One of the things I love most about our country is that it’s weird. No, I don’t mean deep-fried-beer-at-Texas-State-fair and come-see-the-world’s-largest-ball-of-yarn weird. Those are cool too, and sort of a side effect of our weirdness, but not the main thing. The ways in which we are truly weird make us… well… misunderstood by other nations. And often cause us to misunderstand other nations, too.
It in conjunction with our truly horrible education is responsible for how so many of our fellow citizens hate their own country and attribute to us all the ills of mankind and none of the good.
Wait, what? Didn’t I say I love the way in which we’re weird?
I do. The way in which we’re weird is what has made me American. And despite that horrible side effect above, it makes us also kinder, more morally conscious, and in many ways the best country the world has ever seen in terms of our effect on the rest of the world.
The problem is this – we need to be aware that we’re weird. We need to be aware of it when we interact with other countries. Else, they could kill us. It’s what happens to kids who are like us. Or at least they get severely beaten.
I’m not going to claim our country is autistic, though it has certain things in common with it. Instead I’m going to claim that our country is Odd.
It’s become a truism to say that all SF/F fans and authors are somewhere in the autistic spectrum. We related oddly to people, and we have weird ways of going at life.
I don’t agree. I think it gets swept in the autistic spectrum because it’s a fashionable diagnosis and lots of things interact. The reason most SF/F fans/authors present as autistic is that most either have a higher aggregate IQ than normal or a higher specialized IQ than normal. (I’m the later. I’m a very special kind of idiot savant, relating to verbal processing only.) But even those of us who are “just normal” as far as tests are concerned tend to be… odd in our development. That is because the literature itself self-selects for odd. (It’s entirely possible too that the act of reading itself self-selects for odd these days.)
I’m only saying the “in the spectrum” thing doesn’t apply because some of us are almost pathologically gregarious. (Younger son, me at one time.) But we still have some of the odd symptoms that we share with people in the autistic spectrum.
I’d summarize these quickly as “unable to do what comes naturally to others” or perhaps “Thinks so much they hardly do anything else.” Or if you prefer Pratchett “has the first sight and the second thoughts.”
What this means is that many of us on letting our kids go to the blackboard jungle for the first time, cringe a bit. We know what waits them. Our kids generally stick out like a side of beef on a seafood buffet. And the other kids know it too.
How many of you had their kid come home and say something like “none of the other kids wants to play with me.” This eventually, usually, eases, as they find their own group of odds and outcasts and form their own group. At least people like me did, usually by protecting all the LITTLE odd ones (since I was a big moose by Portuguese standards. Only Portuguese standards. In my day, I grew out of pre-made when I reached my adult size of five six and a size seven. It’s different now. Better nutrition.)
But most of us spend most of our lives in some form of “Why are they doing that?” or – at a certain age – puzzling our way through mating rituals that come normally to other people. “He’s looking at me funny. What does he want? How do other people know when they want to kiss?” (This is why the first guy ever to kiss me had to ask verbally and got the answer “okay, but I never kissed so it probably won’t be very good.” Which made him laugh.)
I made it my business to study people, and I still get faced with stuff that I go “But WHY?” particularly when it’s completely irrational. (For instance, how is it proper in an argument over the hugos to call someone a “conspiracy nut?” Particularly when the argument is “people don’t care as much about the hugos as they used to?” Or to complain the other side is “armed to the teeth” – if we were, buckos, and you knew we were, you’d talk more respectfully, I reckon.)
Well, as a country the US is an Odd. If it were a kid, it would read SF/F and be able to give you the statistics on the bestselling books going back to 1940. It would do it, too. In public. At parties. And it would dress funny, not that it’s not completely able to analyze how people dress for various occasions, but because it spent time in front of the mirror overthinking it. “They said business casual, so that means no tie. But you always dress a bit above the norm, right, because when you’re new to the club… so, tie.” This would result in its showing up three hours late, wearing a tux shirt and bow tie, with a sweater over to loosen it up, cerise pants to show its playful side, a loafer on his left foot and a tennis shoe on the right.
And this is what other nations see us like.
When they “get” us at all. Half the time they don’t get us at all, and tend to assume we’re just like them. And we assume they’re just like us. And both of them are close to fatal errors.
What I mean is this: deprived of a unity of blood or a reason for existing as a nation other than our constitution – words on paper and principles agreed on – we think and argue and live by our constitution. There have only been two nations in history formed by law and the other one had blood too.
We don’t. We’re a nation of principles, of paper, of laws. Take our law away and we’re nothing: a group of unrelated peoples living in a common area, that’s it. Okay, genetically some other nations have great variety, but they also have history in common. Our history of continuous immigration means we don’t have even that.
We have the laws, we have the papers, we have the principles.
We are like a little kid who grew up in books and doesn’t understand life outside them. He expects the principles of the books to apply in the playground: honor, duty, right and wrong. And he’s going to be pounded on by everyone until he learns that out here that doesn’t apply, only the self-interest and the casual cruelty of the playground.
Unless she – me – is a big moose, in which case she will run around imposing honor and duty and loyalty and all those things that she read about in books, until the entire class is a very odd one and makes the teacher puzzled.
In a way the US is like me in that playground. Because we believe in things like that nations are constituted for the benefit of their citizens, we run around making it so. Or we fall down on the side that claims to want so – sometimes with disastrous results.
The end is that we end up making the world a better place – a place where sometimes, occasionally, even outside this nation, the welfare of individuals counts.
But it also means the rest of the world hates us. Even our allies think we’re weird and that’s at the best of times. When we go a little nuts and try to prove how wonderful we are by electing someone who has confessed by word and deed that he hates us, well… our allies have reasons to keep their distance.
And yet, which odd kid hasn’t tried that in the past. “If I’m nice to the bully, maybe he’ll reform.” And while your friends look on in horror, you give them the cold shoulder and try to make up to the bully… until he betrays you, and then you wake up and it’s back to your old friends.
It’s very important that we, as a nation, understand that the world doesn’t work like we do. Out there, on the world playground, the rule is instinct, self-serving, and the casual cruelty of children.
It’s no use coming out with things like “China will take over being the world’s policemen and make a good one because they were once victims” – that’s not how other nations work. That’s not how anything works outside certain pious books. China will act according to its self interests and subjugate all in its path if it serves them.
Yes, other countries have constitutions but to none of THOSE are a raison d’etre. They’re more the corporate statement. And you know how much those matter.
It’s not use saying things like “but how could Iraq have WMD, they don’t even have clean water.”
These countries have different priorities. Study their history. Study the history of the European wars, and the shifting alliances. None of it matters much, other than the ego of the kings or rulers.
No other country has ever beat itself over its moral (or lack there of) contribution to History. The English make French jokes, they don’t go “If we hadn’t invaded them, and they hadn’t—“
We do that sort of thing. We do that sort of thing to such an extent that, our seriously misstaught intellectuals view it as proof only we are culpable.
Take slavery (please? I don’t want it.) EVERY COUNTRY HAS HAD SLAVES. (And now I see some people go “whoa, every country? But… Africa!” Africa had slaves too. Many countries still do. Also, there’s nothing particularly African about slaves. Slaves used to come in all colors and types.) But here we have people who angst forever about being descendant from slaves and slave owners. DUH. That just means you’re human. ALL OF US ARE.
What’s more, other countries had as many African slaves as we did. Some had more. BUT no other country ritually beats its breast over it like we do.
As a result our gullible young and even OTHER countries think we INVENTED slavery.
Or take the fact we ritually beat our breast over the wars we entered in, and in which we weren’t angels on Earth – oh, even the Civil War, but also every other war ever, including and not limited to WWI. WWI was the butcher shop of Europe, but do other countries worry and fret over what they did in it? No. Only us.
We stopped them pounding each other into nothing, but somehow we emerged the villain.
That’s because we’re the odd kid. We don’t act the way they do, they don’t understand how we act.
Only in the US could intelligent people honestly believe the UN would be anything but what it is – a squabbling of children, each trying for his own best interests – only in the US could anyone think of world government and not realize it would be two wolves and a sheep discussing dinner.
But we think about it, and our intellectuals believed and believe in it.
Oh, and we’re a big moose. So all of them try to pound us.
We need to teach history in schools. Real history. The back and forth of nations and how little of honor and duty and loyalty there is in the interplay of nations. It’s the only way we’ll stop creating a class of overly educated idiots who hate our country because they think all others are angels.
We need to teach why we’re exceptional – and we are – and how, though we’re human, at least we try for honor and duty and all that. We fail, but at least we try. Other nations aren’t trying, not really.
Other nations aren’t going to understand that what we say isn’t window dressing. Other nations aren’t going to understand that when we beat our chest we’re NOT really worse than they are. (You see, other nations don’t admit to even obvious atrocities, much less accusing themselves of made up ones.) We need to stop making friends with the bullies.
You know the stuff you’d tell an Odd child to help him get through his first year in elementary? Yeah – we as a nation need to learn all that.
We’re probably never going to get “the games nations play,” not at an internal level, just like your Odd child will never get the games of dominance and one upmanship in the school yard. That’s fine. Most of those are nonsense, anyway. As long as we don’t let ourselves be drawn in to one of them needlessly by someone flapping jaws about “right” and “duty.”
Staying apart and intervening only when threatened works for odd kids, and will work for us. Stopping obvious bullies is self-protection-before-time. Because if the bully gets the rest of the world to attack you, even you could be obliterated.
Other than that feel free to stay out of the what-France-said-about-Russia-who-heard-it-from-Egypt battles. Most of them are just jockeying for position.
But first and foremost we need to learn what every kid who is a little odd needs to learn to survive.
When someone says they hate you, believe it.
Oh, and – It’s not only okay but it’s right and just to defend yourself. Particularly when you’re a big moose and a berserker, not presenting as a wuss is the best you can do to PROTECT others. BEFORE you’re forced to obliterate them, let them know you can and will, if pushed too far.
Like the odd kid in the playground, like the odd adult at work, failure to learn this will cost us our lives – literally or figuratively.
