Thinking American

Thinking American

By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 02:05am (Mla time) 07/05/2006

Published on Page A13 of the July 5, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

SOME time back, I was talking with some people in an urban poor community when one young man interrupted to ask if I could translate an English word I had used: colony.

I was surprised by the question and fumbled for a split second, realizing we didn’t have a local term. Eventually, I explained the word as a place conquered and occupied (“sinakop”). To illustrate, I used the Philippines as an example, i.e., that we used to be first a colony of Spain and then of the United States.

I was in for an even greater surprise. The young man, who was in his early 20s, was incredulous. “We were occupied by the Americans?” he asked. “We were their colony?”

Lobotomized

This wasn’t a case of amnesia. We do have memories of our past, but they tend to be selective, and eclectic, a bit here, a bit there but without coherence. This young man was well aware of America; as with many other Filipinos, there is no lack of connections with that distant land with a grandaunt who had migrated many years ago to work as a nurse in New York, plus a smattering of relatives in the US Navy. He idolizes American culture, in terms of rap and popular music and Hollywood films, mainly of the “Terminator” and “Son of Chuckie” genre.

Perhaps what we’re seeing is something closer to what Benedict Anderson describes, in his book “The Specter of Comparisons” as “lobotomies.” It’s almost as if part of our brain has been removed, leaving us with a selective memory of our colonial past, as well as a selective sensory perception of the present.

Many younger Filipinos may not be aware that for some 20 years, we celebrated Independence Day on July 4, which was America’s own Independence Day and which was used, in 1946, to “grant” us independence. Rightly so, President Diosdado Macapagal moved Independence Day to June 12, traced back to the First Malolos Republic in 1898. But unintentionally, that move may have become part of our national lobotomy in the sense that many Filipinos are no longer as conscious of a long and difficult US colonial occupation and our long struggle to regain our independence.

Social engineering

We forget that the Philippines was in many ways America’s First Vietnam, First Afghanistan, First Iraq. We were one huge social laboratory where the United States tested military strategies, counter-insurgency -- and social engineering. American “benevolent assimilation” sought to re-create the Filipino in their image, and succeeded.

Today, we are known in the world for our desire to emulate America in everything from our culture to our economic policies and our politics. We think American, sometimes more so than Americans.

Which need not be a bad thing in itself. To some extent, many Filipinos did imbibe some of the United States’ most cherished values, including a respect for individual worth, freedom and dignity. These were the values that led to the American Revolution in the 18th century, and built the foundation for the American version of liberal democracy. The emphasis on independence and autonomy has sometimes led to an excessive aggressiveness, but more often these values have benefited the world in the way they unleashed innovation and creativity. It’s that ability to think laterally, to be ourselves and speak our minds, and not just an ability to speak English, that has so far given us an advantage in the world job market.

Fundamentalisms

Sadly, we live today in a world where religious fundamentalisms are taking over and threatening those values. On one hand, we see the Islamist variety that looks at America as nothing short of satanic, threatening local traditions and morality. But we forget that a Christian variety of religious fundamentalism is strongest in the American homeland. It is a fundamentalism that fears freedom from among its young, from women, from any group that speaks of rights.

What we see today is not a clash of Muslim and Christian civilizations but a competition of absolutist ideologies masquerading as religion. Whether of the Islamist or Christian variety, we find common threads in their contempt for so-called secularism. They preach a retreat into a world of absolutes, of black-and-white definitions, and of fighting “evil” (meaning anyone who disagrees with them) with violent force.

Even as we Filipinos continue to grapple with ideas of freedom and democracy, many are attracted by the allure of fundamentalisms. Because of our close ties to the United States, we are seduced by the American variation of fundamentalism, with all its bigotry and intolerance and simplistic notions of “right” and “wrong.” The scenes are all too similar, whether in the United States or in the Philippines: burning novels like “The Da Vinci Code” and attempting to ban the film, opposing sex education and family planning, growing censorship in the media, all in the name of Christianity.

The other America

Understanding where America came from and where it is today helps us understand why we are in the rut we are today.

I am sometimes described as “anti-American,” simply because I write against American militarism and the Religious Right. But my criticism comes precisely because I was trained, maybe too well, in an American tradition of liberalism. I had American teachers in high school, regularly went to the Thomas Jefferson Center, and spent several of my college years studying in the United States.

To this day, thanks to the Internet, I remain in touch with an America that I love. I read The New York Times daily and tune in most days to National Public Radio for its incisive commentaries on American politics, as well as its fare of American culture that reflects its growing demographic diversity. Unfortunately, all that is another America for many Filipinos.

I can’t help but invoke the metaphors of gender. Perhaps America tries too hard to recreate the Philippines and the world in its own male image, of GI Joe and Marlboro Man and imperial American ambassadors. (It isn’t coincidental that it was only this year, after more than a hundred years of Filipino-American relations, that Washington finally assigned a woman ambassador to the Philippines.)

Perhaps America would do well to explore how she might project a gentler side, an America brimming over with a love of a good life defined beyond strip malls and consumerism and reality TV shows, an America of justice and fairness.

We Filipinos have seen America in ways more intimate than many other people. That can be both a privilege and a burden. As we continue to seek our national identity, we will never really be too far from America, and yet will need to be courageous enough to maintain some distance, charting our destiny with a determined self-confidence that should do America proud.