Thursday, November 27, 2003
Proud Member of the American American-American Association
Cartographically, America is divided into North and South: two separate continents among the world’s big seven, despite the fact that they are contiguous, or were so before Teddy Roosevelt cut the umbilical through Panama. Linguistically, we divide America into three units: North, Central and South America. Ideologically, the people of the United States divide it four ways: AMERICA… in all caps with the letters alternating red, white and blue; Canada; Mexico; and All Those Drug Dealers South of Mexico. We are Americans, all those other people living in the Americas, are entitled to any other cultural identity they wish; but we and we alone are Americans.
The rest of the Americas seem to be content to allow us this bold, simple declaration. After all, we need something cool to call ourselves; we don’t have the advantage of a creative, descriptive name for our country. Panamanians, Canadians, Brazilians, Peruvians, Venezuelans, Mexicans have taken pity on our appellatively impoverished nation and granted us ‘Americans…’ A name with a touch of Latin-esque class, and something that rolls off the tongue infinitely better than: United Statelings, USAers, or United American State Dwellers.
The rest of the Western Hemisphere has been generous indeed; but we Statelings have taken that generosity for granted. For instance, how many times have you seen a nine-toed, crimson-naped, Republican staking out the employee entrance at a Wal-Mart waving a sign reading, “America for Americans,” and spitting tobacco juice at hard working, undocumented Guatemalans? Or perhaps you’ve heard of a little spat called The Mexican-American War? For that matter, a Mexican-born naturalized citizen of the United States was an American before ever setting foot in the land of the free, so for the sake of clarity, shouldn’t we refer to him or her as a newly minted ‘Mexican Central American American?’
Then there’s Canada. If Canada were to ever truly piss us off by turning into a third world nation, we’d have to find a way to make them not North Americans anymore. North America is reserved for American people; which is why, despite the utter lack of any geographic or topographic distinction between the South of Texas and the North of Mexico, Central America begins at the Rio Grande. I suppose if Canada’s liberal drug policy, national heathcare and gay marriage cause it to slip into third world status, we could start calling it Norther America. More likely however, the President would declare that Canada was exclusively North America; Mexico was Central America; all that other stuff down there was South America. While The United States became Simply America… a new continent for, by and of The Simple.
