As most of you know I consider myself American.  More than that – in a joke you won’t get until A Few Good Men comes out unless you’ve read Darkship Thieves about a thousand times – I consider myself A Usaian.

But there is one think in which I must break ranks with y’all – and that’s when we talk about what I’d like to call deep history.

First of all, I’m going to say I don’t know history like ya’ll know history – by which I mean the US in general.  I don’t know if you realize this, but we probably have more “history hobbyists” than any other country in the universe.  By which I mean someone whose job it is NOT to study history, but who does nonetheless become an expert in a certain time or place.  For instance, my plumber is an expert on the attire, food, guns and what I’d call “daily life” of Colorado in civil war times.

I’m terrified of the various history hobbyists around the US.  I mean, most of them are rather forgiving, but no matter how much research I do, how well I track things, and how many of the hobbyists I enlist, if I write something set no matter in how obscure a time period, I’ll get fifteen letters saying “that shape pot didn’t exist in the fourteenth century.”   Or, “young lady, is this set in DUMAS’ time or the musketeers’ time?”  (Actually I do have an answer to that one and it is – it is set in the world of Dumas’ musketeers, which had bleed through.  In the case of the vampire musketeers, it’s an alternate.)

For five glorious years when we had money (pre-nine-eleven) I belonged to the history book club and one year I managed to spend something like nine thousand dollars in books.  It was a good year.  My husband thought I was insane.

This is not normal in other countries.  People don’t study history, much less THAT detailed a history, for fun.  Professors do, but as we know, they can have fun, but they can’t SHOW it.

So, in that as in so many things the common man in the US is a wonder and compares favorably the creme de la creme of other lands.  I take my hat off to you, and I’m both proud and humbled you let me be one of you.

BUT one thing you’re missing and that has two roots: you are missing the sense of how messy history really is, and how persistent.

There are two reasons for this – one of them is that the country is young and for at least half the people (and probably more) a linguistic barrier with the past intervened.  That is, in almost every American’s history there is one side where the parents had to learn a new language and could or would not ever fully communicate their legends and stories in English to their offspring.    The other part of this is that the country is mobile.  Some of these … what I’d call fossilized history are never fully expressed – they pass on because both parents believe them/know them/use them without thought.  But here, when a person from one part of the country (or another country [grin]) marries someone from far away, you sort of edge away from your crazier beliefs/expressions/traditions.  Many of them don’t live up to the full light of rationality, and when you try to explain them to your spouse, they disappear.

What exactly do I mean?  Oh, I mean stuff like the unexamined assumptions built into language.  For instance, the local slang word for pig and blond man was the same.  It was “Russo” Yep, the Russ Vikings DID raid that portion of the country.  Why do you ask?

And then there was the way that “The ancients said” put an end to any argument about how to do things.  Or charming proverbs like “He who has a mouth goes to Rome.”  (Never figured out if that referred to Catholic Church hierarchy or to ancient Rome.)

When I talked about fossilized faith, it was at that level.  How deep does it go?  Deep.  For instance, on the first of May everyone puts a certain flower in every opening of their house.  Why?  To keep evil spirits out.  If you research (I did) it turns out that the flower was sacred to the Celtic Goddess of Spring.

How deep?  Well…  Judging from the Tiffany Aching series, Pratchett and I share a fund of the same folk superstitions and culture.  And look, yeah, Portugal and the British isles had contact forever, but not that DEEP – not at the level of folk religion/culture.  There is, after all, the language barrier.  And yet…  And yet it’s there, and I suspect goes back to pre-Roman times.

So when people tell me that “human beings are rational” or “they just do things because everyone else does it” they’re ignoring the accumulation of history, the accretion of little meaningless-seeming details that, in their entirety, give form and texture to daily life, and even influence the seemingly-all-rational decisions we make.

The sort of fracture that US culture allows is good in a way.  It allows us to move fast, less fettered with meaningless tradition and history.  (And a good half of it if not more IS meaningless.)  My boys have been known to describe Portugal as a swimmer fettered to a large iron ball.  That iron ball is history.

On the other hand, when it comes to understanding human limitations Americans born and bread can be (not to say are.  Some aren’t) curiously lacking.  This is good to an extent: to dream the impossible dream and all that.  But it also makes people judge the US far more harshly and come up with bright ideas like the US can’t make war JUST to further its national interests, and if it does so, it’s “evil” – because the people saying this don’t realize every nation throughout history did this, and still does, in fact, when it can get away with doing it.  It leads to people turning on the US because it’s not perfect – because they don’t understand the essential “brokenness” of humanity and therefore of human history.

In the same way when dealing with other countries or expecting other countries to behave in a certain way.  The US can be the kid who sits there going “But that’s not rational!”  And of course it’s not.

I don’t know if there’s any way to get that feel for human history and the try-fail of human attempts at betterment without growing up in an old country.  Some of you have, obviously, managed it.  I know it takes more than the sort of hobbyist history that so many people engage in.  I suspect it takes questioning the texts themselves, looking for primary sources, and always thinking a lot.

To those of you who manage it – I am in awe.  To those who don’t – try to understand not every country is the US.  The US is in many ways uniquely blessed.  It doesn’t even come close to being uniquely evil.  Learn other countries’ history without blinders and without setting different standards for them.  And learn that what is in books is always only half the story.

Real history is a story of trying and failing.  Of falling to get up again.  Of keeping trying and keeping faith.  And sometimes you have to have great patience and work in increments to a goal.

No one is perfect, not even us.  Perfection is a goal to aim towards, but it can rarely be achieved.

By the by, guest blogging today at Vampchix and Bite Club