the mostly cloudy soon-to-be expatriot

Sarah Vowell has a brilliant new book out titled The Partly Cloudy Patriot in which she articulates much of my own feelings about the US that I could not say as well. I have always eschewed patriotism since it has so often been the source of problems all over the world. We like to give a lot of lip service to being one big happy global family yet still draw geographic and ethnic borders.

After 9/11, there was little room for those of us who weren't ready or willing start waving the flag or exclaim 'god bless america' at every turn. Sarah Vowell expresses my own feelings, suspicions and trepidations so eloquently that I find it reassuring to know someone else feels the way I do.

Immediately after the attack, seeing the flag all over the place was moving, endearing. So when the newspaper I subscribe to published a full-page, full-color flag to clip out and hang in the window, how come I couldn't? It took me a while to figure out why I guiltily slid the flag into the recycling bin instead of taping it up. The meaning had changed; or let's say it changed back. In the first day or two the flags were plastered everywhere, seeing them was heartening because they indicated that we're all in this sorrow together. The flags were purely emotional. Once we went to war, once the president announced that we were going to retaliate against the "evildoers," then the flag again represented what it usually represents, the government. I think that's when the flags started making me nervous. The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government. Skepticism of the government was actually one of the platforms the current figurehead of the government ran on. How many times in the campaign di d President Bush proclaim of his opponent, the then vice president, "He trusts the federal government and I trust the people"? This deep suspicion of Washington is one of the most American emotions an American can have. So by the beginning of October, the ubiquity of the flag came to feel like peer pressure to always stand behind policies one might not necessarily agree with. And, like any normal citizen, I prefer to make up my mind about the issues of the day on a case by case basis at 3:00 A.M. when I wake up from my Nightline-inspired nightmares.

....

I will say that, in September, atheism was a lonely creed. Not because atheists have no god to turn to, but because everyone else forgot about us. At a televised interfaith memorial service at Yankee Stadium on September 23, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Sikh, and Hindu clerics spoke to their fellow worshipers. Placido Domingo sang "Ave Maria" for the mayor. I waited in vain for someone like me to stand up and say that the only thing those of us who don't believe in god have to believe in is other people and that New Yrok City is the best place ther ever was for a godless person to practise her moral code.

I found all of the essays in The Partly Cloudy Patriot to be witty, insightful and, at times, very amusing. I encourage anyone else who may feel similarly to go get a copy as she somehow makes it agreeable to be an American in spite of these being trying times, even for a soon-to-be expatriot :)