The Return of American Pride

A love letter to the United States

John Gast, American Progress, 1872.

I didn’t care about being an American until I moved to Canada.

In fact, in many ways I actively disliked being American, since my main opinion for most of my twenties was that America was a colonizing nation filled with white people who interfered with and ruined everything.

I embraced what the “cool people” around me thought: that America was too big, too loud, and too spoiled. I resented being told that people fought for my freedom. To me this “freedom” had come with the mistreatment of others, so it didn’t matter. Also, what really was freedom anyway? I didn’t have much of a concept of it, besides knowing I was supposed to feel grateful.

In actuality, if you had asked me to provide any nuance, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you much about history. I just knew that my country had hurt Black people, hurt Native Americans, hurt the Middle East, and that we were an annoying place full of capitalism. That was the correct way to feel, for anybody who had a heart.

In Europe in 2015—long before I met my future Canadian husband—I remember wishing I was Canadian. The Europeans said Canadians were politer, Americans were selfish and loud, and also why did they smile all the time? The radicals I hung out with explained communism to me. At 22, communism sounded lovely. Everyone takes care of everyone, and everyone is equal? I said, “Wait, why was I always told communism is so bad then?”

And everybody laughed, and said, “Exactly.”

I was in Greece working as an independent volunteer at the time, helping the Middle Eastern refugees coming over on boats. I was scared, hesitant to tell these men (oh, so many single men) that I was from America—a place I knew, in my liberal heart, had only hurt them.

But every single time I told someone, a light came into their eyes.

“Ah, America,” they said. “The greatest country in the world!”

And I thought: “That’s sad, they have so much internalized racism that they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

This idea of America fit pretty well with my inner narrative, which was that I was a bad, terrible person. I was a white woman, which meant I was one of the dumbest, worst people to exist in the United States, and it also meant that I should take a backseat in any conversation (unless it included a cis het white man, then I was allowed to speak).

I would be kind, I would be tolerant, I would be a good person, and the way to do that was to just listen to what everyone around me said was the best way to be. Decades of prior self-criticism easily lent itself to this viewpoint—though not consciously, all of this aligned with my inner narrative that something was wrong with my very being.

In 2019 I met my husband and moved to Vancouver to be with him. He thought it was a big deal for me to move countries right away. I didn’t think so.

What even was being “an American” anyway? I didn’t care about that.

What I wasn’t prepared for (even before the mess of 2020, which I will get into) was how distinctly, how quickly I would feel like “an American.”

Sure, there were the obvious differences living in Canada—slight accents when speaking, the way certain words are spelled differently, the way things are in French as a second option instead of Spanish.

But there was something else, something that nagged at me. This underlying current—not obvious in any one event on its own, but in all the subtle little things combined.

The way in the grocery store, when three people are maneuvering their carts, saying, “No, you go first,” I just go before everyone rather than wait through all of that. The way that I will call the doctor’s office 5 times while my husband says “You’re just supposed to wait for them to call you” because I find that on the 3rd time they actually didn’t do anything right the first time and then they forgot about me, and if I hadn’t called I would have been waiting for months. The way that the public buses are completely silent, save for me talking and laughing on my phone to a friend, prompting a woman to passive aggressively say right before getting off, “We didn’t all want to listen to your personal life.”

The way that I would ask my husband to look over my communication with contractors, and he’d laugh, lovingly saying, “You can’t say it like that here.”

“What do you mean,” I’d say, “it’s just honest, direct.”

He would say, “Yes I agree with you, and this is still Canada, people communicate more.. indirectly here.”

Politely. Nicely. Putting others first. Wrapping words in uncertain language to protect their feelings.

In ways I didn’t expect I started to feel a bit protective of my “American-ness.” This American-ness was the part of me that spoke up in bad or unfair situations, that made things happen, that expected better treatment, and often, a part of me that expressed exuberant joy. While for so long I had internalized that being American was lesser-than (at least in my liberal world), I felt frustrated by the layers of what felt like people just not getting shit done.

And then Covid happened.

My husband and I were locked down in our tiny little apartment. And when we chose not to get vaccinated, we couldn’t do much of anything that everyone else could do for the better part of a year (not to mention the year we were locked up before that). We had to mask up anywhere we went, which was usually just to get groceries since nothing else was allowed. “Stop the spread,” right? We were told we were killing people, constantly.

I didn’t dare cross the border back into the United States in fear that I wouldn’t be allowed back in the country—I didn’t yet have permanent residency, and I didn’t have a vaccine pass (nor did I get a fake one, like so many I know).

And everyone just… agreed.

That was the weirdest part to me. Besides very private conversations with friends, from what I could tell, people just pleasantly went along with everything. This Canadian-ness, not a bad thing per se but something I already felt very distinct from, made them comply.

(I know all of this is a generalization. Yes, some Americans are passive, yes, the US locked down and handled things terribly too—but the greater point remains).

I watched as freedom of speech everywhere (including the US) was blocked, again and again. I posted a story about being unvaccinated and my Instagram account got taken down. It felt like nobody was allowed to speak, everything deemed “misinformation,” everyone saying, trust the doctors (except the doctors who disagree with our agreed-upon narrative).

I started to understand the repercussions of so easily deeming everything “problematic.”

I have written elsewhere about the dismantling of my social justice self/my extreme liberalism, so I won’t go into that here. But let’s just summarize it by saying that I began to question everything.

The next factor: In 2023, I wrote some posts about a woman I had a very bad business experience with, and she attempted to come after me for “defamation.” Since she was in the States, I hired lawyers who were also in the States.

For the first time, I was able to experience the laws of my country defend me, while being acutely aware that was exactly what was happening.

That sentence still makes me tear up, writing it.

It is hard to state how profound this felt. I cannot believe now the sentiments I shared at the beginning of this piece, how ungrateful I felt, how taken for granted my freedoms were. It took this experience, combined with the buildup of the prior few years, for me to start to see.

A lawyer who had been part of the Air Force defended me. We could not have been more different—I was telling him about my experience with this woman being a part of her deranged spiritual sex business cult (ha! A story for another time)—and he listened and used the law to expertly defend me. I discovered my country has many laws that protect my ability to speak out against someone I consider dangerous to others. I understood how easily people can be intimidated and silenced.

(And look, I know many people are still intimidated even in the States—but in this experience I felt protected).

I saw very clearly how I would not have had this freedom in many other nations.

And then of course we had our election year.

I was getting blood drawn in the hospital here sometime in September by a woman with a rainbow lanyard that had a pin on it that said “I am a safe space.” She started talking loudly about how she’s an American ex-pat who can’t wait to vote to take down Trump. I went home and ordered my absentee ballot that day.

After the election something I had been feeling in bits and parts for years suddenly burst out in my body: a deep heartache, a longing, a missing of America.

I felt a very distinct sense of not just relief, but also joy. We did it. The country (and the world) was headed into an era of more censorship, more political correctness, more socialism, and now instead it is in the hands of a revolution.

Will the revolution be chaotic? Probably! But after the suppression of the last five years, give me one.

Finally it landed for me—with tears, the way it should—that so many people died for our right to speak, to have revolutions, to have agency. How precious that is, how rare it still is, and how easily it can be taken away.

My own grandfather fought for this country—how could I not have understood?

When choosing the painting for this post, I asked Chat GPT to describe it for me. Ever woke, Chat made sure to remind me that the painting was offensive to Native Americans.

Is America’s history free of violence? Of course not. Was it so different than the bloody history of any nation? No, it wasn’t—except in one way.

I read an excellent piece recently that discussed how America was a nation of slavery, yes, but it was also the nation of anti-slavery. The ideals our country was founded on—liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness—were the very ideals that made people fight for their freedom.

As Elyse Wien so eloquently puts it in this (also excellent) piece:

Much of the Left today sees those they deem “indigenous” as a-historical. Conversely, these leftists see those they deem as “colonizers” to be super-historical, held above and outside of other world events. Both the perceived colonizer and the perceived indigenous people are seen as outside of history, as exceptional to their time and place.

It is unhelpful and disrespectful to try to hide and apologize for the violent aspects of America’s past and present, to shut them away and pretend that without them, without borders, without the people whose ancestors colonized the nation, everything in the world would be better. Yes, there is grief to be felt by many and there is much still to be worked toward in the present.

And we are naive, protected, dare I say “privileged” in our complaints. Without knowing what it is like to live in a place without rights, we easily can let our rights slip away.

America has always been, and still remains a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world.

What I have been feeling the past few months is something new, or perhaps not new, but newly returned to me—and many others as well.

When I was 10 years old, I stood on a chair in a stadium at a Brooks & Dunn concert, where it rained red, white, and blue confetti everywhere and they sang “Only in America”:

Only in America
Dreamin' in red, white, and blue
Only in America
Where we dream as big as we want to
We all get a chance
Everybody gets to dance
Only in America

I read recently that they have taken the Pledge of Allegiance out of many public schools, and that even when it does occur, children are allowed to stay sitting and not speak.

Are they still teaching the songs, the ones I know from singing them in school?

God bless America
Land that I love
Stand beside her and guide her
Through the night with a light from above
From the mountains, to the prairies
To the oceans white with foam
God bless America
My home, sweet home.

Is it weird, to have American pride? To be proud of your country?

Or is it beautiful?

Let me end with some of the things I love about America, things I didn’t feel allowed to love for years:

I love the Fourth of July. Corn on the cob, barbecues, red white and blue food, fireworks, and everybody dressed in red white and blue.

I love the billions and billions of choices. Oh yes, I know this is looked down upon— consumerism, as they say with disgust. But I miss the land of innovation and fun.

I love that we are exploring space. Who cares about space, I would have said before. But listening to Elon talk about space, saying, “These are the things that make life worth living,” I changed my mind. I miss the land of exploration and again, fun.

I love the loud, boisterous people blasting their music and saying things out loud in public and all the billboards and how everything is bigger. I love people smiling at strangers and friendly cashiers.

I love the pushing back against authority, the questioning, the ability to make things better.

I love the guns and how many people are willing to defend themselves and their families against corruption. I love the boys shooting beer cans in their backyards.

I love the shopping. Know what doesn’t ship to you when you live in another country? Many great things. Know what doesn’t ship to America? Basically nothing. Also, American credit cards have the best perks.

I love the traditions and values America was founded on. I am big right now on the return of the American family.

I hated most of these things five years ago (well, except the shopping).

But the other thing you have the freedom to do in America is to change your mind and to voice those changes, frequently.

I have started to understand, I think, why it was so easy for those Middle Eastern men that I met to exclaim that America was the greatest country in the world.