femmeruthless
  • femmeruthless.com
  • Ruthless behind the Femme

A Very Independent 4th of July: Happy Birthday America

7/4/2011

0 Comments

 
I never thought I'd be writing a post like this.  But today, sitting here very independently and quite alone, the sound of fireworks crackling in the sky somewhere, I'm celebrating the 4th in a way I never have before; that is, by writing.  And writing about this country.  Is this Patriotism?  Perhaps a bit, but really more appreciation and a sense of unity with all things Cancerian.  NOT George Bush, I'll pass on that so please no quips. 
It's usually a Rule of Thumb that one shouldn't ever discuss religion, sex or politics on the first date.  And there's a reason why.  It is the Trifecta of Inflammatory.  When I was younger and literally living under a dictatorship (not my parents, like in a country with an actual autocrat), discussing politics was something distant, dangerous and could get you killed.  It was in a sense, a luxury. 

To be able to contemplate saying anything about politics without jeopardizing your health, or your safety was to imply real freedom.  Though unshackled, we didn't know what that was.  There was enough to allow us to go about our business and have jobs, and for that we were grateful enough.  Often times, we'd watch Western pundits on satellite TV duking it out with bluster and conviction about their ideologies, the state of the union or the common man's dilemmas.  They were so confident.  We were not.  
Picture
"We" being those of us subject to a regime.  On Maslow's hierarchy, the consciousness you get from growing up in that environment usually hovers back and forth between the lower three rungs of physiology, safety and love/belonging.  If you weren't safe, or you couldn't eat, then love and belonging became harder to get to.  Culturally, there was also censorship, religious and otherwise.  The political for me was therefore, very far in practice from the personal.  

It was not a place where you could express your personal efficacy through a vote, even if you had one.  It would get fixed or sold or falsified.  So my first lesson in politics, as it was for the rest of life, was to comprehend the difference between the Ideal and the Real.  There were those things neatly laid out in books which remain perfectly preserved in words, and then there were those things that just happened, either caused by nature, human will or both.  Tragic, unfair and terrible things, punctuated by lives torn apart by ambitions, by greed, by political parties, by both military and insurgents determined to gain their territory.  And everywhere, blood.  
Picture
It was with this mindset that I'd moved to this country.  And even if my family and I were luckier than most, not having been personally affected by crippling poverty or persecution, it's not something one can easily forget or deny.  Maybe I'm wrong in saying that.  I went to one of the top universities in the country where there were certainly enough privileged students who demonstrated that they did forget, coddled as they were by drivers and ever solicitous domestics.  Shielded in schools and homes beset by well-manicured lawns, what happened out there was something you addressed via charity.

My mother the Latin Piscean, fortunately made it a policy to never expect anything from the hired help we couldn't do just as well or even better ourselves.  That usually translated to summers of waxing floors, doing the laundry and the ironing, going to the wet markets, cutting grass, tending gardens, cooking, gutting fish, yes you read that right - all of which in the tropics is compounded by proliferating dust, oppressive heat and a lack of sanitation.  My parents were themselves migrants, and still retained the sting of what the last war did to their childhoods.  It was over, but they carried it in their heads framing their lives thereafter.
Picture
And consequently, ours as well.  My mother was particularly determined we would know how to survive wherever life chose to lead each of us.  Mine brought me here.  One of the first culture shocks I encountered as a foreigner is the initially bewildering number of rules this country runs by and the accompanying public pressure to comply with them.  It does not at all, FEEL free.  It's restrictive and so directly contradictory to my understanding of what it meant to be in the "Land of the Free".  

The DMV (Dept. of Motor Vehicles) is a good microcosm of this, all walks of life, all sorts of colorful bizarre fashion, a profusion of languages, everyone lining up for the same driver's test.  Where I'd come from, the test to the fees were surname contingent.  Mine's Chinese, so my fees were always higher.  Passports, license, the lot. 

It also confused me that so many people over-relied on these rules, at times eschewing common sense and even the obvious to stay faithful to the technicalities.  America is serious about her laws, as one finds when in the clutches of an irate police officer.  Faced with the babel of tongues, it is the one unifying language no one is exempt from, even if you choose not to learn, speak or write English.  And thankfully is not determined by a single empowered individual at the cost of many. 

Picture
The message is Be Yourself, within the precepts of the law.  And if you find that difficult to do, you can always say so, which leads me to the second thing I found astonishing.  That is the the amount of debate people engaged in and how LOUDLY.  

On some occasions as if volume rather than thought would give their reasons weight.  Did all that noise really amount to anything?  I'm still to this day, inclined by training and nature to quietly observe first before saying anything - and I'm not exactly introverted.  It wasn't till much later that I realized this vigor owed much to a passion for exercising the right to free speech, which sometimes can also be overused, misappropriated and alienating. 

These are just a few of the things that highlight the paradox America is.  But it's enough to contrast how it's citizens, especially the ones who know no other previous life of hollow rights in severely injured democracies or totalitarian autocracies, take for granted the assumption of good and justice as being more than just a possibility.  It is an expectation.  

Certainly there are wrong-doings, machinations, and miscarriages - there always will be in a government run by people, forever limited to our frailty and humanity.  But for the most part, justice is more within reach than not.  The striving to better realize the ideal being so much a part of the American mind that it's constant and driven, however much faltering may occur in the course of it.

In other parts of the world, the defaulting belief can be the reverse.  The law but a theory and justice certainly not a right.  There is almost at times a sweet naivete to the protests and uproars we launch on behalf of the less fortunate.  Today, most of us can picket without being shot, petition without imprisonment and find ways to channel our dissent into eventually being expressed in our laws.  It's impossible to visit the nation's capital without encountering any number of rallies, the ever-changing yet always present mobs further justifying history's sacrifices.  

I spent an entire cab ride in DC being fully apprised of the impending transportation strikes by the Ethiopian taxi driver who gave me a run down on the commissioners running for office as well as handy suggestions to the best African cuisine on U Street.  There was no gap haunted by the specter of "whatever" in his understanding of the issues dear to him, his rights were a fact and his presence to stand united with those like him, counted.  He knew it did. 

Picture
On the level of the ordinary, I watch most regular Americans born and raised here move with an ownership of the space around them that testifies to their presumption of their rights and freedoms rarely being encroached on.  They mostly don't survey a public space like I do - I'm quick to pick up suspicious behavior, always habitually locking car doors and hiding items too tempting to covet from view.  
Picture
I get nervous over unattended packages on the street, or shifty looking men reaching suddenly into their coat pockets.  When the news blared on about Sept. 11th I was assessing how much cash I could safely take out in case the banks froze and where to stash it.  It also explains why I'm more comfortable always living a minimum of ten miles away from the nearest major international airport and why I always have my passport on me.  
Picture
I know it seems silly and perhaps speaks more of my background than it does of this country.  But does it really?   I think it just gives me a more acute appreciation of its values and definitely, a wider tolerance for the spaces between the moral intentions of its laws and what it actually delivers.  The point is, at least it's there.  

However, imperfect and tattered.  I think it's that which prompts most Americans to go hand over heart as they stand in ceremony to the anthem, to the humored dismay of most visiting Europeans.  

It's also what gives American culture it's social sway, it's X factor.  I've been on both sides of the border and have little illusions about either, but just for today, I have to say Happy Birthday America.  

And thanks for letting me call you home.   

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    AUTHOR

    Picture
    FA on feathers, fangs, furies and all sorts of folly, yes, even the serious kind.

    friends? 

    Picture
    Be a Friend to Femmeruthless
    NetworkedBlogs
    Blog:
    FemmeRuthless
    Topics:
    Love & Dating, Life, Sex
     
    Follow my blog

    content copyright 2011

    PictureCopyright March 2011






    Yep, my life, my insanity, my copyright. If you like what you read, let me know :) 

    imAGES

    Did I use your image & attribute it incorrectly?  Sorry! Let me know and I'll take it down. "Sssshhhh" image on blog header by Deborah Azzopardi. It's an amazing print now available thru Ikea. 

    Archives

    February 2014
    December 2013
    September 2013
    January 2013
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011

    Categories

    All
    Abandoned
    Accidents
    Acknowledgement
    Action
    Advice
    Afraid
    Age
    America
    Anger
    Anti He
    Anti-He
    Aquarius
    Area 51
    Aries
    Asian Driver
    B
    Belonging
    Birthday
    Birthday Dread
    Blah
    Blue Libra
    Blues
    Body
    Booty
    Broken
    Calling
    Cancer
    Capricorn
    Career
    Catastrophe
    Catholic
    Chemistry
    Choice
    Christmas
    Cinderella
    Comfort
    Communication
    Conversation
    Courage
    Craigslist
    Creative
    Crossroads
    Culture
    Cynicism
    Dating
    Death
    Deception
    Decision
    Deserving
    Desolation
    Details
    Dictators
    Dreams
    Emotion
    Endings
    Ent
    Fair
    Family
    Family. Sister
    Fashion
    Father
    Fear
    Fearless
    Female Nature
    Feminism
    Festival
    Flux
    Food
    Freedom
    Friends
    Gay Bffs
    Girls
    Golden Venus
    Golum
    Grief
    Guides
    Gun
    Hanging Out
    Healing
    History
    Home
    Homosexuality
    Honesty
    Hope
    Humor
    Hurt
    Independence Day
    Innocence
    Insanity
    Jezebel
    Justice
    Kentucky
    Kindness
    Kintsukoroi
    Kiss
    Liars
    Liberty
    Libra
    Libran Men
    Lilith
    Long Lost
    Love
    Lovers
    Magic Plumber
    Man
    Marriage
    Mating
    May
    Mayans
    Memories
    Men
    Mentors
    Mercy
    Mexico
    Mona Lisa
    Morality
    Mother
    Motives
    Mr. X
    Music
    Negative Capability
    Nightmares
    No
    November
    Online Dating
    Opinions
    Oppression
    Optimisim
    Pain
    Patriotism
    Peace
    Perspectives
    Philosophy
    Phoenix
    Pluto
    Positivity
    Possibilities
    Press
    Primal
    Problems
    Psychosis
    Pursuit
    Reality Tv
    Regenerating
    Regimes
    Relationship
    Relationships
    Religion
    Respect
    Return
    Revirginization
    Rihanna
    Road
    Romance
    Sadness
    Scammers
    Scorpio
    Secrets
    See
    Self-Esteem
    Serb
    Serbian
    Sewer
    Sex
    Shoes
    Silence
    Sister
    Slim
    Solutions
    Sorrow
    Sorry
    Stalker
    Strength
    Stupid Rules
    Talk
    Talking
    The Thing
    Thoughts
    Tin Man
    Tired
    Transformation
    Transitions
    Travel
    Truth
    Tsunami
    Uranus
    Vagina
    Values
    Venus In Aries
    Virginlandia
    Visualis Canis
    Warrior
    Whore
    Woman
    Womanism
    Women
    Words
    Work
    Worth
    Writing
    Yes

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.