Yue (Ivy) Blog #7: My Impression on American Nationalism

I find that the America that I had once believed in has changed. And I can't help but wonder wether this change was in the physical landscape of the cities that I had once visited, or if my eyes had just refocused onto that which is important. Over the years I learned to discern good and bad grammar, I learned to see fractions and understand the concept of value and opportunity costs. I learned to be correct and eloquently so,  and whether I like it or not, this formation was largely an American one. That is what I learned in the isolated mountain town where I attended high school.

In my years in high school, I observed the others and their demeanor. I had had roommates of Spanish, German, Korean natives but never actually have an American roommate until my freshman year in college. Slowly I began to understand that America is not actually a country but a potpourri of great complexity. Middle class communities especially, are very ethnically diverse and what makes this complexity greater is the fact that not all of them identify themselves as Americans to the same degree. It dawned on me that what kept these people from ripping each other apart in all of their differences, is a kind of faith in the system. They believe in the police and its benevolence, they believe in local and federal governments and they believe in a chance at making a more than decent living. As Imagined Communities points out, America runs a populist fashion of nationalism that entertains the idea that the masses have a real voice. 

However, I wonder if this is true. One too many times I've seen Williamsburg police officers harassing poor citizens for going a few miles over the limit. I am not arguing that the police is evil, but perhaps the incentive structures for the police are not of the most logical kind. I've been told that police officers are given quotas for how many tickets they must write per a specific period of time- whether that is to ensure a larger fiscal budget for the county/state or a measure to ensure that cops don't slack off, I don't know. I do know however, that this kind of incentive structure leaves room for injustices. This kind of thinking however, can be dangerous- how fail safe is the American dream? Was the bail out of GM, AIG and the banks something that would have been tolerated by this nation's founding fathers? Was the bail out planned all along? Was 911 planned out all along? These are questions that I do not like asking because for some reason, my intuition takes me to place I hate to visit.