To my friend Bonnie,

A note for you, for what it means to me “to be an American” – as you request. It is a fraught notion. As you know, I’ve history of a third of my life living in Asian nations, allowing perspective, uncommon for most of our typical neighbors. As well, I left the first time, to build a book of poems for a collection of my pointed realizations, penned in our shared language in a way that they could be enjoyed. My words and perspective have always been a bit unusual. I appreciate the inquiry. I hope my reply is useful, inspirational, and enjoyed. There are so many ways to consider Being an American. Hmm.

Very subjectively, as I type, I have a screen on my side with a rotating collection of photos I took. The first is an image of a famous Gelug monastery (the Buddhists who look to the Dalai Lama as their leader) framed with a hillside behind it, devoid of people. The image, shows a solitariness, on my left. On my right, playing some Indy-rock, a small Bluetooth speaker in front of all the post-its that define my goals, tucked under books that I’m reading or have read, or aspire to read that speak to the modern and past experience of different Americans than I. One a book for Black folks about dealing with the modern economy (Upper Hand, Dorsey), one by a great professor about mental health (How to Cope with Depression, {my Uncle Ray} DePaulo), one a young-adult novel about students coming of age in modern times (Watch Us Rise, Watson & Hagan), and one about a harrowing tale of one of the first European-Americans to walk through and get lost within Yellowstone National Park back when it was a complete wilderness (Lost in the Yellowstone, Everts).

The screen has changed beside me to an image of another area of the monastery that has more people. Perhaps 25-30 people are in view spread lightly in a wide open square in front of a large building. Perhaps ten monks, the rest are tourists, like I was that day, wandering with cameras, hosts holding poles with little flags indicating which tour group they were leading, and brochures in hand about the place, provided by the ticket-takers at the gate who wrote down all our names, checking my passport against the digital ticket I had purchased, welcoming me in the state language of people there.

The state language of the people is a term I use to represent Pu Tong Hua, the “Mandarin” name for “Chinese” kind of. So, “Mandarin” as a word was always a foreigner’s term for the language of the government interlocutors, a language that would also have been called Han Yu, or even Zhong Wen within the same spoken variation of itself. Hmm. To represent five names for a language without even using its own script may seem excessive, but it truly doesn’t scratch the surface. Maybe I’ll skip the tangential description for this space, saying that I spoke Mandarin for many years in the land of the speakers of it and other Chinese languages. That was a place of many languages.

There is value in representing other places I’ve known and the experiences I had there when expressing what it means to be an American because of the perspective I carry. This world is a big place. We (Bonnie and I) are locals and citizens of an unusually situated nation with a profound history, which is going through a historic transition into a place that is yet to be seen. And so, I ponder, “what is it to be an American?” so that my friend can hear my thoughts and as an exercise of reflection.

Being a citizen of this nation, I am able to travel with ease, as our passport is well received around the world. I can not go easily to many places, but that’s okay. I don’t need to be everywhere.

Being a citizen of this land, I am encouraged to speak freely by the undergirding software of our nation’s fabric, within the Constitution. I am encouraged to petition for my hopes, to assemble in groups, to own firearms, to vote, to pay my taxes, and am protected from many otherwise normative governmental incursions that I think many Americans are unaware are unique features of living here.

This is where perspective comes in as a value.

For example, term limits, women’s suffrage, civil rights, voting, a fair trial, a right to say no to soldiers who want to live in our homes, all these “rights” are ours, and many others as well. The thing is, is that they are sort of unique in our packaging. It would be great if all these things were truly in place, rather than merely aspirational, but we try. For example, a fair trial is hard to provide in many instances. The complexity of the social setting that many people find themselves dealing with court systems because of is intensely augmented sometimes.

Racism, for example, is a real crime in my eyes that has yet to be codified, and likely never will be because of how popular it is. And yet – it was nothing but a Portuguese marketing ploy in the first place. And yet, here we are four-hundred-plus years later, still socially dealing with the ramifications of the greed that fed the slave trade all those years ago. Because of racist actions in modern times, people are unfairly placed in the hands of courts that are overloaded with people who are answering to troubles that they either did or didn’t cause. This overload is a strain on our society that needs attention.

To that effect, I’m in education as a profession, with the hopes of leaning into the youth, if given the chance, if not sent away for my unwelcome perspective from this otherwise aspirational place that is America.

This aspiration is something that I think is a value, but I’m at odds with just how to see this nation of mine. I’m conflicted by what I see in the duplicity of people who claim to support the tenets of the Constitution, and yet are obviously in opposition to it. I have watched school boards in Tennessee rally against free speech and civil rights. I have seen governors of states of our nation rail against discussion of racial issues, as if ignoring problems makes them go away.

I think that our nation is going to continue to have serious cramps until we come to terms with a communication style that is palatable to all involved. Unfortunately, there are many people on all sides of the many issues that add trouble to modern times, who do not wish to meet people on fair platforms of discourse.

Within the scope of formal debate (teacher-hat on), there are often styles of discussion that are presupposed as methodologically acceptable. Within those methods are people who act as mediators. These mediators are granted powers to evaluate premises and determine who ultimately “wins” the debate. On the other hand, our modern time has a protracted understanding of what fairness is, what reasonable mediation might look like, and as such, what premises are acceptable. This is a struggle for any discourse, but one as complex and broadly encompassing as the discourse of America is going to be a real delicacy of design.

Discussion is really a defining feature of America. Folks in China do not expect to be able to speak their minds in a public forum. This alternate expectation is a defining difference with other lands. It is one that I’m grateful for.

The idea that we have “freedom of speech” and the right to vote – all by themselves, together, sets us apart from huge swaths of humanity.

What we need to do is help our capacity to have discourse while it’s still something that we have defining us.

This is a major struggle.

The unwillingness to have discussion about difficult matters, combined with the differences of perspective on what reasonable premises for those discussions are, makes for a real sticking point in the American Experiment. I believe that, only through a consistent and meaningful willingness to have interactions with people who are not in agreement with us in constructive and mediated ways, can we continue to advance as a society.

Otherwise, we’ll be stripped for parts like the Soviet Union was under Yeltsin.

I sure hope that doesn’t happen. It looks like it could. With the billionaires running the roost, we might be at a precipice. Time will tell.

For now, we’re still running under full steam. The reins have not yet been passed to the new administration that gained more than half the electorate’s votes. This man is truly a valid president. I worry that he doesn’t take his job as seriously as I hope he does. I worry that he would seek to end certain protections that our American society has come to take for granted. He has referenced very specific things such as attacking journalists for doing their jobs, ending the term limits of presidents, using the military in direct opposition to the American population when they express their constitutional rights to assembly and speech. This is a curious time. I hope it goes less bad than I imagine it might.

As an American, I represent my nation when I travel abroad even though that isn’t my stated position. It is the same that occurs when a tourist from another land, may they be from Japan or Belgium, wherever, walks a city street locally here. That person is a temporary representative. Especially when in places with remarkably few examples of Americans, I am often asked what “the American position” on something is, or “what Americans think” about a certain topic. These questions will always be responded to with a distinctively precise vagueness that I define by explaining that my nation is one that is one of many voices, that there is not a single voice that speaks for the nation. There is a government mouthpiece of federal policy, but this is by no means the language of the entirety of the nation. We are the American Experiment, we have the Statue of Liberty, standing tall in New York Harbor, with all the history and implications, sociologically, that it represents. We are a unique nation. I wouldn’t stand on a mountain top and exclaim the greatness of American Exceptionalism by any means, as I think we are far too bad at what we aspire to, to claim such grandiosity. I think the federal policies and often, the regular citizen voices, are far too unwilling to be introspective and accusatory. For example, when we criticize the use of prison labor in another nation and yet have it prominent in our own nation… Why would we continue to do it, and tell others to not do it at the same time? Only if we stop doing it ourselves can we rightly tell others that we believe it’s a bad thing. That duplicity, that double-speak, makes talking about how our nation is great tough sometimes. I worry that people who are more objectively inspecting the actions of our nation, juxtaposed against the language that is spoken from the presidential or congressional seats of power, will stop trusting the United States to be a viable partner, due to the clear dishonesty inherent in the hypocrisy of the visible behavior.

The volume of hypocrisy is troubling. This is why I say that relating what it is like to be an American is a fraught notion. Because there are so many really great things to talk about, and at the same time, some really scary and troubling things that are important to talk about but are not given the space to be discussed in constructive manners.

 And so, I see myself as a person with a responsibility to open up discourse amongst disparate folk before it’s too late. The possibility for discussion is still on the table. It is an exceptional right. We should put it to use before we don’t have that option.