If I were a normal teenager, this is what I would say.

I would say that to be an American means to be brave and patriotic and eat apple pie all the time. I would say that to be an American means to hate dictatorships and fly the flag on our lawns.

I would say that to be American is to work hard and come home to burgers and a happy dog.

But that isn’t really it, is it?

I think that what it means to be American is that you’re not smart enough to have moved to Canada by now. It means that you’re not brave enough to protest the fates of the children in detention centers on the Mexican/American border. Being American means that you don’t care enough to read the news and see that something’s rotten in the province of Washington D.C. It means that you’re too self-centered to know about Brexit or the unrest in South America. Think about it- we named  our wars the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. How many of those do you think the world has had?

Being American means that you’re biased enough to scoff at the Rohingya genocide and selfish enough to dismiss poverty in our own country. Being American doesn’t mean that you’re hard-working or future-oriented. It just means that you don’t care, and don’t think. And right now, I’m thinking of moving to Canada.