definition: American

The Greatest Country in the World

And I’m proud to be an American

Where at least I know I’m free

This Fourth of July felt different, not because of the lack of BBQs and firework shows, or the closed bars in Denver, not even because it was smack dab in the middle of the pandemic where cases were rising and no one really knew how to celebrate safely. No. It felt different because I wanted to protest the holiday. The lyrics of God Bless the USA rolled around in my head and I firmly asserted against them: I am NOT proud to be an American.  

For many of the last six years I have been out of the country during the Fourth of July. I spent it in classrooms with Thai first and second graders, coloring American flags and displaying flashcards at the front of the classroom, the kids mouthing the words after me: watermelon, fireworks, BBQ, hotdog, flag.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Fourth of July, mostly because I don’t have any traditions and I like holidays with traditions. Growing up we’d go to the fireworks but otherwise the day was a typical day, consisting of errands and chores. Some years, when I was older, we’d go to our cousin’s cabin in Minnesota. But even there one year we didn’t watch fireworks, instead driving down from their cabin on the night of Fourth of July. I was distraught about that.

This year my boyfriend picked out a hike on the aptly named Independence Trail.

“Did you do that on purpose I asked him?” as we pulled off the highway.

“No. I picked it because it has really great views.”

And it did. We hiked to the top, our breaths ragged, wiping sweat from our brows with our bandanas and then pulling those same bandanas over our mouths when someone passed us coming down. We stayed at the top for nearly an hour, looking out over the valley with houses dotted in between the evergreens, the peaks rising in the distance and dark, foreboding clouds slowly creeping their way over our heads.

We spent the afternoon in a park with his friends, playing volleyball and Frisbee with fizzy drinks in our hands. The night ended on the rooftop of his friend’s apartment eating hotdogs and hamburgers. Fireworks burst along the horizon, the mountains dropped behind them like a picture.  

It was a quintessential Fourth of July. And yet, I felt that by celebrating it I was supporting a country that I had stopped agreeing with long ago.  

As a small girl, I thought the entire universe revolved around the U.S. In the second grade, our teacher taped a map of the world on the white brick wall outside our classroom. We placed strips of paper with our name on it where our family was from. I placed my strip of paper on Ireland. I was proud that I was one of only a few kids in the class who could claim their family was from another country. Most other kids put their strips on Colorado or Wisconsin or California. No one even knows what Ireland is, I thought. It’s such a tiny country. (I was surprised to find later that year, that most people knew exactly what and where Ireland was. It wasn’t a secret by any means.) I assumed the kids in Ireland though, knew about the U.S. Our country took up nearly a quarter of the map. How could you not know what that big chunk of land was?

We’re taught in school, whether intentionally or not, that the U.S. is the greatest country in the world. It’s a thought that has pervaded our culture for generations. When I prepared to study abroad, my junior year of college, the program showed us a video of college kids in white, red, and blue tanks, sunglasses on and beer cups in their hands shouting U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

“Don’t be like these kids,” the program directors warned us. “No one abroad appreciates you chanting our country’s name.”

When I left for Chile, I was still under the impression that the U.S. was the best country in the world. It was only after living there for six months that the illusion began to crumble.

Maybe it sounds naïve, but simply living in another country for six months made me realize that the much of the world was living very similar to us. I landed in Santiago de Chile with the misperceived image of a third world country. I thought I would be living in a house with a corrugated tin roof and be served rice and beans for every meal. What I found instead was a clean, modern apartment. It was small – the kitchen a narrow counter jammed between two walls so slim you had to slide your body in sideways to cook. But my host family was happy. They ate the same foods I ate – spaghetti for dinner and yogurt for breakfast – albeit with a few delicacies I didn’t care for. Sorry, Gladys, your lentil soup was not my favorite.

The advantage of being American, in other words, was less than I had been led to believe.

Now we have a president who wants to Make America Great Again. His entire campaign is based on the fact that the US is the best country in the world. He is re-instilling this rhetoric into the nation, or at least the half of the country that listens to him.

I, though, no longer think the US is the greatest country in the world. Far from it.