This is gonna be long, so I'll note the /end.

I lived in Europe from when I was… maybe 7 years old until I was 14, when we moved back to the United States. And it’s interesting how much that seemed to pause my cultural understanding of the US.

While in Europe, we would come back to visit the US sometimes, and as I got older those visits got… weirder as I noticed more, but I never really understood how common that “weirdness” was, because it was so rare for me.

To me, my family and I were “American” (more accurately - US Americans, as “America” is more than just the US; as my dad, a Venezuelan who immigrated to the US, often pointed out), and so my kid-brain assumed that other US Americans were kinda like us.

We were “Americans” and they were us; they were my multi-racial family, they were the sanitized shows on TV and the movies of the 80’s and 90’s, they were my visits back to see relatives. They used to be what history books said, but that was history. That was fixed in the 60’s.

Well.

When I was 14, we moved back to the US. To Colorado Springs; Evangelical capital of the world. The US Air Force Academy. Multiple other military bases. A bastion of Republicanism.

And so, unexpectedly to me - growing up living in six different countries, traveling to over a dozen more, and having met people from all over the world - I was finally going to experience culture shock.

And even now, 24 years later, that shock is still ongoing.

I think in a lot of ways, my understanding of this country was still just that of my seven-year-old self, plus movies, books, and TV. I didn’t really have enough first-hand experience to think otherwise.

For example, media told me that the US was a land of racial harmony. And we were a multi-racial family. So… media confirmed, right? That must be how everyone is.

Heh. Yeah. It was a surprise coming back.

I still remember little teenage me, sitting in a high school pep rally while everyone else around me stood to cite the Pledge of Allegiance, hands over their hearts and gazing longingly at a flag, and thinking “Doesn’t anyone else notice how creepily fascist this all is?”

A few seemed to. They weren’t the “smart” kids though. They were more likely to be the ones who ditched class. They were more likely to be grouped up with the delinquents, because that’s what ditching the pep rally is likely to make you.

And then there were the churches. The megachurches. Christianity mixed up with and perverted by nationalism, capitalism, patriarchy, and just being fucking posers.

I grew up Christian, you see, and one aspect of my dad’s work involved filtering out a lot of the cultural Americana from US-Christianity. The religion I knew was personal, relational, humble, spiritual. It sought out the “other”, shared resources, and built community.

To me, that’s what “being a Christian” was.

Heh.

The church we went to the US was gigantic. Multi-million dollar buildings (plural), wildly-expensive media production, gift shops, the works. And US flags were EVERYWHERE.

You could tell right away how often the pastor mixed up what was Jesus and what was… his weird worship of country. And why was he the pastor anyway? His… showmanship and shiny teeth? That’s not qualifying. Who did he pastor from up there even?

But, the people there mostly spoke like me. They’d reference the same Bible verses about faith and selflessness and love. They *seemed* passionate about it. So why was *all this* ok to them? They said they had been blessed, but… then they just... *kept* it?

Why was the church way out on the edge of town, where you had to get in your car and drive 20 minutes to get there? There wasn’t a bus station nearby, so… what; if you didn’t have a car you couldn’t go to church? Why didn’t anyone see the obvious flaw?

And way out of the edge of town like that, with just all the fancy houses around, sure, you could like, have a potluck. But the genuinely hungry people were all downtown, without cars, and… Hey, I don’t think you guys thought this one through.

And the winters here are *cold* and there’s people living on the streets downtown, and this church is *so big*, shouldn’t we bring them all up at night so they can sleep inside? At least during the winter? I mean you guys literally have your own minibuses, this is a no-brainer.

But almost no one else seemed to think those things. Even though we all said we believed the same beliefs. What am I missing? So frustrated, I’d complain to a youth pastor - why is this church, all this *stuff*, so far out from the actual need?

“Well, everyone has a car here, it’s not a big deal.” Well, not everyone, what about poor people? “Even poor people. If they don’t have one it’s because they don’t want one.” Well, what about people without homes? “Lots of them have cars. And others, well, that’s their choice.”

It didn’t sound right. But he’s a youth pastor, and he grew up here. I’m the stranger. That must be how it is in this country, I guess? Everyone has a car except for those who choose to not be able to afford one?

It was even an example of the great “freedom” here, or so I was told: A man could choose to live without a home, transportation, or even confidence of his next meal.

No, no. Something here is wrong. Something is very wrong.

People would donate money to the church for the big Easter play, the church would spend over a hundred thousand dollars on this big production declaring it their big “ministry” to “show God’s love”, and then the church would *sell* tickets.

Mostly just back to its own congregation. And the same people would keep coming up to be “saved”. And that was proof the church did good.

What?

As I started to understand politics in the US, I realized more and more how intensely political the churches - and the Christians - were too. And how often their politics went against their faith. And how much they twisted upon themselves to explain it all.

And slowly, slowly, I start to realize that all of that - *all* of it - was features, not bugs. These weren’t mistakes, it was design.

But they still genuinely *believed* it was good. And that they were holy; they were “American”. They thought both were one and the same.

And then, the 2000 elections, and then 9/11, and then *everything* kicked into overdrive. And so the culture shocks kept coming. Wars of aggression in response to a *crime*, as if a *nation* and a *people* were the same as a specific criminal network?

Excuse me, sir, did you just say you want to *nuke Mecca*? WHY? That doesn’t even make sense. Wait, why are we invading *Iraq* now? Pardon me, you said that question makes me a *traitor*? I don’t think you actually understand your own country, SIR.

And everyone seems so afraid but they all call it “patriotism”, and there’s still *so much else* about this place that I was only starting to learn.

For example; “I’m not ‘American’; I’m ‘Hispanic-American’”. Oh. Ok. “But my skin’s white, so my experience isn’t Hispanic, it’s white.” Wait, what? Why? “Oh, well most everyone’s kinda racist. At least a bit.” I thought that was all fixed? “Oh, uh… Nah.”

Which became exceedingly clear post-9/11. And only ever increasingly clear since then.

And so much of all the… everything I see now about the US, here in 2020, I can see because of a slow process of learning that’s been rooted elsewhere in my life, and been thanks to others, and even been in spite of myself -

and I don’t mean to claim to have seen anything on my own, the credit isn’t mine and there’s doubtless still so much, even in myself, that I don’t see -

but it’s still kind of wild to me how so much of that seeing started because, as a 14 year old immigrant to what I was told was “my own” country, I really didn’t know this country at all.

/end