Politics

I've been particularly struck lately by several political discussions I've had, as well as the recent news. Many of you know that I am an unrepentant populist. I was disappointed to see John Edwards drop out of the race, but I've been encouraged by the effect his running had on Clinton and Obama's campaign promises. I firmly believe that poverty and health care in our country are issues which can no longer be swept under the rug, and should never have been put there in the first place. Addressing poverty worldwide, not just nationally but also internationally, will serve to not only benefit others but ourselves as well.

But looking in from the outside I see that we are portrayed as gluttons, mismanaging our tremendous resources and bullying everyone else. And yet no one I have met here has ever met this ignorant, aggressive American - a depiction propagated by the media and frankly encouraged by our country's leadership and their actions on the international stage. Our embassy here in Wellington bears the brunt of quite a few jokes - an armed fortress with what I'm told is far more physical barricading than any other embassy, located in between a Catholic girls' school and a tennis club.

So my progressive opinions and loving frustration with my country are often met with perplexed replies. One gentlemen I was talking to put it very succinctly - where are the people who support Bush and war, he asked, because I have certainly never met them. All the Americans I've met are like you.

All I knew to say was that perhaps they don't get out quite as much.

There is an undertone, mild but constant, of some harassment here for being American. It's easy to laugh it off, the jokes about fast food and SUVs, but at the same time I find myself even more politically active. I'm anxious to get my absentee ballots in as soon as possible, and I'm scanning everything from the election coverage down to the local Seattle news daily for the latest. I have the feeling that at the end of my degree program I'll be twice as keen to go back to the states and get back to work.

Wendell Berry wrote that we should "Denounce the government and embrace/ the flag. Hope to live in that free/ republic for which it stands." I'm figuring out that part of coming here was signing on to represent that flag, that country, and while I hope to make my country proud I also am hoping that my country makes me proud, and begins to conduct it's affairs in a way that reflect what I believe to be it's true core: a nation for and by its people.