The Authoritarian Within

No, you’re probably not Hitler, but look carefully and you may still find a brown shirt in your closet.

Rule the world? Nah, they just wanted to tell it how to live.

I am, and always have been a US citizen, but many adventurous years ago, when opportunity called, I answered, and set out to see the world; and apart from more or less infrequent visits, I didn’t come home for a long time, a long time —

— over twenty years.

I’ve spent most of my adult life anywhere and everywhere overseas, and survived it all, coups, tribal wars, disasters and diseases, and I’m ever so happy to be still breathing.

I didn’t survive by insisting all of my many host countries be like my own, or my hundreds of millions of hosts be like me. I survived (in places others didn’t) by respecting people and their customs, stepping back and learning, accommodating and adapting, by letting other people be themselves.

And, because I allowed them to be themselves — they almost all allowed me to be myself, an American, unique, as are we all, but American nonetheless.

Though I’ve been home for a few years, I find myself still getting used to my once again countrymen, and I’ve noticed something about us I hadn’t noticed, or hadn’t thought about years ago—we seem compelled to sort ourselves into groups…