When I was accepted into Oxford, I hadn't realized what a blessing that would be. I knew, of course, that Bush was not someone whose presidency I wanted to be home for. I knew that I wanted to be here. However, I did not know that 9/11 would happen. Consequently, I'm particularly glad to be able to miss the Fourth of July this year.

The Fourth is not my favorite holiday. (For those living under rocks in other countries who haven't seen Independence Day, the Fourth is - gasp - Independence Day.) The only advantage to it for me was the opportunity to blow shit up, basically. And I suspect I'm not alone - that lots of people have family over, have a meal (usually barbecue) and then go out and blow things up, without ever considering what the point of the holiday is. It's been rendered banal by two hundred twenty five years of celebration.

This year, however, I am frightened by the prospect of an incredible return of meaning. Yeah, I know that 9/11 and Afghanistan and the US's mistreatment of prisoners and posturing on the world stage has left the national consciousness. I'm aware of that. However, I can only imagine what displays of "patriotism" and nationalism are going to be in the offing precisely because those events have been forgotten, and that such "patriotism" and nationalism are going to be considered something like The True Meaning Of Independence.

The irony of course is that neither has much to do with independence and a lot to do with exclusionary selfishness. Nationalism is the ability to say "Right. We belong here because we share a culture and you belong there because you still wear feathers". Patriotism is that ability to say "I'm a citizen of this country, and considering that I don't want to give up my material, economic, social, and human rights, I'm not leaving and you can't make me Unless it's to kill < slur >." This is, of course, not how they are actually portrayed, both being seen as noble and worthwhile pursuits that all people should follow, love and unquestioningly worship, but devoid of oratorial bullshit, this is what they come down to.

And yet I digress. Going back to the idea of "meaning", it should be evident that I don't mean "meaning of great importance". I mean more along the lines of "Oh-fuck-we've-forgotten-an-event-we-said-was-unforgettable-quick-Maude-get-out-the-flag!" The "meaning" that will be attached to the Fourth this year is that we should Never Forget the brave Victims of Terrorism, all of whom, undoubtedly, Died For Democracy, and probably even in a National Tragedy. By "meaning", I mean something along the lines of "Never Again", the phrase widely bandied around by both Jews and Gentiles in the wake of WWII.*

See, we feel guilty that we're getting on with business as usual. It offends a lot of people that they and others have managed to act like 9/11 was just another day. Which, in some sense, it was. However, that's going to come out in major expressions of nationalism and "patriotism" on the Fourth. And it's all about guilt, baby.

A friend of mine was talking the other day about survivor's guilt - in a very different context, I hasten to add. However, what he was saying seems to me to be highly relevant to what's going on. One of the things I've always liked about Americans is that we feel deeply, particularly sorrow and sympathy. In the normal run of things, grief occurs, moving through anger and guilt to acceptance. In this case, though, we believe that we should not accept an event like 9/11, that to do so is fundamentally un-American. We're stuck at guilt.

Basically, we had an event that we now, thanks to the passage of time, feel guilty about having survived. However, I'd like to ask what, if anything, we as individuals could have done differently? The reality is that the answer is nothing. There is not a thing that we could have done differently. Before anyone accuses me of not realizing that this was probably a conspiracy at the highest levels, yeah, I realize that. I'm talking about individuals, though.

It is a cliche to say that Time heals all wounds, but all cliches are ultimately based in some sort of fact. If we couldn't stop experiencing an emotion, particularly a strong one, whether positive or negative, we'd all be crazy. There would be no emotional past and we'd all be caught up in trying to alleviate emotions felt at the earliest ages. We'd have no room to have a life, so much time would be devoted to emotions. However, this is not how we work. Consequently, it is inevitable that strong emotion fades.

However, with the prompt of Independence Day, all that emotion - much of it guilt - is going to come out in acts of cardiac nationalism and "patriotism".

The thing is that both nationalism and "patriotism" are empty concepts. They mean nothing in and of themselves. We turn those concepts into ones with great meaning, then hold them in awe, when all they are is an excuse to discriminate against other people. Nationalism allows us to say that we as a nation are the best, and "patriotism" allows individuals to say that they are better citizens than others. Both are meaningless, except as a means to make us feel better about something that essentially doesn't matter in the first place.

If you strip them down of any other trappings - which I've done repeatedly - nationalism and "patriotism" come down to avoiding other people. Basically, to be nationalist is to draw an arbitrary line between yourself and another person, by saying that, as a member of Country X, you're better than they are - "I'm better than you because you're Malaysian and I'm American, but I'll let you continue to produce the products that render my life ever more meaningless." That sort of thing. It is to avoid considering other people on the basis of both being humans and to only consider that there are advantages to one position and disadvantages to the position that you don't happen to occupy. "Patriotism" is merely another way of being exclusionist, by saying that anyone who can be less hyper-< nation >, where < nation > usually means some sort of bizarre thing that you've created in your own head and that has little bearing on reality, is not a "patriot".

We are taught these values as children. They are inculcated in us at an early age. They are imprinted right along with our mothers - children blindly recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day in class. And they are used as excuses. Most of America's foreign adventures have taken place in the name of one or the other, going all the way back to the founding of the country. McCarthyism? "Patriotism" run rampant.

Basically, both terms mean that I'm going to hurt you and justify myself. Nationalism means hurting people from other countries. "Patriotism", hurting Americans. Both are the assumption that we're right even in the face of sometimes overwhelming evidence that we're not. Because if we were right, then no one would be able to live under a political system other than democracy. If we were right, all people want to be a democracy. If we were right, no one would feel threatened enough by our actions to take the lives of people who had nothing to do with it.

Clearly, we're not always right. But to be nationalist or a "patriot" is to avoid understanding that. And I know it seems hypocritical to urge conciliation over the rubble of WTC, but that's not what I'm doing. I'm trying to show you that a display of nationalism or "patriotism" proves no point to anyone. It merely means that you are incapable of being seen to be wrong. You cannot stand to see other people in the world doing and succeeding and being happy, if they are not as hyper-< whichever > as you are.

It's not merely survivor's guilt - although I hope that's part of it, since I can't believe that the people of my country could be that callous - motivating Independence Day, it's also the fear that somewhere, someone else may be right. That by being "patriots" and nationalists, we're proving to ourselves at least that, yeah, we were right after all.

To me, this serves no point. I'm not threatened by people - I'm threatened by concepts. By ideas that divide as effectively and as neatly as nationalism and "patriotism" do.

I'm not going to feel guilty about an event that I couldn't impact, and I'm not going to feel better by making other people smaller.

Are you?

Today, I celebrate my Independence Day,

Channon

*Kosovo. Yugoslavia. Myanmar. Israel. Mexico. Cambodia. Chechnya. Northern Ireland. East Timor. Rwanda and Burundi. Sierra Leone. Liberia. It's not "Never Again", it's "Short Memory".