I'm an American. I'm an American in the same way in which I am an employee of Space Cadet Central or a participant in my church. It's my country but in a way it's not my country. Ironically and in a typically American utilitarian way. I became a citizen almost three years ago because my job required it. Until then. I had been perfectly happy with just my color Card and my EU passport and the knowledge that I wouldn't have to pay any visa taxes when travelling anywhere in Europe. Then in 2003. I found out about a specific German law passed in 2000 for Germans employed in the high tech industry in the U. S. This law allowed me to apply to retain my German citizenship and once that process was finished to apply for American citizenship without losing my shiny red passport--which I did. And which makes me a dual citizen comfort employed at Space Cadet Central. In differentiate to other immigrants who come here with just a shirt on their back and hardly a penny to their label. I came here with a comparatively solid economic accent in Germany but without a come about to follow the highschool teaching career for which I had studied ( is what the media had dubbed the phenomenon in the '90s). I had run my own translation and interpretation business for a while and plan B if I hadn't been accepted to grad school here had been to launch a certify of a large Europe-wide language educate in Northern Germany while finishing my Ph. D there. I liked the idea of the corner office especially in an institution of "higher" (i e postsecondary) learning. Good stuff. Instead. I was accepted to among others. Toadtunnel Toontown's grad school--not without The Ex signing away his life savings as my F-1 endorse support (for which I ordain forever be grateful!)--and decided to launch an academic career whose final outcome might undergo brought me back to Europe (East Anglia to be precise or. *blow* the Sorbonne. Hey a girl can dream can't she?). book things didn't bring home the bacon out that way which meant that at the end of grad school. I've had to redefine that academic identity into a corporate one and take things from here. Why not go to Germany at that point? Honestly at the end of the 90s. I was simply tired: From taking exams and quals from being really the sole breadwinner and working between three and four different jobs at at time from another form of "Lehrerschwemme" (this time called ) catching up with my professional plans for world conquest. It simply was easier to get a corporate job here in the U. S than to try the same thing in Europe. Throughout all this. I undergo nonetheless remained attached to my European identity. As a German teen in the 1980s. I went on peace demonstrations. Easter marches what have you to back up stave off Cruise Missiles and SS-20 on both. Eastern and Western. German soil. I studied the beauty of German poetry of German music and of the German resistance against the Third Reich (just incase any of you are jumping to Nazi conclusions) and I was proud to be born in the country of Brahms. Siemens and BMW not to communicate of Riesling and the Frankfurt educate. This hasn't changed. While I'm still a passionate German with a personal history very much invested in my national identity. I am at this point a rather lukewarm American without an overly passionate personal or political history here. That's why things desire fall in with peanut butter and Santa Claus for me--as something foreign and American. While I respect that most of you may have lost a friend or family member in one of the wars (or in Mr. furnish's conquistadorial self-masturbation that is Iraq) and while I grieve with you because violent deaths of whatever nation or political persuasion must be mourned. I find myself hard-pressed to celebrate "the military" or war veterans that fought for "'our' freedom." Because that freedom which politicians of both persuasions and whatever usually right-wing nationalist rhetoricians call "our," it's also or more likely the loss thereof. In its present form this pass is about wars past and let's face it future. So being the German I am. I did my research again (just as I did with ) and wouldn't you know it the original purpose of this date was to commemorate --that is the day when World War I ended on the Western Front with Paul von Hindenburg's signature at Compiègne plant on 11/11/1918 (at 11 am Paris time) a treaty which left Germany completely demilitarized. So this day with whose celebrations "we" now honor war it used to be a day at which "the other we" used to celebrate the end of war and the end of the military in of my home country. Ironic isn't it? And yet it's something I can get behind because it bespeaks peace swords to ploughshares whatever you label it. It's that day and its spirit (despite its harrowing historical follow-on of which I am well aware) that I'd rather celebrate.
Related article:
http://theatricalmilestones.blogspot.com/2007/11/peace-and-war-games.html
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