This won’t be my most coherent post ever, because it’s about feeling muddled. Sorry about that.

A couple of weeks ago I went to visit a Turkish friend at her new flat. While we were having tea and talking about life in Turkey and life in London, the CIA and torture (as one does), she thoughtfully gazed at me over the coffee table and said, “I can’t imagine what it’s like, being from a country like yours. I mean, in Turkey we have our problems. We are poor and the people, we have no hope. But to be from such a rich country like America? With so much power over everyone? I don’t think I would like that.” She went on to ask me what it felt like, and I have to admit, I was stumped. Not because I’d never thought about the U.S.’s power in the world, or about my own complicity as an American citizen in the good, bad and ugly of American foreign policies and practices. But, simply, because when she asked the question so directly, and so comparatively, all I could think (and say) was that it was strange. Strange, and, well, not something I could really like or dislike, since, after all, being American, like being Catholic, and being from a big family, and being from San Francisco, and being a woman, and being White (or pale-pink-peach, as the case really is) is inextricably part of who I am.

Her question stuck with me though (obviously, since here it is, guiding my blog post a couple of weeks on), and has sat on my shoulder ever since, like a parrot that doesn’t parrot so much as whisper almost inaudibly in my ear while I read the news and walk through my life as an American in London. I think now that if I’d been asked such a question by such a person in such a context earlier on in life, I would have said something along the lines of “It feels awful”, or “It’s embarrassing.” Alternately, I might have said “It makes me angry and ashamed.” Now though, as I enter my wiser years, everything, including what it feels like to be from the big, rich, powerful country that is the U.S., seems far too complex to be summed up by such answers. Let me illustrate -

The other day, I read an article in the International Herald Tribune about a book by Trevor Paglen. The book is about his research on secret U.S. military programs, and I should note that the article was not a book review, but a news article about a book, the news being both the secret programs described in the book, and the book itself, which is newsworthy because of the fact that it was written at all, it being all about secret military programs and all. I found the article to be both fascinating and disturbing, as well as, ultimately, both upsetting and reassuring. It was fascinating because secret military programs of any kind fascinate me, and because Paglen did some pretty amazing sleuthing to uncover all that he did. Similarly, it was disturbing because secret military programs of any kind disturb me, and because I’ve done my own snooping around secret military programs, and I know well that more often than not they lead to budget bloat, waste, myopic thinking, bad decision-making, and significant destruction of nature and/or human life.

The article was upsetting for a few reasons. First, because from it I learned that the budget for secret military programs is $32 billion. Thirty-two billion! All classified! Second, because after thinking about it a while, I started wondering about the quality of the press. Why did it take a photographer-geographer to write a book about these programs in order for them to get covered in the news? Why aren’t there investigative reporters hammering away at the story all the time? After all, we’re talking about $32 billion in unaccounted for government funds which is, according to the article, as much as the budgets of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and NASA combined. At the same time, I was reassured, because, however it got there, the story was in the mainstream news, and because the book was published, and because to date, no harm has come to Paglen from writing it. Quite the contrary. He is free to publish photographs of secret bases, take his book on tour, do interviews and so on. Comparing this to, say, Turkey, where the Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk is hounded by the government for discussing unpleasant matters of Turkish history, I’d say the U.S. looks pretty good.

I chose the secret military program story, but there were other stories I could have chosen – stories that similarly triggered conflicting emotions. The contested Zimbabwe election for example – in a few ways it reminded me of the U.S. presidential election of 2000 and thus made me feel both disturbed and disgusted by what occurred in the U.S. then, and encouraged and excited by what is happening there now. The fact that President Bush was booed when he threw the first pitch at the Washington Nationals opening baseball game made me feel simultaneously sad, angry, ashamed and again, reassured that people could express opposition to a sitting president without fear of arrest or punishment of any kind. News from home about my friend’s organization that works to get kids into college made me excited about the real opportunities there are for people in America. News from Germany about a friend’s deployment to Iraq made me mad about the stupidity of the war and ashamed that it was my government that not only started it but then made such a mess of it.

So then, how does it feel to be from America? Strange, I tell you. Strange. And I think that’s why I like Thanksgiving so much more than the Fourth of July. There is room for complexity at the Thanksgiving table. It is about giving thanks, for whatever it is you might be thankful for. It celebrates the confusing, turbulent, fruitful coming togethers of early English immigrants and Native Americans. And it takes place in autumn, when everything is in flux. The Fourth of July on the other hand, is all about certainty. It takes place in July. People wear clothes in colors as crisp as red, white and blue. There is bright sun, baseball and good cheer. I like it, but in all honesty, it makes me a little itchy. And why am I writing about this now? In April? Because the question’s been on my mind for a couple of weeks now, and I had to do something to answer it.