Are you proud to be an American?

I am not. A couple reasons.

1. The genocide of the native inhabitants of this country and the dispossession of the remaining few of their lands; the fact that so much of the American landscape has been paved over to make way for strip malls; slavery; the forced internment of Japanese-American citizens between 1942 and 1945; the CIA’s endorsement of the massacres of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalan civilians between 1960 and 1996; the fact that blacks were still treated as second-class citizens until the 1960s (and, let’s face it, for a long time after that); the refusal at our shores to give asylum to Jewish refugees during WWII; Arizona’s abhorrent immigration policies and medieval views on women’s rights; the Republican Party.

All this is not to say that I think America has not done its share of good in the world too. I just think the bad has mostly outweighed the good.

2. I find that to be proud of who you accidentally are is pretty ridiculous. Should I also be proud of being brunette and wearing size 8 shoes?

So, are you proud to be an American? Why or why not? Or, if you’re not an American, are you proud of the country you are from and why?