i’m sitting at an airport bar in DC sipping some coffee & about to head home to Atlanta. two hours ago i opened my laptop to work on a very different essay i’ve been writing for a few weeks…
not only did i make shamefully little progress but i managed to have never connected to the wifi.
i kept getting distracted by a revelatory conversation on my phone with my college friend group (like 5 of us in a group chat).
it started when one of them asked a really great question (paraphrased):
“Have any of you ever had a moment where you felt, ‘wow, I’m proud to be an American’?
I’m not sure I have.”
here’s the Anand Girihardas clip I mentioned (starts 2:20ish):
I separately asked the same question to a friend of mine who I know is very (soberly) patriotic. I admire his perspective a lot and ofc was not disappointed by his response:
I definitely am along the definition of Twain saying 'support your country all the time and your government when it deserves it'
I think there's a lot of pride I have in the collective identity we have across 50 states (generally) of hard work, equality, and doing stuff. It's something that IMO transcends class, race, sex, national origin, career, etc and is so uniquely wonderful. We're a collective people that are SO ambitious all the time and don't take no for an answer
We're also not shy about confronting our shortfalls in the open as a society, and there's a lot in the arc of time in the US that we kind of take for granted today in terms of individual rights
There's also still a very unique American brand overseas about us being kinda crazy but always building new things and getting stuff done, either in the arts, business, engineering, etc plus core egalitarian values that sticks with people
I think it's easy to be self critical, but it's done a lot for me and I just couldn't live anywhere else.
i did challenge a bit their assumption that ambition is inherently good/righteous/productive. in that side-convo that friend also shared the following, which i think is beautiful:
There's a bit of a wind-up and context-setting to this point, but to me this is a very recognizably American perspective from 1963:
back in my group chat we also reflected on how this might mirror our relationship to our alma mater. i noticed in this conversation that i really do love America, but it feels disingenuous to say i’m “proud” (at least in the sense that my brain processes the word proud)
this was also the perfect opp to share one of my fave soapboxes about the social imaginaries of institutions LOL
and finally, just to round things out, a completely unprompted text from my little brother a few mins ago:
