Float above the fray

It seems that the one benefit I should be able to expect from living in exile would be some distance regarding my country, the one gift the ability to watch politics with interest but without the pain. This is not the case so far. I am as passionately attached to what happens here as would have been had I lived here physically. New Year’s resolution: to float above the fray, like a large Buddha statue, with a large benevolent smile on my face, loving, but remote. To embrace both sides of my country. Let’s try with the election of Scott Brown to the US senate, one of the greatest disappointments I have experienced in months, and I’m not even from Massachusetts. I may be too sensitive to live in this world, and this is a serious problem. Let’s get to the bottom of this.

The emotion, heartache, – as opposed to a rational reaction about what is happening in my country - I suppose is inevitable because as we all now know, we choose our political affiliation based the identities we are trying to cobble together rather than the actual policies that we support. Our political party represents ourselves, our self-image. Hence all those people voting against their self-interest because to call themselves Republican makes them pure and virile rather than muddled and girl-ish. Hence those ridiculous statements that came out during the interviews with “independents” during the last presidential elections. Remember that bizarre real-time monitor of the independents’ reactions as they listened to the candidates? How they would explain their reactions in terms of how they were perceiving the candidate’s toughness on national security? Or whether he had given the interviewee an impression of trustworthiness, whatever that means? The last thing on earth we should be valorizing is emotional reaction to a debate. And yet there we were pretending that it was a legitimate way to decide how to vote, proposing that voters listen to their instincts to choose the president. At least people who declare a party have some consistent set of principles, however nebulous and emotional, attached to the party. They are not just blowing in some wind tunnel of spontaneous reactions.

But let’s admit and look beyond the disappointment. I am disappointed because it is humiliating to be a citizen of a country that responds positively to a pick up truck. This is pure elitism on my part. Let’s get beyond it. More specifically, I am embarrassed to be part of a national narrative that promotes itself as a society of freedom-seeking, independent-minded pioneers who just want the government to leave them alone when the story is so patently false. The story gives us an excuse not to read through the information that is available, which would make it clear to us what every other civilized nation on earth can see and what we ignore, that we are all governed by the immensely powerful healthcare industry, which we have not elected. And an excuse to facilely embrace a handsome guy who looks like a movie star playing a military officer because he riles us up with more of the story, posing us as hero fighting those corrupt politicians.

I am tired of analyses of competing narratives: if we attach our current division to the tale of implacable hatred that has divided us since before the Civil War, since the pact with the devil, that "compromise" with southern slave owners when the country was founded, there is no way out. But for the moment I see no other way to explain our apparrently instinctive dislike of each other. (Or to be clear, I should say their dislike of me. I don't care about them. I do not send the red side of my family spam promoting my political ideas. They do that to me, apparently eager to pile on me, the way bullies persecute kids who like to read.) Yet surely there must be some interesting nuances. And surely I can examine these without pain. Here is my solution: displace the too-raw story of today into our horrible and beautiful history. Look harder at Thomas Jefferson and try to understand him, sympathize with him, rather than disdain him. And once I’ve done this, maybe I will be able to accept without cringing this kid-like group of compatriots who think they are tough when they are just deluded. And maybe love them some day.

Sounds like the beginning of an important odyssey to me. Important because at the end lies freedom from embarrassment, the possibility of watching the political show with equanimity.

I will begin by accepting with resigned but genuine affection Obama’s decision not to do what all other majority parties in all other civilized nations do as a matter of course – push his legislation through. The ninnies who love pick up trucks have spoken, and because Democrats are the default marginals even when they are the majority, we will defer. It cannot be otherwise. It is in the very nature of the American character that they are loud and strong, even though a minority, and I have to accept it, just as I accept the monotonous bullying spam from my family without protest. I don't have it in me to do otherwise, and I would not want to have that in me.