Frame of Reference

I say "toe-may-toe," you say "toe-mah-toe." I say "baked potato," 

you say "Ofenkartoffel" and add a whole lot of dill.

The other day I’m sitting on the train from Austria back to Weimar, reading Die Zeit, a German newspaper, admittedly with the occasional aid of my dictionary. Across the aisle is a presumably American family (they could be Canadian, but on the son’s jacket are the Stars and Stripes embroidered), and a couple rows back are three presumably American Collared-Dress-Shirts chatting over an array of IBM laptops.

I’m not being my usual “Ooh, Americans! I should talk to them!” self because I’m feeling motion sick and also in the mood to write. (I am, moreover, receiving the socials cues of their sitting in complete quiet, Dad reading a book and Junior asleep, face plastered to the window.)

Also, I just have to sit down and write because (a) I am rather impressing myself by virtue of reading a German-language newspaper, (b) I've been starting a tragically growing heap of potential-but-soon-neglected blog posts for the past couple months, and (c) I've only got 4 CBYX days left before I hop on a jet plane and can no longer reflect on the German-American relationship with the legitimizing status of American-living-in-Germany.

I'm not sure what a June 26 issue of Die Zeit is doing on board this 10th of July, but it does occur to me that since living in Germany, I've become 500% more aware of the goings on in not only Germany, but also on the European continent (Russia, too). That, and how these Eurasian folk perceive us A-murr-icans.

The long media-dominating NSA scandal aside, little effigies of “AMERICAN” pop up in more realms than I’d expect. In supermarkets on jars of peanut butter and packages of hot dog buns. Broadcast in every bar, Germany plays against (OK, defeats) the US team in the World Cup. On the 4^th, a small brotherhood of Americans in Weimar sing the Star-Spangled Banner from their apartment balcony, concluded by a round of “U-S-A! U-S-A!”

Exports, sports, "culture."

A German asks me what I think about Obamacare. A man from Eritrea asks me if I can even name other countries in Africa. An Austrian refers to “that horrible war” in Vietnam, adding parenthetically that I personally had nothing to do with it, and his fellow countrywoman describes with fondness visiting pre-2001 America – an America that earnestly believed in possibility and making anything happen if one worked hard enough – this, the America I described one year ago as “a place where dreams come true,” in contrast with the post-2001 obsession with fear.

The role of government, the “living in a bubble” syndrome, history. The very definition of “America.”

I see an economic effigy (oh, that’s cute, an FDA-regulated picnic basket) on the front page of Die Zeit.

"Will the Americans soon have control over us? Trade with the USA shall
become alleviated: the Germans fear genetically-engineered corn, hormone-
pumped steaks and chloro-chicken from overseas. As well as new conven-
tions in the economy. But what really lies ahead of us?"

“What lies ahead of us?”

Perhaps this is too strong a claim, but I would guess that the average American is ill-equipped to answer a European’s questions: why the high levels of obesity, why no universal health care, how have you never heard of the EU Parliament?

I have a theory.

The American frame of reference is simultaneously enormous and microscopic.

Allow me to illustrate the enormity of America with an observation from the point of view of language.

The German "berghoch" means "uphill,” literally composed of "Berg" (mountain) + "hoch" (high).

Ok, fair enough, one can go up both a mountain and a hill. No gravity-defying transatlantic difference yet.

But the use of “Berg” this side of the Atlantic is much more generous. I’m walking uphill to the church and the girl with me sighs, “Ugh. Berg.”

And I assure you, it was a hill. It’d be like me taking a stroll in the park and spotting an anthill that I have to circumvent. “Ugh. Mountain.”

Now from a geopolitical point of view:

After kicking out the Redcoats, purchasing Louisiana, and fulfilling “manifest destiny,” we had a lot of land on our hands. Though China’s land mass is comparable, our population density is 4.23 times more manageable. Add into the equation 2 peaceful neighbors plus-or-minus 24-hour Wal-Mart’s and up-to-15-lane highways, and you’ve got yourself a self-sustaining, resource-rich, politically-powerful, militarily-mighty 1^st-world country.

That said, the happenings and goings on of other lands are simply far away. We worry about immigrants from the southern border, but not in the way that Germany worries about immigrants and asylum-seekers coming from Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine (and the list goes on). We rely on neither the peso nor the Canadian dollar, whereas the EU is an interdependent network of small countries, each led by its own politicians, held together by a thread that is the Euro. We worry about the flow of oil from the Middle East, but not to the degree that some EU countries worry about a 90%+ dependence on energy from Russia.

We are enormous.

Sally and Bob Johnson from Cornfield, Kansas can work their day jobs without any racket from neighboring France or Italy. In fact, a cruise on the Seine or a gondola ride in Venice is just what they’re looking forward to in retirement. Acres of gold rolling about them, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson know what to call a mountain, and what to call a hill. But enormity buffers their daily lives from the rest of the world.

Therein lies the conundrum. Enormity dwarfs.

With only roughly three centuries to work with, their children and grandchildren will study in roughly equal parts (1) the American Revolution, (2) the Civil War, and (3) the 20^th century (cramming in WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Gulf War(s) , and basically every other instance of America “mitigating international conflict” in Central and Southern America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia). Thanks in large part to being enormous and having an ocean on other side of us, the most conflict on home soil (not that I wish for more) that we can relate to is that first two-thirds. Yet that last third is the most relevant to a global frame of reference.

Enormity dwarfs.

Until what is American is super-sized and what is not is – still of the utmost relevance.