My Fellow Americans

An Open Letter to Two New American Citizens

Well, now look what you’ve done. Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten yourselves into.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s start at the beginning:

I know where you two are from; everyone else might as well know it, too. South Africa! Afrique de Sud! Land of vast wine farms, thanks to the French. Land of row upon row of citrus trees, thanks to the Dutch. Land of tea time and parliamentary impulses, thanks to the Brits. A far-flung outpost of the British Empire. If Australia is the Wonder Down Under, you are expatriates from the Wonder Not Quite So Far Down Under.

Boers, you are. Dutchmen, perhaps, if you’ll pardon my saying so. And worse: beneficiaries of the stain of—Apartheid!

You BASTARDS! Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. It’s just that I’ve heard a lot about you people over the last few decades, and none of it has been good. Never mind that you were born into that system, and didn’t have much to say about it. As you will soon see, that kind of excuse doesn’t cut any ice around here.

Which brings me to your newly acquired citizenship. You thought being responsible for Apartheid was rough. Now you’ve taken on the mantle of American citizenship, which makes you complicit in so much more. To wit:

1) GENOCIDE AGAINST AMERICA’S INDIGINOUS PEOPLE! You are Americans now. You may as well have personally passed out smallpox-infested blankets to the Indians (sorry, I mean the 'Native Americans').

2) SLAVERY! As American citizens, you may be tempted to protest that you sacrificed 600,000 lives in a civil war to end slavery. Don’t give me that guff. For all the textbooks know, you invented slavery. Hang your heads in shame.

3) CAPITALISM! Just because your so-called “free market system” has made you an economic powerhouse and the envy of the world, and just because wherever people emulate that system they prosper, there are still poor people on the planet, so obviously your fancy-pants capitalism doesn’t work.

4) GLOBALIZATION! You’re Americans now, and it’s all your fault that societies on the other side of the world aren’t nearly as quaint as they used to be. Maybe they liked being impoverished and without hope. Who are you to say? Whose business is it of yours to go barging into their countries, offering them jobs and technology and “outsourcing” your prosperity?

5) FOREIGN AID! Sure, it sounds nice that you give more aid to other countries than anyone else. But who says they want your lousy aid? Sure, they accept it, and maybe it saves a few hundred thousand lives every year; but have you thought about the impact it has on their self-esteem? Didn’t think of that, did you, cowboy?

I’ll stop there. There is plenty more for you to feel guilty about, but as just-minted American citizens, you can only absorb so much at a time. When you're ready, all you have to do is turn on the news to learn much more about how bad you really are.

Having said all that…

Now that you really are Americans, I can let you in on a little secret: all that stuff is rubbish.

The best thing about being Americans is... we're better than everybody else. It’s true!

We invented everything. (Go ahead, try to think of ten things we didn’t invent.)

We rule the planet through commerce and culture. We’re the economic engine that runs the world, and everybody everywhere wants to get on board.

We have the mightiest military the world has ever seen (and it has seen quite a few). Our enemies fear us; our friends rely on us. We can be anywhere in four hours, if we’re not there already.

People envy us and even hate us; but the ones who can afford it can’t wait to send their kids here to get an education. We have a problem keeping people out of our country. (Most other countries have a problem keeping them in.)

We write more books. We read more books. We know more. We are smarter, richer, and better looking than everybody else.

And we owe all that to people like you.

America is made up of people like you—people from somewhere else. We are all from somewhere else. This country is made up of people who wanted more, and had the courage and determination to go find it.

Your average Ivan or Ng or Pablo—or Johannes—doesn’t pick up and leave his country of birth, no matter how unhappy he is. He’s too frightened, or lazy, or complacent. It takes a special kind of person to do what you did—what all Americans have done since the beginning. Those are the kind of people we want here. Risk-takers. Dreamers. Hard workers. People like us.

People like you. Welcome, my fellow Americans.