USA! USA! (pt 1)

*** Since this was turning out to be an incredibly long post, I’m splitting into many parts***

You know what?  I’m not kidding, I’ve been reading articles about the elections, and looking at reaction photos from around the world, and I’ve honestly been getting a bit teary-eyed.  – It already looked like Obama had it in the bag, they were waiting for 3 more states to come in.  Hank had turned away to pay the delivery guy for our chinese food (because I wasn’t about to cook and be away from the television), I was looking towards them, at the door, and as he came back to the couch and looked at the tv, he exclaimed, “Obama won?! That happened just as I was paying for dinner???” I looked over at the tv with a start, and there it was, “Obama wins election.”

(Before I get on with it, I did think McCain’s concession speech was flawless and I even felt something for him.  I thought it laughable that Palin just stood there smirking, unable to talk.  She’d have ruined it, though – McCain departed with grace and she’d have stomped all over that.  I read this article, a really interesting behind the scenes look at the campaigns and I realized that McCain, as a person, isn’t that bad.  And that Palin truly did fuck it up for him, big time.)

In any case.

Once upon a time, I wanted to move far, far away from this country.  Granted, much of it was because I just wanted to experience life abroad, to experience something different.  Though I left to the tune of, “The US sucks and I never want to come back.”  For the first couple years, I would have anxiety attacks every time I came to the US to visit and the first words my poor mother would hear out of my mouth, upon picking me up at the airport after not seeing me for months, were something along the lines of, “I hate it here.”

It wasn’t until my last year in Prague, when really & truly confronted with the complete opposite of American, that ideas of what “American” meant started to take shape in my mind.  When confronted, with a sneer, during my relationship with The Czech, about how I was “too American” and hadn’t let go of my “American Ways,” I started to think about what that meant.  Every day, for too long a time, I listened to him attack all the details of my life, everything he didn’t like about me, it was “American.”

(to be continued…)

1 thought on “USA! USA! (pt 1)

  1. La Phoenicienne

    Thank you for saying that you think McCain doesn’t seem so bad as a person. I agree with that. I don’t agree with his politics and of course voted for Obama, but it’s not to hear the other too.

    Reply

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