The United States of Embarrassment

Photo by Francisco Gonzalez on Unsplash

Lately, I confess that I’ve been imagining myself in a way I never have before in over a half-century of living here in America: I’m imagining myself as an expat.

Seeing my social media timeline, now filled with breaking news that is the stuff of horror films and chilling 1930’s newsreels, I daydream about what it might be like to wake up in a place that doesn’t feel the way this one does: oppressive and disappointing, angry and divided. I imagine what it might be like to greet the morning with expectancy, to move though the day with the simple exhalation of belonging, to feel truly home in the place I call home.

At first, it was difficult to admit this newly-burgeoning fantasy of flight from my place of birth—until I found out how many here are similarly prone to daydreaming right now, as well.

Since November 5th, tens of millions of Americans moved from national pride to abject humiliation literally almost overnight, exchanging the promise and possibility of what we could be for the grim reality of what we are. We spent a few horrible days or weeks in stunned sadness—and most of the rest of the time since, alternating between rage and shame.

You see, so many of us understand how horrifyingly ridiculous this all is. We see every bumbling, reckless, dishonest thing this incoming Administration is doing. We know how thoroughly batsh*t crazy the President-elect is, and we're well aware that he has absolutely no business running a street corner hot dog cart—let alone the Land of the Free and home of the Brave.

We still get outside news here (for now at least). We read the news from all over the world. We see what you're saying about us. We hear the jokes. We know that we're a global laughing-stock. Occasionally, we even find spots to laugh along with you just to retain our paper-thin tether to sanity—but for most of the time we're red-faced and beside ourselves because we're living as a planetary punchline and it isn't funny. Every day seems to deepen the severity and magnitude of our never-ending national facepalm.

That's because this election has put many of us in a precarious position that we've never been in our entire lives: we're now ashamed of our homeland.

No, not of the ideas of Liberty and Equality that are our very collective heartbeat, not the tremendous sacrifice that's been offered by past generations in order to protect us, not the noble Constitution that forms the very bedrock of our nation, not the things we've done together to this point to try and craft a country open and welcoming to the entire world.

But we are embarrassed of this coming President and of his kleptocratic Cabinet, and we're embarrassed to live in America as they represent it in the world. We're ashamed that they are speaking for us, serving as our ambassadors, being our surrogates—because we know it all reflects terribly on us and alters the way people see us. They're the old, weird uncle, rambling on at the family outing; becoming belligerent, picking fights with strangers, and keeping us always on edge with the fear of the inappropriate acts we know are surely coming. It's exhausting to try to live, work, and study while holding your breath and hiding your face, alongside so many who seem proud of this ugliness that is defining us.

As a result, so many things are now shame-triggers for us: the mention of the his name, the very sight of him; the flag, the eagle, the word America. Hearing those first few words of our National Anthem, "Oh say, can you see..." are cause for mourning, because right now it's very difficult to see those things we should still proudly hail.

Perhaps the only true comfort we've found in these days has been the solidarity of like-hearted men and women who are equally humiliated; the affinity we have discovered together—like arm-locked, rebellious souls fiercely burdened to see one another through a terrible disaster. If misery loves company then we are certainly finding such heavily-grieving company now.

So yes, we are united here in our great embarrassment; young and old, black and white, believer and Atheist, men and women, red state and blue state, straight and gay and transgender. We are all greatly ashamed of the America that the world is experiencing and the one we see us becoming—and no we're not leaving, even if those loud and angry few who are not embarrassed of all this would prefer we did.

We are staying to push back, to advocate for one another, to repair what is being damaged. We are staying to be the dignified and rational response to the most undignified and irrational behavior by those in our leadership. We are staying because we know that our nation is better than those who have commandeered it and made it into the present planetary joke that it is.

We're shaking our collective heads here in the Land of the Freaked-out and the Home of the Facepalm, trying to make America good again despite our leaders—and we will.