Americans in Paris [on experiencing the greatest moment in our countries modern history abroad]

I’ve heard it said before, though I don’t really recall where, that being in a foreign place gives you a better understanding not only of the culture in which you are immersed, but also of your own culture. I’ve had a taste of this in the past, while I was traveling through Europe with a group of friends. We spent months in Germany, France, and Spain, sometimes in a large group, sometimes in pairs, and sometimes alone. We learned how life worked, how people saw the world, how cultures both differed from and aligned with our own. We learned what made us who we are, by what we noticed about others.

Arriving here in Toronto, I expected there to be some differences between the social and political norms I’m used to and those I would experience here. I also, however, expected these differences to be small, nominal at best; after all, we share a border, a language, a common history (in many ways) and even an accent. Or so I thought….

I’ve been noticing some small things day to day in the way Canadian life and culture varies from my Californian history (as you might have noticed). The commercials are cheesier. The business names are more up-front (descriptive, perhaps). And the people are nicer. Not necessarily in the go-out-of-your-way-to-say-hi-and-strike-up-small-talk way, but in the (in my opinion) deeper always-looking-out-for-your-fellow-man-way. As in, “I pay more taxes so that you can have health care because it’s just the right way to live.”

It wasn’t until the inauguration this week, however, that I really started to feel like a foreigner. It has been, I must admit, a feeling that has faded as politics has receded from the forefront of conversation. But it did have quite an impact on me. There is no doubt that I was not the only one excited about the inauguration of President Obama. We were all excited for various reasons: for Not George Bush; for a different direction in foreign policy; for a young hopeful figure in office; and for the first African American president. For me, however, it seemed a bit deeper than that.

For the last two years, throughout the campaign, Obama has consistently reminded me of the Kennedy family. His words, image, tone, and message of hope, the joy he inspires in people, his young family all carry for me a feeling of Kennedy legacy, from Jack to Bobby, even through Teddy, though I could scarcely claim to have been influenced firsthand by the former two. The legacy, I believe, is of the idea that change is possible, that hope can be real, and that the nation should be governed for the good of the common man, in the face of hope and adversity. As I have become an adult, as my social and political consciousness has matured, I’ve come to realize that the political world in which I have been raised has been at best indifferent to the needs and hopes of the people, and at worst actively pursuing the benefit of the priveledged at the expense of everyday people. I have learned to dislike Reagan, to tolerate Johnson, to pity H.W. Bush, and wish for more from Clinton. Even more, I’ve learned what politics meant to my parents, and many other people of their generation. The idea of politics as having the ability to change the way we live is something that is foreign to me, and yet would not be in to my parents in the 1960s.

In the 1960s, they saw the rise of young liberalism, the fight for civil rights, the challenge to war-mongering, and with all of these, strong faces and personalities giving them life. They also saw the death of Martin Luther King, JFK, and Bobby Kennedy; the end of the summer of love (and innocent freedom), the 1968 DNC riots in Chicago, the continuation of the wars in Korea and Vietnam. In 1969, political hopes were crushed. My father was drafted. All the hopes for change, the belief that their expression of this need for change would be heard and addressed, had been killed with Robert Kennedy. The hope that any real change would ever come was beaten out of them in Chicago. Hope, simply put, wore out. What do you do when everything you’ve ever put faith in fails?

And yet forty years later, here is this man with a fresh face, a young family, speaking the words of hope that we’ve all been longing to hear, some of us for our entire lives. Our new president speaks of change for all, not just advancement of some. He embodies the idea that life can be good for all of us, that we can be the change we wish to see. Rather than telling us to abide, to cope, that we’re the best and that’s all, he tells us to hope, to dream, to work, to change. We have been waiting forty years for you.

And this idea, this complex notion that Obama is not just our president now, but also their president then, was simply not present in the minds of my coworkers as we watched the inauguration. They, like me, were moved by the beauty in his rhetoric, the promise of change, and yet were somehow not invested in it. Yes, the foreign policy of the United States affects Canada much more than it does most other countries. Yes, American politics get much more attention in Canada than Canadian politics do. Yes, he is the first African American president in the Western World. But missing was the weight of history and the sense of urgency, that if this change had not happened now, we would not be able to last another forty years.

And perhaps more than history it is our spirit that differs. Not one person here has been able to give me a convincing argument for why Canada still has a queen. The best I’ve heard is, “What’s wrong with the queen – what has she done to us lately?” followed closely by “it would be soooo expensive to take her name and face off of everything.” Along the same line, I’ve never met an American who understands why Canadians don’t just secede. Having a queen in England who has the authority veto political decisions is kind of like letting your parents tell you what to do once you’ve moved away from home and started your own family. It’s nice to be nice to them, but someday you have to cut the cord.

At the end of the day on Tuesday, after being awed and moved and instilled with fierce pride, I also came away with a better understanding of myself and my country, and how patriotic I actually might be, however cynical I come across. Here we are, after so many years, doing what others thought could not or would not be done, believing again in the face of adversity and years of being trodden upon by our leadership. Here we are declaring our independence once again, declaring our difference and yet our common humanity. Here we are, showing the world the embodiment of our American dream: that the son of a Kenyan immigrant raised by a single mother, can become President on the merit and power of his dreams, and lead the nation, and in fact the world, into a new era.

And away we go….