments against homosexuality using that Leviticus section of the Bible hold - it says so in the book, and the book must be right, therefore I'm right, regardless of whether it's still applicable or relevant today.

The shooting in Las Vegas sickened me, but not as much as the vapid "thoughts and prayers" from many of the country's leading politicians. Even worse are the politicians who, instead of taking to arms (so to speak) and thinking of ways to combat this problem before the next shooter comes along, have openly said that these shootings are a natural consequence of the freedoms afforded by the constitution, so we just have to accept them. Even worse is the politician who when asked about gun control said that it's on the shoulders of everyone to take extra precautions and to "be small" in the situations.

Fuck.

That.

(sorry for swearing, mum)

If I have to accept you have a constitutional right to "bear arms", and that there is nothing stopping those arms from being fully automatic, military grade machine guns, then you have to accept my constitutional right to congregate freely in public and to live a life free from harassment. Why should I have to take precautions about going to open air concerts or other crowded spaces because it is feasible and possible that someone, without any prior convictions or recorded history of mental illness, decides to take their arsenal and shoot their frustrations at me? Why should I have to teach my students the "lockdown" drill where we hide in our classroom in the dark with the door locked so a shooter can't kill us? Why should I have to hug my children extra hard tonight, praying that at some point in their lives they won't be one of the faces on TV for a few days, their lives ended because no one did anything in their power to stop it from happening again, and again, again?

The normal response of "people wouldn't shoot innocents if they knew everyone else had a gun" fails when your gunman barricades himself in a hotel 100 yards away and rains bullets down. But not once in 48 hours post Vegas have I heard anyone (apart from a few Democratic senators) say anything other than condemning the violence, praying for the victims and talking about mental health laws. I don't know if I get so worked up over gun violence and mass shootings because I come from a country where guns aren't an issue because no one has them, or because I'm a pacifist through and through and the idea that you are making it easier for people to cause massive damage to others just sickens me. But the lack of any kind of preventative response from the only people who could actively do something about just makes my blood boil.

The life of an alien is tough sometimes. You spend ages feeling like you've acclimatized, that you're part of the furniture, but then you realize that being part of that culture is more than knowing the Red Sox lineup by heart or learning a few pop culture references; it's understanding the decisions that get made and the different voices that make up the national conversation. Perhaps that's why American values are so hard to pin down - not because they don't exist, but that each American has their own interpretation of what they mean, and that is the hardest lesson for an alien to learn.