I feel grief and guilt for being American
Art Nahill
Jun 02 2022
ART NAHILL/SUPPLIED
Art Nahill, who lived in the United States for 45 years, has struggled to be an apologist for it recently.
It has always been hard to answer these frequently asked questions - why is America like this? Why are Americans like that?
Out of an abiding fondness for the country in which I was born and lived for 45 years, I have always felt it important to try and answer.
“America is actually many countries,” I often say.
I try to explain the ways in which its puritanical origins, frontier experience, deep and troubled racial history, and idolatry of rugged individualism, have combined to make America the much-loved and much-hated country it is.
I have often felt, in trying to explain all of this, as though I was defending the bad behaviour of a good but troubled mate who, despite his well-meaning heart, seems to screw up everything he touches.
But, if it has been hard to be an apologist for America in the past, that role has proven impossible over the last several months.
There was bombastic and frequently violent opposition to proven public health measures during the peak of the pandemic.
It has also recently been leaked that the Supreme Court of the United States could be poised to overturn the landmark legal precedent of Roe v Wade, affecting abortion rights.
In the eyes of far too many, it is an abuse of governmental power to enforce mask and vaccine mandates, but pregnancy, not so much.
Even more recently, re-enacting a far too common scenario, an 18-year-old walked into a primary school in Texas and shot children dead. The response from some local and national politicians has predictably been to advocate for more guns rather than fewer.
The only thing that can stop a bad guy wth a gun is a good guy with a gun, or so the thinking goes.
So much for being pro-life.
The easy virtue-signalling of mostly Republican conservatives seems to be that regard for the sanctity of life seems to end somewhere in the birth canal.
I am simultaneously outraged and heartbroken.
This country that I have done my best to understand and explain to outsiders. This country, whose amazing potential I have always loved and celebrated. This country of diversity. This country of innovation and creativity, has become like that good mate who has gone completely off the rails.
It seems to be succumbing to its inner demons, racism and bigotry, and its addiction to religion and violence.
It is spiralling downward into a state of rabid self-loathing.
And I can only stand back and watch it unfold from a distance.
I grieve for its loss of decency, reason, and tolerance.
But I also feel an acute and enduring sense of guilt for turning my back, as I must now, on a good, but troubled mate, blinded and hell-bent on his own destruction.
ART NAHILL/SUPPLIED
Art Nahill, who lived in the United States for 45 years, has struggled to be an apologist for it recently.
It has always been hard to answer these frequently asked questions - why is America like this? Why are Americans like that?
Out of an abiding fondness for the country in which I was born and lived for 45 years, I have always felt it important to try and answer.
“America is actually many countries,” I often say.
I try to explain the ways in which its puritanical origins, frontier experience, deep and troubled racial history, and idolatry of rugged individualism, have combined to make America the much-loved and much-hated country it is.
I have often felt, in trying to explain all of this, as though I was defending the bad behaviour of a good but troubled mate who, despite his well-meaning heart, seems to screw up everything he touches.
But, if it has been hard to be an apologist for America in the past, that role has proven impossible over the last several months.
There was bombastic and frequently violent opposition to proven public health measures during the peak of the pandemic.
It has also recently been leaked that the Supreme Court of the United States could be poised to overturn the landmark legal precedent of Roe v Wade, affecting abortion rights.
In the eyes of far too many, it is an abuse of governmental power to enforce mask and vaccine mandates, but pregnancy, not so much.
Even more recently, re-enacting a far too common scenario, an 18-year-old walked into a primary school in Texas and shot children dead. The response from some local and national politicians has predictably been to advocate for more guns rather than fewer.
The only thing that can stop a bad guy wth a gun is a good guy with a gun, or so the thinking goes.
So much for being pro-life.
The easy virtue-signalling of mostly Republican conservatives seems to be that regard for the sanctity of life seems to end somewhere in the birth canal.
I am simultaneously outraged and heartbroken.
This country that I have done my best to understand and explain to outsiders. This country, whose amazing potential I have always loved and celebrated. This country of diversity. This country of innovation and creativity, has become like that good mate who has gone completely off the rails.
It seems to be succumbing to its inner demons, racism and bigotry, and its addiction to religion and violence.
It is spiralling downward into a state of rabid self-loathing.
And I can only stand back and watch it unfold from a distance.
I grieve for its loss of decency, reason, and tolerance.
But I also feel an acute and enduring sense of guilt for turning my back, as I must now, on a good, but troubled mate, blinded and hell-bent on his own destruction.
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