Everyone's a Philosopher

Here's a telling anecdote told to me by an American expatriate in Singapore.

AD was traveling in rural Cambodia. She's browsing through a market, when a little girl about 6 years old comes up to her. The girl is hawking bracelets for her mother's stand nearby.

"Where are you from?" the little girl asks & AD tells her.

At this answer, the child--who may never have left this 5 block radius of rural Cambodia--casts her eyes upwards as if deeply considering her own thoughts & opines:

"Ah, America: Good country, bad president."


I've told this story a number of times now to break the ice in international groups, especially when attention turns to me as an American per se. "What shall we do now," said one author. "Ah! I know! Let's make fun of Anne!"

When the US elects a president, just about everyone's life is affected. Sometimes more than our own. As my fellow istri EJM said of being swept along to Sulawesi with her husband, It's all well & good for [the grantees who chose it], but "I didn't choose this. I'm just along for the ride & it's a rough ride."

People I meet abroad—even here in Sydney this week—express concern that maybe Americans don't fully realize this, that sometimes our president is sort of their president, too. And that the world is watching our polls, invested in the outcome. That 100% of us don’t vote is a global mystery infuriating to many who would like themselves to vote in our elections. Who sometimes, because of corruption or dictatorships, don't even get to vote in their own.

This is not all anti-Bush, though. The on-going war in Afghanistan--the one that is more clearly & from the outset waged against the causes & spread of terrorism--has visible supporters here in Australia. And Fulbright itself just received monies to improve US foreign language skills. It’s this Bush-allocated money that is sending so many of the young, Indonesian Fulbright grantees to the US, to study their specialty & to teach Indonesian.

I met two foreign spouses of Americans through Fulbright, adults with successful careers & happy citizenship in other nations, who nevertheless changed their citizenship to American for one reason only: to vote.