Identity by contrast

I was getting some copas (drinks) with my German friend Steffen and his Canadian friend Danielle. Never having met her before, I asked her where she was from.
"New Brunswick," she said.
"Oh, is that right above Maine?" (I took a lucky stab, knowing that at least some of Canada has gotta be above Maine.)
"Yeah!" she said. "Do you know Canadian geography?"
"Not really," I answered. She pulled out a map that she had drawn for someone else. "Wait, let me try to draw what I do know," I said. I knew Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia.
"We´re you neighbor!" she said disapprovingly. "How do you know only four provinces?" She gave me the others.
"Well, do you know every state in America?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Wow."
"We had to learn the states and capitals in school," she said. "Americans don´t take the trouble to learn because they´re too egotistical. No offense."
"Maybe it´s because America is a bigger player on the world stage," I said. "Do you know every province in France'" I asked Steffen. "And do you know every province in Russia?" I asked Danielle.
"Russia isn´t our neighbor."
"They´re your neighbor to the west."
"There´s an ocean separating us."
I didn´t press the point.
"Do you know who our Prime Minister is?" she asked.
I tried to think. "I know he´s conservative," I said, cringing. That´s one I should have known.
"Steven Harper," she said smugly. "He´s the reason we´re in Afghanistan."
"Oh," I said. "So, do you, um, support that decision?" It was pretty clear she didn´t.
"No, I don´t. Canada´s role has always been as peacekeeper. We shouldn´t be fighting."
I asked her why there was a difference between fighting for peace and handing out food for peace (or whatever it is she meant by "peacekeeping" -- some people mean fighting). If both create peace...
She buckled a little there. "The point is, we shouldn´t be fighting the US´s wars," she said. "Especially one as pointless as Afghanistan." I raised an eyebrow or two. I´ll be the first to say that the poppy, heroine, warlord, and violence ridden country is in trouble, but I think we had a good purpose.
"America just wants the oil," she said. That´s a line I hear a lot.
-- Except -- alarm bells were going off in my head -- it didn´t make sense in a conversation about Afghanistan. I had caught her in an outright falsity.
Usually, I try to respond reasonably to this kind of rhetoric and explain that, while neither war has been what I would consider a net good for the world, America, or the countries themselves, America did not intend the chaos and bloodbath. Except -- here I could be a bit more pithy.
"Afghanistan doesn´t have oil," I said.
She paused. Even she recognized that she´d made a mistake. "Well, America just wants to control the Middle East situation," she said.
"Let´s not conflate Iraq and Afghanistan," I said, not letting go of the huge error.
"The problem is that we don´t know why we´re in there," she said. "It was never clear."
I flipped a little.
"A terrorist organization called Al-Qaeda killed 3000 people," I said. "Afghanistan´s government, the Taliban, was protecting them. The US went in with a UN resolution to take out a government that was protecting a group that killed 3000 of our citizens. What´s unclear about that?"
My voice was level, but I stared at her like she was crazy.
She offered this pitiful explanation:
"Well, unless you´re super-political, it´s hard to know what´s going on." (That´s the way the brain works, I almost said; you need to expend effort to learn. But I kept quiet.) "We just get the news that yet another Canadian has died."
"Well, you want peace," I said. "A lot of Afghanistanis have died. But most didn´t die during the invasion. Most died after, in the chaos, and this is even more true for Iraq. The chaos might be our fault, but taking Canada -- or Germany, for that matter -- out of Afghanistan will just create more chaos and bloodbath."

Later, after she had caught the metro back to her house, Steven and I had another copa.
"I got really angry," I said. "It´s been a while since I got that angry in a discussion about politics."
"Yeah," he said. "Everyone´s entitled to their own opinion."
Had I been unfair? I wondered. Had I not given her opinion a fair hearing?
No. I had been TOTALLY fair.
"Sure, of course. But her story was wrong," I said. "She says oil, and that positively can´t be the reason. What happened on September 11 is pretty clearly the reason. So to try to make it seem like it was something else -- it´s a little disrespectful to the 3000 people who died."
"Yeah, and also, the fact that the US went in the a UN resolution is very important," he said.
"That´s true too," I said. "Here´s the thing. I think it would have been better if I had stayed calm. But I also think I was totally justified to be angry."

A few nights later, I was out again with Steffen, this time at O´Neils, an Irish bar in Sol. We met a German girl and a girl from Northern Ireland.
The anti-American attacks came again, hot and heavy.
There are 3 types of anti-America attacks.
1. The US has done bad stuff in the past.
2. The US is doing bad stuff now.
3. The US treats their own poor badly.
This lovely bar conversation saw all three.
The first US beef came up in the form of past US support for Saddaam and the Taliban. I explained that, while the support was probably a bad idea, looking back now with 20-20 hindsight is unfair when the USSR seemed so mighty and dangerous back then. (And moreover, if we go back far enough, every group has a legitimate complaint about another group. Germany doesn´t have such a clean record from the ´40s. England, France, Spain and Italy were careless colonizers. I could go on.)
Obviously, the second US beef came up. It always does, when we´re fighting two wars, one without a UN resolution. Both wars had good intentions, I said, as I usually do. I also honestly said that I was part of the Iraq protests.
The third came up in the form of our healthcare system, our welfare system. our slums, and our response to Katrina. I agreed that changes needed to be made to the healthcare system. I tentatively agreed that our welfare system could be more comprehensive, but I cautioned against welfare systems that were so "comprehensive" that they took away the incentive to work. By the time we (they) got to slums and Katrina, I was spent.

I used to say that I wasn´t patriotic. The heavy symbolism put me off -- the flag-waving, the group expressions of allegiance to the flag and the republic for which it stands, "One Nation, under God" -- and that kind of patriotism still makes uncomfortable.
But while I continue to push against the group shows of loyalty through symbols, by the most basic definition of patriotism, I am patriotic. I am proud of my country.
As far as I can tell, we are the oldest continuous democracy still in existence. We have a free press, we have freedom of religion, and we are largely free to speak our minds. We are go-getters and innovators. Slums be damned: of the countries our population size or larger (there are only two others), we have the highest standard of living and the most equality of wealth. We are still the land of opportunity, with the most immigrants in the world. We have absorbed more than 20 million legal immigrants over the past quarter-century.
America has caused a lot of bad, and we still do. But I think that, all in all, America is a force for good. And I am proud to be part of that force.

Back "home"

Stepping back onto the Madrid Metro, I felt a strange mix of familiarity and homesickness. I had been on these metro lines almost every day for two months, I knew this city far better than any that I had visited back in the US, I was excited to sleep in my "own" bed for the first time in two weeks, and I couldn´t wait to see my "family" again.
But the two week visit was one of the best of my life. Every city brought me to people I loved, most of whom I hadn´t seen since the end of June and all whom I hadn´t seen since the end of July.
On the metro, I took the 8 from the airport, transferring at Nuevos Ministerios onto the 6, running on auto-pilot through stations I know well. It was a stark contrast to the New York and Boston subway systems, where, no matter how simple my route, I asked for directions every time. I love knowing that I´ve mastered Madrid to the point that it´s my city away from LA, but I already miss the people waiting to meet me at the end of those unfamiliar United States underground rides.

Seeing my host family -- Eva, Alberto, Margie, Hector, and Dario -- was wonderful. We got right back into the swing of things.
I gave English lessons to Dario and Hector, and Alberto and Eva gave me a Spanish politics lesson. They have given me a first-rate education on Spanish current events (and American cinema, too -- they know more about movies than their Los Angeles host son -- it´s a little embarrassing), and the night I came back they updated me on the latest. The biggest news, and the most bizzarre, was an incident at an Iberoamerican conference (Spanish and Latin American leaders summit). Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was giving a speech, when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez began interrupting him to call former Spanish President José María Aznar a Fascist. After multiple interruptions, the King of Spain asked, "¿Por qué no te callas?" In English: Why don´t you shut up? Usually, the King is supposed to sit above it all, the perfect diplomat...This time, he lost his temper.
It seems as though Chavez was looking for a fight, because tensions have exploded way out of control considering how small the incident was. Chavez wants Spain to apologize for crimes it committed when it had colonies in Latin America. And he and the South American leaders who are his allies have threatened to penalize Spanish companies.
Gifts that I´d brought from the states went over well. A Red Sox hat for Alberto (after I pretty much exhausted him day after day during the playoffs with Red Sox status updates), a scarf for Eva, a stuffed Schnauzer for Margie (well, for her daughter), and baseball gloves for Hector and Dario (the next night, Dario -- just 3 years old -- and I played catch!).

I got in Thursday. Friday and Saturday night, I went to a jazz club with a friend from Germany and my Venezuelan friends. The music really caught the best of this gap year so far -- the freedom, the unpredictablility, and the roaring ´20s night-lifestyle all rolled into one.