Proud to be an American again

[RazzleCat]

more a I am almost proud to be an American again


This morning I did a quick world wide scan of headlines about the Biden inauguration. Each and every one riffed on Democracy Prevailed or Americas Back, even America Great Again.

I say almost proud, because the stain of it in the White House will remain for a long time. I am a lucky person, I travel world wide for leisure, the idea that I don’t have to be ashamed when talking to local persons that I am an American is so good. I never had shame of my Country of Origin under Obama, or even Bush (as much as I hated him, persons from other countries did no assume I was a raging raciest, or easily scaled yokel).

If you want an idea of how “bad” it could be, 2020 I was in Egypt and Jordan, a mixed group, Americans, Canadians, and UK. You may or may not be aware that American actions are covered world wide, what we do echos all over the place, so you know who came up, in a discussion of the Democratic Primaries, oh boy, did we get an earful, it was mortifying, even worse, in a round table discussion with some of our guides there (Egyptian) effectively said, how could we talk, we elected you know who. Think on that, a somewhat third world county smacked down American Democracy with the simple comment of who are you to talk?

So I look forward to the ability to move about the world again when this virus is vanquished, and I really look forward to no longer having the “shame of my government”.

[PJMcK]

1. I'm with you, RazzleCat!

Right after New Year's in 2017, my wife and I spent a week in Paris. Although it was dark and cold, since it was after the holiday seasons, everything was quite inexpensive and we had a wonderful time eating great food, seeing historic sights and meeting some interesting people.

On our last night, we had dinner at a small bistro that was located in a 500-year old building, (it was built only 25 years after Columbus's first voyage!). There were only a few customers and the husband and wife owners were very sociable. He was the cook and she ran the dining room and we had a very nice conversation with all of us using Frenglish!

Once we'd established that we weren't ugly Americans(!), they asked what we thought of our new president, Trump. We responded that we hoped our system of checks-and-balances would prevent anything truly awful but they weren't convinced. On the one hand, they found it satirically funny that we had elected such a buffoon but on the other, more sober perspective, they were terrified for the world. It was a disturbing conversation and we left feeling, for the first time in our lives, ashamed by the direction our country had taken.

Thankfully that feeling is gone.