A lot of positivity and negativity, irrationality and sentimentalism
characterize my generation, the generation before mine, and even the
present one’s feelings when the topic of America comes up.

In the Philippines, one grows up with a generous dose of American
culture. In my time, our schoolbooks, the medium of instruction, the
history that was taught us, were all American. Even when we studied
Philippine history, so much of it had the US in it, most especially its
political line that justified their continuing presence in the
Philippines. America was everywhere and in everything in our daily life.

In the first 20 years of my life, America seemed to be such a wonderful
place, with an almost mythical quality to it, where lots of wonderful,
magical and creative things happened. There was Hollywood with its
great movies and narratives that shaped my own dreams. At one time, I
wanted to be Davy Crockett and fight a live bear, a cowboy who could
lasso a wild horse and ride it from dawn till sunset, a Marine who
could fight gloriously like the Americans did in The Longest Day, a
spaceman, etc. America was a place where anyone could be anything he
wanted to be.

In my teen years, Marilyn Monroe, Ali MacGraw, Natalie Wood, Katharine
Ross, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and so many other American
actresses, including sexy magazine centerfolds, sashayed into my
libidinous fantasies. America’s sexual images delivered to us through
the media shaped a lot of what we defined as sexy.

There was something about American women in the movies that was
especially attractive to the Filipino male. Unlike Filipinas, they
seemed aggressive, much more expressive and overtly affectionate, not
to mention more abundantly endowed physically. They had an ephemeral
“bitch-goddess” quality that defined what we adopted as our standards
of beauty and lust.

America was also the source of good music. I memorized the original
album of “West Side Story” from beginning to end. I thought it was one
of the greatest musical works ever created. I still do. I remember my
dad playing George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue on the piano. I adored
pop music as well.

Pop and rock-and-roll have been constant influences and sources of joy
and inspiration to me all these years. They were powerful forces in
molding my musical taste. I thought Motown’s soul music was one of the
greatest musical genres ever. Jazz was simply out of this world. My
musical idols were mostly American—Stevie Wonder, Frank Sinatra, Frank
Zappa, Billy Joel, Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones, Ella Fitzgerald,
Steely Dan, and so many others.

The greatness of America extended to other fields as well, such as
sports, science, fashion and style, and the arts. Muhammad Ali, Michael
Jordan, Albert Einstein, Any Warhol were just a few of my personal
idols. But to me, the greatest gifts that America exported to the world
were the humanist concepts of equality, justice, opportunity, freedom
and self-determination—values I held deep in my heart. Because of
these, I held America in the highest esteem and affection.

America was the land of the possible where cutting-edge ideas were
conceived and made flesh. I wanted to spend my life there. After I got
married, my wife and I had planned to settle there. We even got green
cards.

But as my love affair with the “land of the free” was going on, there
were events taking place in the Philippines that demanded a wider,
morerealistic view of my sentiments and relationship towards the US
vis-à-vis my own country. The First Quarter Storm in the early ’70s
opened my eyes to America’s imperialist motives in coming to the
Philippines—something the Zaide history books we read in school never
discussed honestly. Its support of the Marcos dictatorship was a
shocking reality to me, who thought that the very existence of the
dictatorship was a stark contrast to everything America professed to
hold dear.

In fact, it was during the last days of Marcos when Ronald Reagan was
still vacillating on whether the US was going to recognize the new Cory
government that I first contemplated giving up my green card. I could
not believe that Reagan, who was scheduled to visit the Philippines,
had said that there was cheating on both sides! Luckily, Senator
Lugar’s message to Marcos to cut and cut clean saved the day somewhat
for the US, although many of us felt it had no other choice but to do
what it did.

During the Cory years, I campaigned against the renewal of the US bases
treaty. A song I wrote for APO called American Junk said it all as far
as I was concerned. The euphoria of people power ringing in a new
government was a political, cultural and a seminal coming-of-age for
me. Senator Manglapus put it so well when he used the metaphor of
“killing the great white father” to describe our process of weaning
away from the security of having American bases in our country. I felt
that we, as a people, were coming into our own.

America in my eyes was still a great nation, but I had now fallen in
love with my own country. I promptly gave up my green card after the
failed December coup led by Honasan where we almost lost our newfound
freedom. I felt that I personally had to be present here to protect our
freedoms by giving up my escape hatch.

The Clinton years were great as far as my sentiments about America were
concerned; I thought that the US generally stood up for the right
values as far as world affairs were concerned. Except for a few places,
the world loved America. Clinton epitomized American charm at its best.
In my eyes, the Lewinski affair did nothing to diminish Bill Clinton’s
reputation. Politically speaking within the US context, I am a deep,
left-of-center Democrat who is more forgiving of sexual pecadillos than
war crimes.

When George W. Bush came to power, I was close to losing all my
affection and respect for America. I was angry at this nation that
professed the values of Lincoln and JFK but acted out the rhetoric of
Rush Limbaugh and other Neo-cons. The sympathy generated by 9-11
quickly dissipated after Bush’s invasion of Iraq under false pretenses.
I was awakened to the reality that with its invasion of Iraq, the
suspension of some of the human rights of its own citizens, its policy
of torture, Guantanamo and its arrogant treatment and disdain for the
UN, America was, like Germany under Hitler, capable of becoming a
fascist state.

America, she of the Statue of Liberty, the country of Jefferson and
everything associated with an open and free society, was not a special
idea after all. It, too was fallible and had its own fatal weakness
like every other nation. Many times, I pondered with great distress on
the fate of the world — with the only super power behaving so badly.

The Bush legacy with its hypocrisy and right-wing excess will hopefully
be just be a blip, an aberration – though a costly one – in America’s
history.

The spectacular rise and triumph of Barack Obama has made a lot of
people, including myself, take a second sympathetic look at America.
The US, with its image battered all over the world, its morale sunk so
low, and its power and influence diminishing, could still spring a
fabulous surprise on the world – and on itself.

I was ecstatic when Barack Obama won the presidency. To me it was a
sign that America had come back to its senses, awakened to its greater
self and touched base with what it preached. A black man with the
middle name of Hussein, of mixed parentage and an alien past, has won.
That makes me consider that perhaps the American dream is not yet a
spent force.

This single event has turned the world around a considerable degree.
Once again, I am in awe of the US and its capacity to correct itself. I
have started to revisit American authors, artists, books and movies
that I sometimes consciously bypassed in protest during the Bush years.
I am liking America once again.

The world is on to a new beginning. The world’s most powerful person is
black, the richest is an Indian, and the fastest-rising region is Asia.
A still-powerful though more benign America playing its part in it will
hopefully be of great benefit to the world.