During the Democratic National Convention, Michelle
Obama took to the podium and said, “Don't let anyone ever tell you that this
country is not great, that somehow we need to make it great again. Because this
right now is the greatest country on Earth.” The crowd of supportive democrats
cheered, nodding their heads, pumping their fists, most presumably thinking,
“Yeah. This country is the greatest.”
Hillary Clinton, as part of her bid for presidency,
later wrote on Twitter, “I don’t understand people who trash talk about America
…who act as if we are not yet the greatest country that has ever been created.”
And even Donald J Trump, the most obstreperous
proponent of making America great again, not too long ago, in
a 2008 interview, was caught saying “We have the greatest country in the
world! The greatest!”
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| Bhutan, great in its own right. |
With limited facilities here, I have been following
the election through a combination of internet searches (when there is power
and when the internet is fast enough) and word of mouth. My best source of
information is often the school’s math teacher and my neighbor, Gyeltshen, a
man from a small village near Gelephu. (Gelephu is part of the Sarpang district.
The Sarpang in southern Bhutan. Fine, I’ll explain it again: Bhutan is a
country in Asia, sandwiched between India and China.)
See, the thing is, Gyeltshen knows all about our presidential
race even though you might not be able to pinpoint his whole country on a map.
He watched both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. He watched
the first presidential debate in its entirety and then watched CNN’s coverage
of the full highlights of the second debate. He can not only tell you both Trump’s
stance on IS and Clinton’s stance on immigration, but he can tell you each
candidate’s personal history as a businessman and a politician, respectively.
He has yet to tell me though if he thinks that America
is the greatest country in the world.
I didn’t sit down and watch the debates with
Gyeltshen. But I wonder what he thought when he saw Trump interrupt and talk
over Clinton. Or when Clinton kept referring to Trump as “Donald” and accused
him of living in his own reality. I wonder what Gyeltshen’s take is on the
snide remarks and direct insults flung between the two candidates; what are his
views on the hoots and hollers from the audience that was explicitly asked to
remain quiet. I wonder what he thinks about Clinton’s part in the Debbie Wasserman
Schulz scandal and Trump’s deplorable “locker-room talk” to Billy Bush. What’s
his perspective on how the “greatest country on Earth” is deciding its next Commander
in Chief?
Just today we had our own contact with national-level
government when the recently appointed Minister of Education made a visit to
our school. For the entire week before he came, the students cleaned the classrooms,
improved the grounds, and prepared a cultural show. When the Minister arrived to
the immaculate campus, he was greeted with reverent bows, welcome speeches from
our principal and one of our students, and dances. He was referred to as “Your
Excellency” by everyone who addressed him.
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| A teacher instructs students on how to demonstrate deference. |
Between the speeches and the culture show, the Minister
was given the stage to edify our students on how to be successful and take
advantage of their education. He mentioned that he wanted students to be
well-fed, provided basic resources, and to be happy. The most uncouth thing that he
did during his talk was juggle three rubber balls, using the skill as a didactic
metaphor on the merits of discipline and continual practice. He coupled his
advice to the students with a fable about a hummingbird who attempts to put out
a forest fire by taking a drop of water at a time from a nearby river. The
Minister explained, “The hummingbird said to the larger animals who mocked him,
‘I am trying my hardest,’ ” and then he implored the students do the same. “Be
like the hummingbird.”
You may have actually been exposed to a bit of Bhutan’s
government yourself. Maybe you are one of the 1,625,000 people that have watched
Prime
Minister Tshering Tobgay’s TED Talk about Bhutan being the only carbon negative
country in the world. I watched the video before I came here, but what struck
me recently as I watched it again was not the environmental policies espoused
by His Excellency, but his introduction. He graciously declares about Bhutan, “We
have been called Shangri-La. Even the last Shangri-La. But let me tell you
right off the bat, we are not Shangri-La … We are a small, underdeveloped
country doing our best to survive.”
In terms of government demonstrating respect, professionalism,
humility and honor, Bhutan beats America in greatness, hands down.
I, like many, wonder why the American republican nominee
is even a contender in this election. But when I look from an outside
perspective, to be honest, the whole country looks a lot like Trump, democrats
and republicans alike. When the citizenry is caught up in their supercilious
beliefs of, “We’re the greatest! We’re the greatest!” it is hard not to compare
it to Trump’s own self-aggrandizing claims. From the picture we get on TV—not just
from CNN, mind you, but BBC, Al Jazeera, and Japan’s English NHK—America is
aggressive, loud, angry, and not very smart. Remind you of anyone?
It’s not surprising to me that nearly fifty percent of
the electorate support Trump. Whether we like it or not, we have to face the
fact that he is a reflection of a large section of America’s populous. I don’t
mean far-right republicans. I mean people who gossip about others behind their
backs, people for whom money is the ultimate definition of success, people that
make inappropriate comments and give half-hearted apologies, those who will
insult their colleagues in order to set themselves up for a promotion, those
who will lie to get out of a lie; I mean the fatalists, the patriarchs, the
xenophobes, and the staunch ideologues. America has its share.
When I am asked, “Is America really like that?” I
think back on the last three years that I was living there. I saw a lot of
evidence that yes, America is like that. But I also think about my former colleagues
who are American teachers, quietly trying to erase social injustice one lesson
at a time. I think about my former students, many of them from immigrant
families or immigrants themselves; I think about their belief in opportunity,
their beautiful ambition and their adventurous sense of independence. I think
about my American friend whose job was guiding teenagers around the world so
that they become more globally aware (badass), or another who is helping with
development initiatives in South Sudan (really badass), and one of my best
friends who, among other things, is consulting with the Somalian government in
hopes of helping them ameliorate decades-old civil disputes (super badass).
When I talk with them and other Americans like them, the conversation often has
a tone of, “Thailand is great,” or, “Kenya is great,” or “Mexico is great.” And
I chime in with “Bhutan is great.” From those conversations I know that all of
America is not like its politicians—not so narrow-minded and ironically hyperbolic.
But the Americans that I respect for their humility
and kindness sure aren’t on TV much these days. If they dominated the news then
I am sure that Gyeltshen’s—and the rest of the world’s—picture of America would
be quite different. Imagine a presidential candidate who came to the debates and said, “We are not the Land of Opportunity that
everyone says we are. We are a complicated, diverse country, with many
different beliefs that we are working on finding common ground to. It is a
struggle, but we are working hard. Really, we are just doing our best to
survive.” That would be a leader that I would be proud of, one that represented
the other half of the American people. If we had a leader like that, wouldn’t
that be … great?
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