Not only is this a week to continue celebrating recent election results which brought back all that is right and good to America, it's also a week during which some are encouraging us to think about "geography awareness."
And I just don't see the point.
"Some people out there in our nation don't have maps," is a phrase that will forever be burned into the minds of YouTube-watchers around the globe, thanks to South Carolina's 2007 Miss Teen USA competitor. And though many laughed as they should have, others took this as an opportunity to discuss xenophobia in America. Likely socialists, of course.
But, honestly, no one should really care about things like outside geography when we already know the US is the center of the universe.
So I'm calling for a boycott of this fruity Geography Awareness Week. All we need to know is right here nestled between our über-secure borders anyhow.
photo: America. That's all we need to know.
Everyone knows we're the best, brightest, smartest, strongest, safest, most moral country on earth (that is, if those pesky gays would stop wanting equal rights and getting us attacked by terrorists).
Having been raised by Evangelical conservatives, I know the US is a land where women know their place, and justice always reigns supreme. We have the absolute best health care system in the world and value the caregivers of those with long-term illness more than anyone on the planet.
We can learn from no one, nor do we need to.
Anyone who calls the US home and disagrees is anti-American. Questioning the direction of one's country, the hysterics of dramatized politics, or refusing to blindly agree that conservatism is the definition of patriotism, is downright hubris.
And that's just what something like Geography Awareness Week does -- encourages elitist arrogance and 'expanding worldview', maybe even independent travel. Blech. Why would anyone need to travel outside our manifest-destiny shores, or spend time with open-minded learning about other parts of the world? Only elitist jerks do that -- and we should shun liberal socialism-loving ideas. Think of our children and how harmful this commie way of thinking could be.
I mean, why save up a few thousand dollars to see South America for instance, when one could fly to Vegas with that same money and live the American dream of possibly hitting it big? The trip of a lifetime, reminding us that we don't need a strong middle class, nor should we tax the rich, because at any time we could make bucket loads of easy money. (Now that's travel.)
After all, we've already hit the jackpot by living in the Shining City Upon a Hill -- the center of capitalism and freedom for all.
As a travel writer, Kim Mance knows she's supposed to be more mainstream, turn a blind eye to pervasive xenophobia in her home country, and serve up homogenized top ten lists about the world's best beaches sprinkled atop a platter full of idealized vacation inspiration. Travel media should never talk about travel as a political act, speak of religion, or do things like bravely break the status quo and support suppressed local economies, even if it's the right thing to do.
Photo by istockphoto with notations by Kim Mance.
Boycott Geography Awareness Week by Kim Mance is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.