To paraphrase something David Bowie once said about his song I’m afraid of Americans, America likes to claim to be the things they reject. Rock and roll and beat poetry and hip hop and such.
Instead of thinking of themselves as slavers, Americans see themselves as freers of slaves.
If Nazi Germany didn’t lose the war, and then recognized the atrocity of the Holocaust and honored its victims 50 years later. Are they then worthy to be crowned as the champion for human rights?
America forgives and then celebrates itself for its crime, but punishes others for the same. While hypocrisy is business-as-usual in the dirty arena of global politics, America is somewhat unique in weaponizing its hypocrisy — to paint a smiley face on its diplomatic gunboat.
If for centuries, Americans could not even empathize with their own slaves, who had served them and clothed and fed their children and learned to speak their language and worship their god, how long will it take for them to learn to empathize with those whom they see as aliens? As foreign?
I’m afraid of Americans because I am a foreigner.
Imperialism is a foreign concept to Americans, as racism is foreign to White Americans. The whipper cannot feel nor does he concern himself with the pain of the whipped, he only sees the whipping as a means to his goal.
It is even more difficult to convince the whipper to stop if he sees the whipping not as the mean, but the goal itself, that the whipping is needed to help the whipped to be “good.” You cannot persuade a crusader to stop trying to save the damned by burning down their village, not if he is genuinely trying to help.
The blinding spotlight of hegemony and imperialism shines both outward and inward, and it is a scary transition when one emigrates from the outside to the inside of this shining city.
I’m afraid of American lords
I’m afraid of Americans because their concept of morality is Christian at its core — even for Americans who are not Christian. Their framework for moral judgement is more based on values and principles, and less so on consequences and outcomes. They are theorists, not empiricists — dichotomously speaking. I get that my argument here is reductive and hypocritical here, but when I think in American, my thoughts also become American. You can only describe a color using the words within the language you’re using.
This mode of thinking gives preference to treat facts as fuel for powering the narrative that has already been pre-selected by one’s belief. It is the seed that gives birth to confirmation bias, for without this seed of belief, one would have no bias to be confirmed.
While most Americans are not self-aware of this tendency — although the self-aware but hypocritical media has been trying to educate the masses — the target of this essay is not for those Americans. This essay is directed to those who consider themselves to be intellectuals. This is directed to those who do not see themselves being confined by a small bubble along the conservative-liberal spectrum, but are unaware of the larger elongated bubble along the one-dimensional politics of the US.
Let’s call that the “straw.”
Just as those who dwell inside a bubble thinks everyone outside the bubble is evil. Those who dwell inside this straw thinks everyone outside the straw is evil.
I’m afraid of Americans because even the intellectuals of this country are unaware of how American hegemony has impaired them as well. For slavery does not only create slaves, it also creates slaveowners.
I’m afraid of American hordes
America said “never again” to slavery, but never to war, regardless of how not-worth-it its last war was. And so with every new nail America decides to hammer, brown children of another country learn to fear the sunny sky.
I have a dream that Americans will treat an Afghan farmer with the same empathy they give to their fellow countrymen, even if the farmer does not share the same beliefs as them, especially if the farmer does not share the same beliefs as them.
But where can we find this MLK Jr. figure to advocate for the victims of American wars? King was an eloquent and educated man who spoke fluent English and a scholar of Christian ideals, with millions of followers within America’s border who fought tooth and nail alongside him for decades. If that is the bar to meet for America to stop committing atrocities against its own citizens, how much would it take for an Afghan farmer to convince America from burning his fields? How could he be heard, especially when the megaphones had been handed to his fellow countrymen who offer to thank America for liberating their country?
Every time America has found its next enemy, it threatens its immigrants to fall in line.
For decades, Muslims in America have to prove they are one of the “good” ones, especially they’re from a country America wants to bomb.
Today, I feel the same, that I need to prove that I am one of the “good” Chinese, a Chinese who hates China and loves America, who hates Chinese ideals and loves American ideals — because American ideals are universal ideals that transcend all space and time.
