Two Hundred and Thirty-Five

There is much to be anxious about. Uncertainty is everywhere, and the government continues to struggle to reach a solution to an impending debt ceiling crash. Politicians and educators have ended their speeches with cautions that the challenges we face are real, and they are difficult. They continue to assert, however, that there is much that we can do. There is no problem we cannot overcome.

I don't know what my role in all of this is. I am uncertain how much I believe that I can do to solve this country's problems or to lead it anywhere. A career in politics has been thoroughly dismissed years ago. And I wouldn't say I'm an overly patriotic person. I love living in the United States not as a result of some belief in this country's infallibility or because of its tremendous prosperity. I love living in the United States because it is home, and because it has allowed me to be who I am. I owe a great deal to American society, because it was through it and with it that I have been able to define my world and react to it. Because I was born and raised in the United States I have been given tremendous opportunity, and to me the Fourth of July is a reminder not to blow it and to remember that there are many more after me who deserve the same opportunities that I had. If for no other reason, this is why the Fourth is so important to me.

When I was in Europe I was made very aware of my own American identity. Sometimes I was ascribed an American identity that wasn't really mine. A woman on the U-Bahn in Berlin approached my girlfriend and I and immediately began asking about God and religion because, to her, Americans are all very religious people. I'm not religious at all. I believe in God, and I have my own views on God, but I am not religious. In London (Or Colchester) a young man stood agape at my accent and then proceeded to tell me how much he wanted to go to the United States and see the cowboy-hat wearing Americans. I've never owned a cowboy hat in my life. Sombrero, yes, cowboy hat, no.

From the outside, America must appear to be much more homogenous than we really are. I have no doubt that foreigners understand some of the deep political gaps that exist in this country, but I don't know how much this country appears to be one continuous whole. I don't think America works because we have one unifying force. I think we all believe in something implicit and incapable of being properly articulated, but often times we all have different visions of this country and our common life. What holds this country together, so to speak, is far more complicated than anything I can properly describe. But still, in this country we do certainly have some unifying forces that make it possible for us to be "We the people."

I've been reading the news a lot in lieu of doing any course reading, and every story I read I wonder how others are processing this information. I know there are people who read about the debt crisis and think of it only in quotation marks. At the same time, I know there are people who read it with a fluttering in their chest with the fear that our American life, in material terms, is about to flip about. Its really unclear how I feel about the whole thing, only that I am very aware of our dysfunctions now. What America will look like by year's end is uncertain, but I happen to think that, when its all said and done, there are some slightly more immutable aspects to American life than our economic system and material life.

This is all far too timely, and its much too nebulous to be anything of note, but its something I felt like talking about. Maybe one day I'll look back on my own country and ask of it the hard questions I will be asking of others. Even then, I very much doubt I will have the essence of American life written down anywhere, but at least I will have tried.

In any event, today we're going to celebrate America in both profoundly superficial ways (no foreign beer for me today, thank you!) and maybe take a moment to reflect on some of the things happening in this country- both the good and the bad. So here I am, in a strange state far from home, celebrating America with a crappy blogpost. Happy Fourth of July. Try to keep all your fingers on your hands.