I no longer live in the country I was born in.
Geographically nothing has changed. But geopolitically and
geo-socially and geo-significantly, everything is different. I was born in a
country so powerful and so far away from any threats that it was impossible to
touch us. We had fears, yes. Missiles from Russia or Cuba. But most of my life you
could walk down any street in America and feel confident you were safe from
foreign attack.
The country I was born in was also undeniably THE center of
the world, according to pretty much anyone you would ever meet. (Because you
were likely to only meet other Americans or polite visitors.) And, besides,
back then we were the strong, rich, noble and powerful child in the world’s
family. Our leaders were respected, as were our politics, economy
and freedom.
I don’t live in that country anymore. In fact, I don’t live
in that world anymore. The world has become a much more dangerous place. My
country has become more callous in response. And with opinions about my
country—as well as circumstances in countries all over the world—as close as
my nearest computer or TV screen, it’s clear that the world doesn’t revolve
around us anymore. In fact, it never really did.
With each day, I become more and more a world citizen. We
all do. It’s unavoidable. Our nationality is still a source of pride, regardless
of where we’re from. But, for Americans especially, there is a “learning curve”
of sorts that we’re navigating as we become less insular and more established
in the global arena. Americans are stubborn, though. And spoiled. So it’s not
going easily.
Case in point is this issue with the Seth Rogen movie, Sony
and North Korea. In the US, we have freedom of speech. Freedom of speech
doesn’t protect things like slander, verbal abuse or threats against people’s
lives, however. For example, if a child wrote a detailed story about the planned killing
of the principal of their school, that child
would be expelled from the school and put on psychological watch. What a child might call “fiction” is thought of
as a threat in this day of school violence that goes from fiction to reality very
quickly. Same would apply if an adult sent Obama a video depicting how they
would murder him. It wouldn’t be considered freedom of speech. It would be
considered a threat to national security and that videographer would likely
never been seen or heard of again.
In converse, consider North Korea. In their country, there
is no freedom of speech. In fact, if you say anything negative about their
leader, you’re likely to get killed. So we all know that whatever negativity is put in their face about
their ways is considered an insult, a threat and a crime. And knowing that, most
well-adjusted adults would be sensitive to it, regardless of whether North Korea is our friend or not. After all, we all have to live together on the same planet. Just as you wouldn't intentionally offend or make enemies of your neighbors, we also don't do that in the world. It's part of being civilized.
In a global context, America’s freedoms mean nothing. You
can’t go over to North Korea and insult the leader and expect him to honor your
American freedom of speech. When you put something out on the global stage,
that’s what you’re doing. It’s like going into a bar in Russia and mocking
Putin’s man-boobs and pasty demeanor. They’re going to beat the shit out of you
and calling out “freedom of speech” is only going to get you beaten harder. And
nobody is going to come to your rescue, either. And it’s not because Russians are barbarians.
You can see something similar here in the US if you go into a bar in Boston and
mock the Red Sox.
Freedom of speech is an American thing that is not
necessarily valued in other countries.
And, even in this country, freedom of speech is not without consequence.
So when we put out a movie into the world that depicts the
pre-meditated and violent murder of a world leader, it’s not odd that the
leader in question would see it as a threat. If France put out a movie about
the assassination of Obama, you can bet that the CIA would be all over their
French asses before the final credits were able to roll. You can also be sure a
number of other countries would stand behind the US and criticize the bad
judgment of the French. Actually, like the Interview, we would have hacked into
their systems long before the movie was released and dealt with it before it
was even an issue. Because we’re squirrely that way. And we would then
celebrate it as an American win. Because we're arrogant that way.
So how come when the shoe is on the other foot, it becomes a freedom of
speech issue? And the decision to not air the movie becomes “knuckling under to
terrorists”? Nobody gives a crap about our freedom of speech in the global
community. And besides, the one who makes the threat is the terrorist, not the one who
responds to it.
It’s not like I don’t know who Kim Jong-Un is. He is the
Supreme Leader of what some call a Socialist state and what others call a
dictatorship. He runs his country in a very different way than the US is run. He’s
not what would be considered a “warm and nurturing” leader. There are many
countries out there that most Americans would not want to live in. North Korea
is one of them. As global citizens, though, we need to respect the ways others
live and lead. If we insult a leader and they hack into computers to obliterate the
insult, we’re culpable and can’t go crying about our consequences. Both sides are wrong. But playground rules state that the one who started the fight is wronger.
Speaking of playgrounds, remember the big kid on the playground who pushed others
around and then when they pushed back, cried about it? That kid was called a
bully. And then when he ran crying, he was called a pussy. We’re acting like
bullies and pussies in this situation. Nobody likes a bully or a pussy. And we
can’t afford to be the hated kid on the playground in today’s unstable world. We
poked a dude that we know is kind of trigger happy when it comes to protecting
his ego and now we’re saying “how dare he be offended?” “How dare he respond
back just as aggressively?”
C’mon, people. Grow up. Really. One of the first lessons all
of us learned in life is that we have to respect others. Another is that we have
to learn to think of the consequences before we act (“well, you should have
thought of that before you did it, missy!” Remember that?) We don’t get to do
anything we want to do in a global community. The US is no longer the country
you were born in. It was NEVER the center of the world. You just had the luxury
of believing that was so. But times have changed.
We are more citizens of the world than ever. That comes with
both benefits and consequences. In any community, there are certain social mores
you follow. We simply no longer have the luxury of being the “rude Americans”
the rest of the world has put up with for years. It was fine back when we
didn’t have to interact with each other very often. But the world is changing
and America has to change with it. We can’t live by our own rules alone. We
have to respect the mores of the global community. And putting out a movie
about the assassination of a sitting world leader is totally irresponsible
redneck behavior unbecoming of the country we would like to be.
See, I was blessed to be born in what I think is the best
country in the world. As I grew older, I began to see that we weren’t the only
country in the world with a groovy thing going. But I also got to see how truly
blessed I am, because there are places on earth that brutal to live in. The
fact is, our relative safety and isolation as a “strong” country sandwiched
between friendly borders, is the very thing leaving us way behind the curve when
it comes to being global citizens. We have three large countries over here
dominating both North America and the western half of the Northern Hemisphere, insulated from
the all the rest of the world by two large oceans.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world has had to learn to live
within a massive string of different countries, customs, languages, etc. for
all their lives. Not just for all their lives, but for centuries of border conflicts and strife that we have never had to deal with. Americans are WAY behind the curve when it comes to adjusting
to a global community. And because we’re late to the game, we’re not in a
position to tell others how it’s going to work. We are absolutely a bull in a
china shop on the global stage and we need to check ourselves. And some
humility wouldn’t hurt, either.
Nor would it hurt to apologize to North Korea for our
buffoonery, rather than whine about terrorist threats, Sony. Because that’s
what assholes do when they realize they’re being assholes and starting
international incidents with their irresponsible behavior. We Americans get
what you were doing. We understand the immaturity of American humor and our
hillbilly ways. We know you weren't trying to insult anyone or put Americans at risk. But a line was crossed, nonetheless. A nation was offended. You don’t
get to cry because you poked a rabid dog and it bit back. It’s not the rabid
dog’s fault. It’s your bad judgment’s.
Nor do the rest of us Americans get to whine about Sony being hacked or Sony pulling the movie. We are the aggressors here!
In the eyes of North Korea and, no doubt, many others, at best we’re being
assholes and at worst, we threatened the life of a world leader—something considered an act of war. Our job right
now is to use this as an opportunity to stop being so darned myopic and pull
back and see some of the consequences of our behaviors. I’m sorry, but no
stupid movie that we now know is seen as disrespectful and threatening is worth
standing on principle for, especially when the principle is a lamely muttered
“freedom of speech” in defense of irresponsible “speech” or a stubborn “we
won’t bow down to terrorists” when we’re the ones that started the whole thing
in the first place.
Freedom of speech isn’t free. It comes with responsibilities
and consequences. Words have power. Bandy them about irresponsibly and
aggressively, and you can expect consequences. But keep in mind that the US only gets
so many byes in the eyes of the global community for any good works we’ve done.
If you pay attention, you’ll see that the world is losing its patience with us
and some of the ways we’ve been behaving over the past couple of decades has
rubbed the gilding off our “good guy” reputation. I’m not willing to risk
whatever respect our country has left—not to mention countless lives—for the
honor of a sophomoric comedy (not to mention the crassness of its planned HOLIDAY release. For Christ's birthday, no less. Because this is how we honor such things.)
We have a lot of growing up to do in this
country. It’s time we get started on that.
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