Sadie Interview

Being American means acceptance, welcoming, and a commitment to a way of life. It's not just a patriotic stereotype, but a dedication to a system that is under threat. Proud moments include getting a great education and feeling lucky to grow up in America. Feeling least proud was during the January 6th incident. The American identity is connected to the American dream and the ability to seek better opportunities. Representation is seen, but some stereotypes overlook the context of rural America. Traveling within America and abroad showed the diversity and vastness of the country. Being from the Midwest brings practical grit and awareness of blind spots. It's a mix of love and understanding of the limitations. Being American is an ever-changing experiment, with progress and regressions, and the constant reassessment of what America means. My first question for you is, what does being American mean to you? Um, I think for me, being American so much is not what it's said of sort of practices. It means acceptance and welcoming and a commitment to a system of life and a way of living that is sort of always experimental, but yet you stay committed to that despite growing hatred and vitriol. Um, so it's not like being American is like sort of a yeehaw, you know, a sort of convincing, but rather a commitment to a way of life that is increasingly being threatened by demagogues and dogmatic, dogmatic. Sorry, you cut out a little bit. Sorry. Okay, go ahead. Okay. Um, next question. Do you like being American and are you proud to be American? Am I proud of being American? Is that the second part? Yeah. Am I proud of being American? I think I've been used to. It's sort of how you define it. No, I'm very proud of being American. Has long had like sort of a bad rap, like it was sort of like an alt-right thing. But I would consider myself very patriotic and very proud of being American. But it's not like, again, it's not like a yeehaw thing. It's like a commitment to a way of life. My American-ness, I would say, is very Midwestern and very much a frontier ideology. Both of the people, a desire for the rights of middle class and blue-collar workers, and not so much patriotic for like the system. And I'm not saying like I'm a commie or anything, but I am saying that I am very much a cultural thing and not so much a systematic thing or a systemic thing. So, yeah. Last question. Can you think of a moment when you felt most proud to be American and another moment when you felt the least proud to be American? I think I probably felt the most proud to be an American. Probably when I moved to New York, I felt the most proud to be an American. Because like, you know our family, like after generations and generations of poverty and lack of education, I felt very proud that I lived in a country in which I had the opportunity to go and get a great education. That because of America, they accepted me as having a rightful place. And so like the fact that I did that, when we did that, made me very proud. As an American, you do have a lot of opportunities if you work hard. Like you can do a lot of different things. And probably the least proud was probably like January 6th. I did not feel very proud to be an American. Because these people that like espouse patriotism were like Confederate flag and Congress. And like I really felt ashamed of the fact that like these were also Americans. These were also my countrymen. And the divide between us was so great. Okay, what do you believe makes someone an American? Um, I think the only real thing that, it's really hard to say, but I think the only thing that connects Americans is like this American dream and body. It's got to move because everyone except for the Native Americans are not from here. And so it takes a certain type of person to like pick up and leave and go and to look for new horizons and to try something new and hope for better opportunities. Like I think there's not a lot that can unite America outside of that. But you know that is a unifying thing. I think it's a big thing. But that's pretty much the only thing I could really say. Okay, next question. Do you feel represented in America? Like does your identity feel represented? Does that replace? Um, yes I think so. I think oftentimes what I would consider my identity, which is sort of like this midwestern cowboy frontier thing, is represented in sort of a trite way. But I do see representation for sure. But I do, I am very conscious of the fact that a lot of people who espouse sort of our shared identity don't always have the best interest or have the context at heart of the fact that, like with the opioid epidemic and all the poverty in middle America, I think people sort of see us as rednecks and roughnecks and yada yada yada. But I am cautious of it, of the fact that people often don't see the context of rural America. But no, I definitely see myself represented. Okay. How have your world travels and your travels within America changed your perspective on what is America and the American identity? Um, I think a lot of it has made me see how lucky I am to grow up in America. Like seeing poverty in different parts of the world made me realize like poverty here is different from poverty in a third world country. Most people here can, even if they struggle, they can often find a lot of the things necessary for a better life. And also my travels within the country have made me more cognizant of people who try to systemize Americans into a sort of stereotype because this country is large and it is diverse and it is huge and there are 10,000 different ways of living and value systems. I think the value system is in LA versus the value system is in Appalachia. It's a completely different thing. But I think it made me realize that people who try to tell Americans what America is and what it is have really no idea how vast this country is in its ways of thinking. Okay. Next question. How does being from the Midwest play a role in your American experience? And you already kind of touched on this, but maybe you want to go more specific and like a specific example. Yeah. I think it gave me a grit that I'm very, very proud of. I think a lot of people who don't grow up in a rural situation don't realize the difficulties that arise with that situation. And I think it gave me, I thought like I was very moldable when I came to college and then I realized that like I am very much a product of the Midwest. I'm very much a product of that sort of like practical grittiness that I'm very, very aware of. Sort of that like you get up, you do your work, and you don't complain, which I think is an excellent value system. But I think in this day and age of like therapizing, and especially in New York and like where we're both therapizing and sort of cancel culture and stuff, it's made me like very aware of these differences in my sort of blind spots, but also where I think other people's blind spots are as it comes to like how do we assess other people? How do we access other people's culture and identity? And definitely things I was very unaware of, but like for example, when I did a presentation about the Ogallala Aquifer in school and I sort of explained ranching and I showed pictures or videos of branding, for example, and people are like, this is animal cruelty. And I'm like, no, it's not animal cruelty. And they're like, yes, it is animal cruelty. And just blind spots like that, that growing up in a situation, you just have no idea that that is even in people's purview. But coming to New York, you sort of see where your blind spots were and you see what you didn't see. So I at times very much love, I mean most times, I very much love being from the Midwest, but I also understand it gave me a lot of blind spots, and I'm very thankful to now be in New York and to be able to assess myself more fully. Because I think if you stay in one place your entire life and never leave, you never have the opportunity to see those blind spots. So very thankful for that sort of practical readiness, but also thankful to now have a New York statey who can assess these things. Okay, that's all the questions I have for you, but I don't think the first part of the interview, like the first question I asked you actually was recording. So do you mind if I ask you again? Okay. Yeah, sure, go for it. Okay. That question is, what does being American mean to you? I think being American to me means a sort of set of values and a system of living that many people see as antiquated and sort of regressive, but yet it is an American experiment. It continues to be the American experiment, and things are always changing, and what the founders wrote 275 years ago may seem sort of aggressive now and stupid now, but it is this experiment where you're constantly trying to reassess and reform the idea of an America, and it's this sort of system that gives rise to demagogues and dogmatic thinking, but it also gives rise to an incredible amount of progress, an incredible amount of political thought and philosophical thought and intellectual thinking. So for me it's an ever-changing tapestry of rights and wrongs and progresses and regresses and trying to reform our idea of what exactly we want out of our America. All right. That's it. All right.