AWKWARD.

WARNING: Vaguely political content ahead.

Yesterday I experienced, for the second time in my life, what it's like to be the only American in a group of Europeans watching a Michael Moore documentary.

It's not a nice feeling.

In the US, I can appreciate Michael Moore because he's completely up-front about his bias, and if you sift through it you find interesting information and hear the voices of people you otherwise probably would never talk to in your day-to-day life. Sure, I wince at some of the generalizations and sure, I have some pretty heavy criticism, but if Fox News can have the motto, "Fair and Balanced," there's no reason someone like Michael Moore can't make documentaries in which he honestly states his personal beliefs.

But watching Bowling for Columbine in my "Imperio, diversidad y globalización en el mundo de habla inglés" class was just uncomfortable.

If you're watching one of his movies with an American audience, you can shake your head and wince at all the stupid stuff that goes on in our country. You get it. You've met people like that. You know what it's like. But as I was watching it at the Universidad de Córdoba, all I could think was, "Oh boy, more American stereotypes confirmed." Every proud gun-owner going on about shooting burglars (or building bombs) was another tally mark against my country in my classmates' eyes, or at least, that's what my paranoid imagination leads me to believe.

Then the professor stopped the movie to talk with us about how diverse the US is and how every state is different and has its own culture, and not all Americans support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan... and then my conscience kicked in and I wanted to say, "Our country as a whole supports these things, though. Collectively, we're guilty."

I don't want people from outside the US to get the impression that it's one big mess of violence and belligerence. But sometimes I see it that way myself.