Six Months

November 9th we were sitting in the lobby of our hotel in Hue, watching CNN. It wasn't looking good for Clinton. I observed my heart rate to increase, my breath to become shallow and a general feeling of unease take over my body. As we were walking out the door, we met two Canadians who were shaking their heads in shock, disbelief and I might add a resemblance of disgust at America's choice. The final results weren't in, but the projection wasn't looking good. We apologized for what our fellow American's were doing. They invited us to move to Canada.

On a bus headed to Da Nang, a young man, presumably from Europe, in front of me shook his head as he showed his girlfriend a red United States. I tapped him on the shoulder and asked it if was final, if the next president elect was in fact male. He shook his head in disbelief and replied yes. A young man behind me observed our interaction, took his earphones out and asked if the results were in. I said yes and promptly apologized for what my fellow Americans had just done. He was stunned, I dare say appalled and invited us to move to Canada. I cried. I observed a feeling of anxiety take over, deeply reminiscent of how I felt in 2000. In 2000, as I was falling asleep in Chico, California, just as gun shots began to echo, in celebration of our next president, George W. I struggled amidst terror to fall asleep. I was convinced that we were going to war. I was absolutely convinced that we would go to war, quite possibly World War III. And this made me feel scared.

This time my fear was not that we would be going to war. This time my fear was of my fellow Americans who knowingly voted for a horrible human being. A man, who for months, has run on a podium of hate, racism, sexism, bigotry and intolerance in all of its forms. A podium of fear wrapped in propaganda that detracted from real issues. A man who spends more time on twitter than a hormonal teenager. I was angry. I felt hate. I wanted to blame. I literally felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to yell at the bus driver. I wanted to punch someone. I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. I was horrified. I was upset that I felt this way. I reached out to friends for advice as how to let the fear go. The most helpful advice I received was to remember that American's are hurting and are wanting, needing, serious change. Our system of democracy is flawed and we were only given these two candidates from which to chose. One, a politician, and the other. The other was chosen out of a sense of hope. So I began to feel hopeful, maybe a non-politician will change things. So, I reached out to two of my republican friends and started a dialogue. We discovered that we agree on more issues than disagree. Neither were particularly proud of their candidate, but again, it was the only one they were offered.

For 5 months we have done our best not to watch or listen to the campaigning. But it was everywhere, on all news channels. The election was on peoples minds and so we were involved in many conversations, with people from all over the world about the state of politics in America. Not once did we meet someone who thought Trump was a serious candidate. Not once did we meet someone who believed he was a positive spokesman for America or the world. Not once did we meet someone who believed Trump was a wise choice to be Commander In Chief. Every person we spoke to, believed this was a joke. On some level, this was just a show of how ridiculous politics have become in the US. How everything, it seems, is for sale and can be bought.

It's interesting, being in a communist country as America voted in Mr. Trump. Jason and I have commented a number of times at how impressive it is to see the most basic jobs being performed by people. So much of what can be performed by people has been outsourced in America, either to computers, overseas or to the ever feared immigrant. Communism, in theory, creates jobs, pays fair wages for the betterment of the society as a whole. Of course humans run this political system as well and therefore it is horrifically flawed. But, to see the most menial tasks performed by human beings was enlightening. This is job creation at its simplest level. We met one Vietnamese woman who stated she was hopeful that a non-politician would offer positive changes in American and the world. We shall see. My fingers remain crossed that Bernie Sanders becomes president elect on December 19th.

I'm making a vast judgment with the following statement, but I'm going to say it, regardless of how it makes you feel: Americans live in fear. Quite possibly all people live in fear. I, certainly, am not immune to this. It seems to me that we, as Americans, allow media, politicians and corporations (to name a few) to continue to force feed us this fear sandwich. Fear keeps us trapped. It kills our ability to dream. It kills our motivation. It keeps us in our place, which is working for the man...making the man richer, while we fall deeper in to debt, depression and anxiety. We keep working for people who treat us like we are disposable, replaceable and under appreciated. We allow stress to keep us up at night, to reek havoc on our organs, often creating and feeding cancer. America is the land of unicorns and fairies, endless opportunity, freedoms of speech and gun ownership (a wildly crazy idea the world over, and the most popular topic when people discover we are from America). As Americans we have rights that most of the world can only dream of and yet we often squander them away doing laundry and taking naps on our two weeks per year vacations, because we're tired and quite possibly to scared to spend money, or too scared to get a stamp in our passport or cross over state borders.

The world is not as scary as we are told it is. I too was scared to leave the comforts of home, the ease of which I went through my daily routine. I like routine, until I get bored of it. We've been watching a lot of movies and I realize that a lot of what we watch make the world out to be scary. Again, we are fed fear in the form of entertainment. In these films, America is always the good guy, fighting against and conquering the bad guys, interestingly, usually using a Russian or Arabian-like accent. Often the theme of these movies are weapons of mass destruction, nuke's. Only bad people have such weapons, these movies dramatically tell us, and it is our duty to destroy them, these evil countries, these evil people. How do we destroy them?, with our own weapons of mass destruction and nuke's, which we are justified in having, because we're America...not terrorists. It's the bad guys who are terrorists. We are nuke dropping, targeted drone killing (including American citizens who were denied their constitutional rights) peacekeepers, you know, the good guys.

While in Cambodia, five years ago, we spent some time relaxing on the beach in Sihanoukville. Here, a group of about four elementary age school girls hung out with us, trying to sell their wares. Once they understood that we weren't buying, they decided just to hang out and talk with us. We learned that their families could not afford to send them to traditional school, the uniform alone costing more than a months income, instead, they attended classes on how to talk to tourists and make the sale. They knew all the 50 states and most European countries, including the capitols and leaders of said state / country. One girl, not more than 10, asked us "why didn't the Americans help us? The Russians helped us, but you didn't." I really didn't know what she was talking about, but felt sickened and vowed to research what we had done to make her so disappointed by my country. What we did in Cambodia was adamantly denied by our government and then locked in the secret government vaults for decades, until President Clinton unlocked them, allowing us to learn what really happened. I encourage you to read up on the campaign of terror we unleashed on Cambodia, keeping in mind that the land mines we planted decades ago continue to dismember and kill innocent people.

Needless to say, I've been questioning my American-ness. This began with my anxiety around Mr. Trump becoming the president elect and continued to be fueled as I watched as President Obama did nothing to stop the police violence against peaceful protestors at Standing Rock. The fact that protests at Standing Rock were even necessary is disturbing. And then, the most interesting looking book on the free shelf at our hotel in Phnom Penh just happened to be Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. This book is thick, and not really backpacker friendly, but I needed to read it. I knew it would be challenging, but I needed to educate myself, not only to mouth off to random dinner guests, but to really understand American created, funded and celebrated war. This information so brilliantly presented throughout this book not only increased my blood pressure and very nearly had me buying Xanax, but it allowed me to understand the men and women we have democratically trusted to run our country. I no longer trust them, not that I did to begin with, but I happily just went about my day. The problem with information is that once you have it, you can no longer not know it. The book is also a documentary and I highly encourage all of you to watch it or read the book. I also encourage all of us to learn from the outcome of Standing Rock and trust that a peaceful gathering of people, for a common good that benefits the majority, can make lasting, positive change.

I don't think it's accidental that this questioning really began for me while in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Growing up in America, the Vietnam war is the Vietnam War, but here in Vietnam, it's the American War. I've never quite understood the American War. Walking slowly, as to allow proper digestion of what I see, read, hear and feel, through the War Remnants Museum allowed me to better understand. I cried throughout most of this museum. Photo after photo documents the atrocities committed by American troops. Preserved, Agent Orange fetus' float in glass jars. Photos of nearly unrecognizable human figures, affected by Agent Orange, line an entire floor. Entire villages massacred, burned, destroyed beyond recognition, the corpses of children in the foreground. For the first time, shockingly, I come face to face with my country, the terrorists, the perpetrators of crimes against humanity. I feel shame and embarrassed. I think of walking through Auschwitz and how I found it comforting to have a bad guy to place all the blame. At Auswitz I felt proud to be an American, here, I want to begin talking with an Australian accent. I am disgusted and don't want anyone to know where I come from.

We have more in common with our fellow humans than we have differences. Even with a language barrier (although most people speak English), differing cultural norms and strange cuisine, we are the same. We all want to be needed, to be loved and to love. We want to feel safe. Travel reminds us that we are all connected. That what we do in our hometown, our home country really does have a profound ripple effect. Travel yanks our eyelids open, it smacks us upside the head and pops the bubble we feel safe in. It beckons us to face our fears and plow through them. Travel holds a mirror to our face and reminds us that our way is not the only way, nor the best, it's just different. It brings us face to face with "the other" and more often than not proves that our preconceived notions were desperately inaccurate. Fear is never, under any circumstance, a place from which to live our lives. Fear needs to be acknowledged, questioned, dissected and then conquered. This trip has been about facing fears, as often as possible. It's not always comfortable, sometimes it exhausting, but like everything else, takes practice and is absolutely worth the effort.