John Wheelwright Diary Entry

I'm not an American.

Even though my fellow Canadians claim that, despite my citizenship, I am not one of them, I refuse to accept that I am still an American. I do not have any citizenship in the United States. No passport, social security, or anything of the sort accept my birth certificate, which will always be American (but that is out of my control). Even if I still had American citizenship, I could not call myself an American.

It is difficult to say when my heart left the U.S. It could have been the Vietnam draft, which I tried so hard to avoid. But more likely, it was the death of Owen Meany. When I lost Owen, I lost not only my best friend, but the greatest miracle that I will ever see. I doubted my faith in a lot of things, especially America. As a look across the border to the south, I feel disgust. I would be ashamed to be called an American.

An American. The most arrogant and ignorant type of person in the world. Americans seem to believe that they are God's chosen people. They seem to believe that they were put on this Earth to "guide" the rest of the world. Yet they no less about the rest of the world than the people of any other country. I would bet that most Americans could not name ten other countries. I know that most of them have not set foot out of the U.S.

It is this dangerous combination of arrogance and ignorance that has wrecked destruction on the rest of the world. For example, Vietnam. As soon as the threat of communism approached, America saw it as it's duty to trample on the jungles of Southeast Asia, to slaughter thousands of innocent Vietnamese. Or Iran. They elected a democratic leader, but he dared to take the oil that was rightly the Iranians. So the U.S. decided to replace him. Even if it was with an extremist who cast the Iranians into poverty. How could I call myself an American after that? How am I supposed to be proud of my heritage? I could not travel to any country and look into the eyes of people looking back at me as an American.

The tragedy is, however, that while I have successfully removed myself from the hated status of being an American, the people around me refuse to recognize me as a Canadian. They say I am not one of them, that I have not, and refuse, to assimilate with their culture. Apparently, loudly expressing opinions, even if they are specifically anti-American, is a very American thing to do. So I remain, trapped in my identity, surrounded by people who see me differently than I see myself.