America’s Face

Just look at the handsome devil…………………….those beady little eyes. 

After reading anticant’s latest fascinating post regarding some historical observations about America’s culture I was inspired to jot a few general and timely thoughts down regarding America’s Face on the world stage. 

 

Since moving from the States to Canada one of my personal missions has been to identify the elusive Canadian identity?  After six years of dwelling on this topic I’ve concluded that it is not multi-culturalism, as government officials would have us and the rest of the world believe, that is our collective identity, but more likely the public’s common connection to the environment. Canadian identity can be best described as the communal knowledge of the inevitability of winter’s coming.  Canadian residents are quite possessive of their environment’s ruff beauty which comprises most of the North American Continent.  Endless ocean coasts, vast prairies, countless lakes and the towering Rocky Mountains are the natural escape of many who seek refuge from the stresses of city life.  The Arctic tundra known as the “Great White North” holds a mythical status among Canadians and non-Canadians alike.  Virtually every Canadian is an avid outdoors-person and many families keep cottages in rural northern locals to escape their city dwellings down south near Uncle Sam’s border.  This fascination with the land is one likely candidate for the elusive Canadian identity.

 

That being said, upon initial observation a visitor or newcomer to Canada might not make this assessment.  Many Canadians are forced to express their identity by proclaiming how unlike Americans they are.  “We’re a lot like the States, but we’re nicer and more polite.”  I’m sure everyone reading here that has met a Canadian on a train or airplane knows what I’m talking about. 

This is certainly an understandable reaction for a relatively young country in search of a unique identity while living next door to the most powerful nation on the planet and attempting to become recognized among the world’s older and more established industrialized countries.

The comic, Robin Williams, said of the Maple Leaf country….” Canadians are like the residents of a loft apartment living above a house that’s throwing the greatest party on earth, and they’re not invited.”  It may seem that way to that comic and other Americans.  But after living here for six years, I’d have to say that sentiment actually rings hollow.

 

 

Could it be a similiar quest for a unique identity that many 19^th century as well as modern critics of American behavior mistakenly describe as uncouth mannerisms? In an attempt to find themselves in the aftermath of Revolution, Americans proclaimed to abandon and distance them selves from most everything right and English, quite notably the Victorian Era’s rigid behavioral etiquette practiced by certain visiting English men and women. 

Perhaps in this attempt to find a unique national identity the fledgling American citizenry living in the “wilds of the west” lost some of the inherent “English civility” of their mother country.

After all, aren’t many of those 18^th and 19^th century American entrepreneurs just wayward Englishmen.

 

One question to ask our collective American self is this:

Has our early reactionary and gruff defensive posture towards everything British manifested itself into a modern Foreign Policy or was it just a fleeting reaction which helped us move on with our own national initiative and identity?

 

Of course, every nation embodies many sorts of behavioral traits, and it would be naive to presume and cliche to say that America and all Americans are ruffians as compared to certain “other” countries and the citizenry there in. 

 

But what could these stereotypical mannerisms so often applied to America and Americans say about the Domestic and Foreign Policy of the lone Super-power?  And what does our President’s language and behavior on the world stage say about us as a nation?

 

I find it quite disheartening to observe a certain American President and his administration embody these imposed stereotypes for the sake of seeming rebellious and individualistic when all it does is make him look like a giant ass.

It is a shame that America’s sometimes gruff exterior forces outsiders to recoil and draw half-baked stereotypes.  Since America took the reins of global power from the British in the 20^th century and subjected itself to the world’s giant microscope we have had a difficult time dealing with the reality and constant awareness that our country is one of great contradiction.  America is a nation of great wealth and liberty as well as a nation of great poverty and repression.

The most important questions we must ask ourselves as modern Americans are:

Which vision and characteristics will Americans choose to embrace as they lose grip of the reins of global power to a rapidly developing Asian power?  And, what type of President will Americans elect to represent that collective vision?