The American People

Americans are this...

Americans are that...

The American people demand...

The American people support...

It has a hypnotic effect. It starts at such a young age that I can't even trace it to an origin. Get everyone to identify as an American. We are all Americans. We ARE Americans. I AM American. I may have some Scandanavian and French and Polish and German and Jewish and Sasquatch heredity, but I know I am an American.

Then politicians spout off in speeches about all the things that Americans are and aren't and demand and support and are against. Americans like puppies! It blurs the brain. Nobody could argue with that. To the individual we can say that while you may not want to tumble around on the floor and play with a puppy, you certainly don't hate puppies. No American hates puppies. So of course Americans like puppies. To those hearing the argument, it sounds like Americans are all 100% in support of puppies. Not the case. As a majority rule representative democracy anything with 51% support becomes what America wants. Then the other 49% are represented as wanting it as Americans.

Rather than fighting for fairness of language, rather than convincing people to use words like 'some' before such a broad generality as 'Americans', perhaps we could take a much simpler approach to breaking this strange spell that binds over 300 million people who can't agree on anything into one large anthropomorphic entity.*

We could stop calling ourselves Americans.



* I dare say that is one of the best run-on sentences I have ever devised.