The World Thinks We’re Crazy: On Travel and the Importance of Self-Appointed Ambassadorship

When my friend and I went to Paris, we didn’t intend to leave the country on the eve of the election. We’d purchased our tickets based on cost, not date. But when we realized that we would be missing our nation’s democratic Super Bowl, we were somewhat relieved. We knew what was going to happen – Hillary Clinton would become the next president, a supposition to which, as Bernie supporters, we were resigned and unenthusiastic. But at least, we knew, it would not be the Nectarine Nazi.

We arrived in Iceland for our layover around 4AM local time, which meant that back at home the polls were just closing. As our flight’s international coterie disembarked, you could see the exact place where the wifi kicked in because each person did the same thing: they stopped dead in their tracks – phone illuminating their face – uttered a noise of shock that bordered on physical pain, then looked around at everyone else with a confused expression of sickness and fear.

I didn’t have to read the news to understand that things had not gone according to expectations.

The world was finding out that the United States had gone even crazier.

The Downward Spiral of the American Reputation

The global consensus that something is seriously wrong with our country is nothing new.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when word began circulating around the planetary campfire that maaaaybe the Americans aren’t the best people to have in charge of the matches, but if our high point of international esteem was Marshall Plan-era nation-building, it’s probably safe to say the decline kicked into high gear right around the time we decided that Vietnam was due for some nation-flattening.

Let’s put it this way – it wasn’t long after that when American travelers began putting Canadian flags on their backpacks. We’ve been on uneven footing ever since.

My first trip abroad came in 2007, during the last choking gasps of the Bush years. Nearly a decade of multiple wars, a global economy on the rocks, Dick Cheney’s sneer smeared all over the news on a consistent basis – suffice to say that it wasn’t a popular point in our national career. Some real Dylan in the 80’s shit.

Things took a big upswing once Obama moved into the White House (though much of the world was still more than a little displeased with his propensity for extrajudicial, civilian-massacring drone strikes), but day to day events often left people with questions. Bewildered questions.

For example, the last time I was in Mexico the Pulse shooting happened.

Why isn’t your country doing anything? It came from people visiting from every corner of the globe. What is it with you people and your guns? How can you not see that you all have guns to protect yourselves from being shot, and that people are being shot because you all have guns?

A few months later, I was in Paris, and the new confusing madness was Trump. Are you people really that racist? That gullible?

Now I’m back in Mexico, and Parkland happens.

People are beginning to become accustomed to our brutish, irrational ways. Now they have less of these baffled questions. It’s more of a quiet sympathy. Because the international community is coming to realize that the Americans who are curious and engaged enough to travel tend to reject Trump’s bigoted isolationism, tend to support rational gun regulations because they don’t walk through life afraid and armed against imaginary enemies, tend to be better informed about the world and the United States’ relation to it in general.

We Are Our Own Ambassadors

This is why the disembarked life is so important. This is why some of us – perhaps many of us – need to travel.

Some of us need to be out there showing the world that there is another face to Americans besides spray-tanned bigotry and violent madness.

Some of us need to be off the island, out showing the world that we can be good people too. That we can be considerate and interested and compassionate.

Some of us need to venture out to explore other ways of doing things, then bring the best ideas back to the island. Let’s culturally appropriate some of that Scandinavian healthcare.

In other words, some of us need to be ambassadors. Self-proclaimed. Self-funded. But not self-interested. Curious, engaged, empathetic ambassadors. It’s going to be up to us to build bridges, because as far as the world can tell, all many Americans know how to build is bigotry and bullet collections.

Get out and show the world that we haven’t all given into our national insanity.

And when you find a good idea, bring it back home to share.