An American Character on the American Character
by Carol L. Skolnick

     On May 6, 2004, not soon enough after the Abu Ghraib photos were made public, President Bush made a faint apology for the prison torture, although he added he was "equally sorry that people seeing these pictures didn't understand the true nature and heart of America."   
     It's easy to paint any "people" with the same damning tar brush.  Just as the more ignorant (or traumatized) United States citizen is wont to paint all Muslims with the Al-Qaeda brush...just as the Yellow Peril jaundiced our vision of Asians after the bombing of Pearl Harbor...when our newly re-elected President occasionally comes off about as brilliant as Charlie Chaplin's Great Dictator, ignorants abroad enjoy labelling Americans as torturers and morons.
     What is that true heart and true nature Dubya referred to?  Some of us like to think of ourselves as freedom crusaders, and it's an apt description.  Look how we crucify in the name of Democracy...and I don't simply mean in times of war.  Presidential election carnage was particularly grisly this year, but this has been going on at the local levels forever.
     As Americans we like to think of ourselves as the Earth Mother, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, making the world safe from the Castros and Bin Ladens of the world.  Except, duh, we sometines forget to put on our own oxygen mask before helping the kids with theirs.
      As Americans we pay for bennies like tax cuts with loopholes that make it easy for companies to off-shore just about every job you can think of.  So much for taxable income.
     Yes, we are mindless at times, and yet there is that great American heart present at all times.  I would still rather live in this country than not.  Case in point: I can say what I am saying and not be considered an enemy of the state.  And of course I am not that.  I am a brusque New Yorker -- just another American character if not "the" American character.
     And, as a New Yorker living just down the road from Ground Zero, I saw in the days and years following 9-11 the character of my hometown change from a place that seemed to value time and productivity over humanity to one where people now look out for each other.  I saw a nation reach out to us and claim our arrogant city as its own flesh and blood.  Clearly we are a people capable of redemption and of great love. 
     What is the true character of the American people?  It is the same heart and nature of every human being. Throughout history and in every culture, sometimes people are idiots, and sometimes we are sane.  We make messes, and we clean them up.  That seems to be our job...the one that will never be outsourced.

c2004 by Carol L. Skolnick.  All rights reserved.