Why "Un-American" is a Meaningless Term

Can you imagine a Swede walking up to a fellow Swede in a public park, and bluntly informing him he is "un-Swedish"? Or two Frenchmen arguing at a cafe, and one of them blurting out that the other is "un-French"? Or how about a couple Austrian shepherds confronting each other in a mountain pass and one of them shouting at the other that he is "un-Austrian"? And would it be even possible for two Canadians traveling by train from Winnipeg to Vancouver and passing the time idly conversing, and one of these passengers suddenly felt compelled to mention that the other strikes him as exhibiting a decidedly "un-Canadian" nature? Such situations are as likely to happen as the planet Jupiter acquiring a breathable atmosphere! So, as we enter the second decade of the 21st century and face multiple global crises that need and require our united and mature attention, what does it mean when sneering or self-righteous politicians and radio pundits in America "accuse" individuals or even whole portions of the population of being "un-American"? Is America regressing back to the nursery room of political development that we have people who think they can (and need to) make counter-claims as to what defines our identity as a nation? I think if we were to consult the law books of the United States, there would be a very simple answer as to whether a person or group of people are "American" or not: you are American if you were born in America, or have immigrated here and successfully progressed through the naturalization process for citizenship. That's it! Oh, but you say those pundits and politicians aren't being "literal" when they throw out such a characterization? Well then, what might they imply? If they are making a claim that being a citizen and obeying its laws are not enough to be called "American", then we have quite a ball of wax to melt through. You see, if they are getting into the primitive notion that truly belonging to any country has to do with being "culturally correct", then we are starting to step into mucky ground indeed. You see, there have been political figures in our recent past who have played with the concept of "cultural fitness" in order to decide who is really a "proper" citizen or not in their particular country (or empire). I don't have to comb very assiduously through the annals of human history to quickly come up with three very excellent examples who tried to go beyond normal and established legal definitions as to who is entitled to be (or remain) a citizen: Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler and Mao Tse-Tung. And there were terrible repercussions when those three leaders decided to play with such definitions of identity, weren't there? Millions upon millions were put to death, and not for any crime but that they did not fit the narrow definitions of membership decreed by their dictatorial states. Yes indeed, making claims outside democratically legislated, constitutionally-sound, humanely-reasoned determinations of how one becomes a legal member or retains legal membership of a country is courting the wicked figure of totalitarianism or fascism. For such wicked games to be played here in America is especially heinous, since we are a nation consisting of native peoples, immigrants and descendants of immigrants stemming from literally hundreds of ethnic origins. That such a contemporary and historical reality could ever support the notion that there is one monolithic definition of what makes a legitimate American strikes one immediately as a ludicrous thought event to consider let alone actually speak aloud with the air of authority. Yet it is sadly not merely ludicrous -- it is disturbing that such accusations in American society go so feebly challenged in a country that claims to be the leader of the democratic world. Oh, I'm not saying America does not have commercial and socially or religiously chauvinistic forces in the media who aren't doing their level-devilish best to influence and subtly intimidate the population into a form of cultural conformity. Americans are indeed bombarded by such things, and if all them succumbed whether out of fear, or a desire to belong to what they perceive to be the "winning team" and to appropriate its "credentials", democracy would surely die in this country. Indeed, anyone who might attempt to live according to the measurement chart of a "true, red-blooded American" would have to first kill their soul if they did not want to risk having a nervous breakdown or worse, and that is because any such social yardstick is an artificial construct concocted in a board room by master manipulators. Such self-appointed skull-measurers don't really care about Americans as people, but only how they can use Americans to achieve their ends for accumulating further power and wealth. Inevitably, each and every single one of us has his or her own special formative mixture of parental upbringing, family histories, life experiences, social institutional rearing, regional influences, spiritual priorities and values, and educationally-influenced expectations that shape our struggle to live life happily in whatever country we might inhabit. This is true the world over, where all countries through the vicissitudes of human history have multi-ethnic heritages, but most especially fundamentally pluralistic societies like America. I could go over what various political groups are so loudly positing as the defining traits of a "real American" or an "un-American" American, but that would be as much a waste of time as describing the potential accuracy of what one insect might tell another (if they had the power of articulate speech) when attempting to define what sort of creature a human being is.