Visiting the Holy Grail

A YouTube recording I recently watched brought to mind the thought that many people in the US --or at least border officials-- might think outsiders consider the USA to be the Holy Grail.

I've had my own experiences that testify to the ludicrous nature of US border officials, but I must agree that the attitude of the Canadian man in the linked recording was definitely confrontational almost from the start.  In fact when you consider that the recording was likely made in anticipation of something happening, you might wonder if it was done in order to deliberately provoke some kind of reaction.  After all, why would a completely innocent person, who had absolutely no agenda, even want to record such an event unless, perhaps, they had been continually subjected to unpleasant treatment in the past.

A great number of US officials who I have had contact with have been so much less welcoming than they might have been leading me to wonder if the DHS has an unstated mandate to disingratiate as many visitors as possible.

In fairness, however, take note that this video is about 3 years old, and earlier this year I was surprised at how pleasantly we were processed when we arrived at the immigration inspection when passing through the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.  On the flight which took us to DFW airport, a video was shown which depicted a warm welcome being given to arriving visitors by US border personnel and I commented to my wife that I'd be amazed if what we were to experience was even half as pleasant as what the video portrayed.  In fact, I was so favourably impressed by the improvement we experienced that I even complimented the official who processed our entry.

While I'd still think that there's too much of a hassle for passengers in-transit, now, at least there is a glimmer of hope that visitors to the US might not need to be afraid of one-day being water-boarded just for stepping on the soil of the USA.

Symbol of American Failure

The term "American" may a symbol of its greatest failure.  Term is closely related to the notion of manifest destiny which is the dream of uniting all of the countries in America into one gargantuan nation which would be called the United States of America.

This was never declared as a specific plan or objective, but has been almost openly pursued by some US presidents and there is evidence that the idea of creating one super-nation may have been in the back of the minds of at least a few of the founding fathers when they created the US constitution. Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Monroe, wrote that "it is impossible not to look forward to distant times when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits, and cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent."

The plan never played out but the notion lived on and through a distorted sense of democracy it might be considered justifiable to expropriate the name "American" as a moniker for  exclusive use of the USA.  While the number of states involved in the union is a majority of the separate states in all of America, the union represents a majority only if it is agreed that each state has only one vote, but it is far from a majority of all the people in the area.

A search of "population of America" in Google returns a result for the population of the United States of 319 million whereas the population of South America is 387 million, Central America is estimated at some 47 million and we still haven't included the populations of Mexico and Canada which add another 140 million to the equation. The total population of the Americas is well over 893 million of which 319 is barely over a third.

The use of the term "American" is widely rejected throughout Latin America and is considered by many to be an inappropriate misuse of the term to describe a person or any thing which is specifically attached to only the United States.  In Spanish the denomyn for a US citizen is "estadounidense," and the official Spanish dictionary states its view quite plainly: 

But the use of americano to refer exclusively to inhabitants of the United States should be avoided; this abusive usage is explained by the fact that U.S. citizens often use the abbreviated name América (in English, without an accent) to refer to their country. One should not forget that América is the name of the entire continent and all who inhabit it are americanos.        Translation from Wikipedia 

It is clear that anyone from the US who wants to make friends with others in the rest of the Americas, would be wise in employing another term and although they may have a long list of reasons to take pride in the country where they were born, they might reconsider the word they use when that word, in itself, reflects a dream that has never been realized.