While preparing my last lesson plan of the semester, a comparison of the United States and China, I found that, according to the CIA World Factbook, the area of the USA is, surprisingly (at least to me), a little bit larger than that of the PRC. The next day, I tried this plan on my least favorite class, a group with enough apathetic and rude students to make things tense. Opening with, “Which country’s larger, China or the US?” I received my most enthusiastic reply of the semester, “China!!!” I followed up by asking in which way it was larger, population or area. “Both!!!” Putting the populations on the board, I then wrote down the areas and stepped back. I heard the reaction before I saw it: gasps, followed by a few hushed, hopeless whispers of “No!!!” Faces had lost color. Mouths were hanging open. Brains were overloading. I’d hit home and it hurt. “Ha!!! Haaaa!!!!! MY country’s BIGGER than yours!!!!!” With each blast that I unleashed, eyes blinked and dazed faces involuntarily snapped back. It was as if they’d been told that their families had died horrible and unexpected deaths. They were silent, but in a deep way, trying and failing to make sense of what I’d told them. In all of my subsequent classes, despite radically softening what I had to say, I saw variations of that same theme: shock and dismay. Was my students’ behavior nationalism? I thought so, until having a discussion with my friend from Iowa. Recounting my classroom experience, I then began to disgustedly complain about what I considered to be the nationalist shift in the United States in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. I chose as a symbolic example the dramatically increased use of American flags, both by a presidential administration that I consider to be a stain on the country and its good name and also by the general public in my region of it. In reply, he very reasonably told me that, after the attacks, he himself had put a flag pin on his book bag to show support. “Was that nationalism?” he asked. I said something about knowing who we are without having to wear it on our clothes, and then brought forward my guess that residents of his hometown might be more apt to have flagpoles in their front yards than those in mine (which he agreed with). But I knew that he wasn’t satisfied with my response. And privately, I wasn’t either. I realized that I, in fact, didn’t have a good answer to his question and had thrown those out to him to hide this. Over the next days I kept going back to my students’ reactions and my friend’s response to my frustrated ranting and asked myself: What is nationalism? I know that I experienced it in my country and I know that I’m experiencing it here right now. But what, exactly, is my definition of it? My dictionary didn’t really help so I was left to reflect on my own observations both here and at home: candlelight vigils, “freedom” fries, disturbing conversations regarding civil rights, the Chinese national anthem playing on bus sound systems and during TV commercial breaks, a foot massage lady with a scant handful of English words knowing enough to scream “Monkey!” when she sees a picture of George W. Bush, and gasping students who should have more important things to worry about than national square area comparisons. And so now, after much thought, I finally have a definition that I’m not totally dissatisfied with.

Nationalism: Exploitation of the masses’ essentially good (patriotic) intentions by the few in power (or seriously aspiring to it) in the interest of their own debatable intentions.

That’s the best I can do for now. I’ll see what my friend from Iowa thinks.