The Oddest Thing She's Ever Said

Land Of The Free?

If today is about celebrating our freedom and independence as Americans, I’d like to exercise my right to take cut-cost birth control paid for by my comprehensive health insurance plan, get an abortion, have my hypothetical natural-born Hispanic lover not have to worry about carrying his passport with him at all times in Arizona, and let my gay son be able to marry whomever he loves. The end. I’m looking at you, GOP.

XOXO

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Oh my god, there is a place called Spotsylvania, Virginia.

NO.

IT CANNOT BE SO.

That’s wonderful.

XOXO

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Our Country Is Not More Important Than The World, Dear America.

I am about to say one of the most deeply unpatriotic things for an American possible: I hate September 11th.

It’s not like I hate it for the reasons that most other people do: I don’t hate it because reflecting on the massive loss of life makes me sad; I don’t hate it because getting people to fly on this day is like pulling teeth without Novocaine and lots of residual fear; I don’t hate it for the commercialization that has taken the anniversary over; I don’t hate it because it’s a day that our nation suffered. I mean, yes, I hate all these parts of the day as well, but it’s not my main reason for not being able to stand my country on this particular day.

I hate it because it’s a day that our country has insisted the rest of the world stand up, take note of, and treat as particularly special.

Can anyone tell me the date of the particular day in history that the Nazi party obliterated more Jewish lives in their concentration camps than any other? Can anyone tell me when the day the world is supposed to mourn the lives lost of the citizens of Darfur? Can anyone tell me, an American, what day I should be mourning the utter destruction of a market that was the trading center of an Iraqi city, killing hundreds of unarmed, innocent citizens? Can anyone give me the total death-count of Middle Eastern civilians killed during the War on Terror? We don’t have a holiday to remember the victims of the Spanish Inquisition, or the Trail of Tears, or the Indian eradication through the sadistically purposeful gift of infected blankets, and some of these things happened in our own country. 

I am so sick, so disgusted, so drained of empathy for a country that I am a citizen of who is willing to play the victim without taking responsibility for the pain that we in turn have caused. It’s as if you and another person were burned in the same kitchen accident— would you expect that other person to not focus on their own wound and consider yours of greater importance, instead? We don’t need the entire WORLD to place the same sanctity and importance on this day that we do. We can stop shoving our scarred ground and blister site in their faces. We can stop pretending that we’re the only people this sort of thing ever happened to, and start acknowledging the fact that when you’re as big, and as powerful, and as domineering a country as we have presumed we can be, this sort of thing happens. For chrissake, look at all the death, devastation, and destruction that England and the U.K have undergone personally over the centuries of being a dominant world power. Wars all over the world, for HUNDREDS of years. TREMENDOUS loss of life. Entire generations of young men killed, maimed, or psychologically damaged. Terrorist attacks that I, as a high-school age American girl, was actually in their country for. Do we remember these dates? Does England expect us to?

I lost relatives and family friends in the Trade Centers, too. I was 13, and waited on a phone call to find out if my cousin, a trader who had a morning meeting in the first tower, was alive or dead. I don’t begrudge a single family, survivor, or citizen the right to mourn their lost loved ones…I just ask that we stop pretending that we’re “special” because terrorists attacked us, and instead, look at the massive losses of life that we as a country inflicted upon the countries those terrorists hailed from— a small, select band of people who in no way reflect the thoughts or beliefs of their land as a whole anymore than one could say the K.K.K is an accurate representation of how all white Americans feel about race, religion, and politics— and maybe start pointing the finger away from them and back at ourselves, instead. We need some SERIOUS self-reflection about the way we conduct ourselves and our world affairs. And that’s my prescription for this holiday.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. I’m tired of being expected to talk about 9/11 in hushed, reverent tones. I think we could, as a world, and not just as individual counties or states or cities or cultures, heal much cleaner and faster if we stopped turning blind eyes on our own self-importance issues, and instead, worked on our relations with each other in a positive way, not dwelling on all of our painful pasts and nursing our grudges, to make sure that we realize that EVERY COUNTRY IN THIS WORLD IS EQUALLY IMPORTANT TO OUR CONTINUED EXISTENCE, and that the hurts and pains of one should not supersede or overshadow the hurts and pains of another. You may be proud of our country, but let me remind you— vanity and excess pride are a slippery slope to build on.

A little more awareness, and a little less patriotic bullshit, is all I ask.

Sincerely,

This American Girl

XOXO

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