America, America!

Where liberty is freedom from each other; where opportunity is grabbing something before someone else does; where control is the measure of an individual’s success over the environment. (Bauer, 2010)

Where for the rest of us, liberty is “personal freedom from servitude or confinement or oppression” (when you had once long ago promoted slavery); opportunity is “a possibility due to a favorable combination of circumstances” (when you had been against preference option for any single individual); and, control is the “power to direct or determine” another (when you fight wars to promote self-direction and self-determination).

Perhaps our idolatry towards the United States come from our shared history and shared bonds. You are our big brother who saved us from Japanese occupation and gave us our freedom. You are our friend who made us discover “liberty, opportunity, and control” (Bauer, 2010).

Our values just as our vision are intertwined. But just as we stand shoulder to shoulder, we are dwarfs to you who are giants. Poverty, crime, and corruption have stalled the arrival of our vision. It has also corrupted our values. The Philippines has survived “luckily” thanks to the consistent money remittances to families of overseas Filipinos largely coming from the United States. Millions have come to this country to find their dream come true. Filipinos are the second largest immigrants here. We are your teachers and nurses who have left family and the familiar to try our luck in your land. Success seems to come in each personal journey, from the Pacific islands.

For me, the United States had always been in my psyche especially for your protection of minority rights even when the majority rules (Bauer, 2010). An article personally resonates with me because despite the criticisms of the American Way, and how America struggles with controlling its future, your protection of the minority and the different, the weak and the oppressed makes you keeper of the history of the world.

Although I love my country, I have come here to the United States to taste the feeling of how it is to be a contributor in my difference. I realize that many have suffered to promote and protect this value – women, African-American, Native Indians, veterans, persons with disabilities, etc. Your framework is not perfect and your superiority is arrogant, but though you conveniently forget the losses of the past, you have learned that there is no “I” in team. “We” are the world’s citizens. Another’s victory like China’s is not America’s defeat but America’s renewed potential for growth, “Bigness and Expansionism,” (Bauer, 2010) and allowing them the opportunity for economic well being as well.

China’s values of saving, obedience, and study – values exactly non-American (Bauer, 2010) make them successful too on the world’s stage as prima ballerina for 21st century. In contrast, to your key traits and values historically built on top of each other and cumulative given by the Spanish/Portuguese, French, and British, have made you for many ages the danseur noble.

But history is a pas de deux or a dance for two.

Though America might not appreciate its history, thus disabling it to move towards the future – you are who we aspire to become. The realization that each family can have a good job, a decent college education, a car, and the latest techno gadgets is what moves us Filipinos to mold ourselves to become like you. We live on less than a dollar a day when you spend five dollars for your morning coffee and bagel. Our children spend Christmas in the streets selling cigarettes and gum when your children dress up as Disney princesses and superheroes. Our families spend their entire life living in slums beside polluted rivers when your families own a family van and live in suburbia while going to soccer practices and other diversions.

As we get to know you more through your movies, through your songs, through your bestseller diet books, I just hope we are in no danger of losing the lessons that made us who we are. You have made us free, but we have spent that freedom being a prisoner to your identity.

Allow us to shine too.

Reference:

Bauer, N. (2010). THE AMERICAN WAY: How It Came To Be and Why Current Challenges Are Such a Surprise.