Day 123: Patriotism Means I can Care More About the Beach, Than the Tsunami

I consider myself a fairly intelligent and educated person. True, my expertise is anthropology and literature, but I think any amount of advanced education or worldliness aides in our overall intelligence. I read extensively. I pay attention to politics, global events and news outside of that presented on E! Yet when the tsunami hit the America Samoas the other day and I was watching the coverage of the tragic wreckage, I had to ask myself and Google, “Where the hell are the American Samoas?”

Geography is widely known to be one of our most sorely lacking subjects in the U.S. school system. We learn American geography, all the states and capitals, where they’re located and if you’re an honors student, maybe even a bit about Central and South America, but that’s pretty much it. So what about the rest of the world? Especially today, in a world increasingly more akin to a global community, we shouldn’t just focus on reading about what’s happening in other places, we might want to take a minute to learn where those places are.

Why is it okay for us to not even be able to pick out the United Kingdom on a map? For that matter, how people actually don’t know that the UK isn’t just England, but in fact is made up of four countries. I laugh as loudly as anyone during those segments on Jay Leno or Conan where they ask people to point things out on a map, and they are so egregiously wrong it’s embarrassing, but funny. When I am the one who cannot pick out Iraq or the Sudan on a map, however, it hits home. Now, it’s not just other people that are stupid, I’m stupid.

So I did research the American Samoas and found out it is a group of islands in the Pacific, but then I did something that really showed that I am an American. Instead of going back to the coverage of the tsunami, I started looking to see if it was cheaper to vacation there because they are US territories. I understood it might take a year to get the beaches and vacay hotspots back in order, but I’m looking for next year anyway. This makes me a bad person right? Horrified by the destruction I research the islands, then when I realize they are pacific islands I stop caring about the lives lost and start planning my next trip to the beach. Being an American is fun, we don’t have to care about stuff we don’t know about and we don’t really know all that much.