I Am Not An American

I am not an American. I just live here. I live here because I was born here. I have never made any concerted effort to live anywhere else because I do not particularly care to give up the huge investment I have made in learning the cultural mores, dominant language and social structures of the society that I grew up in. In other words, I am lazy and indifferent to the whole damn shebang. Wherever you go, there's still people there.

I am not an American. I just live here. I do not have a problem with America. I am not anti-American. I am not pro-American, except inasmuch as I live here and American interests can coincide Venn diagram-like with my own. But I am not an American. I am not proud to be an American, not because I am ashamed of being an American but simply because I am not an American. I am proud of my accomplishments, my achievements -- not that I happen to have been born within these lines on this map. I do not believe in countries, I do not believe in nations. I do not believe in laws, borders, or governments. There might be clear delineations between different species (there aren't) or between the land and the sea (nor these) but everything else is some human-created nonsense. Including America. As a human myself I am free to toss out the rules and ideas that were laid down by those that came before me and build my own world from tabula rasa. You should try it sometime.

I pay American taxes. I follow American laws (or rather I follow my own code and am smart enough to not get caught where that happens to be illegal under local conditions). According to the records, I am an American citizen.

But, nonetheless, I am not an American. I just live here.