You are what you do
“This is not who I am” is a common phrase usually said by Americans when they get caught. Killers say it, distancing themselves from the crime, implying it was done by their shadow self or their evil twin. Sentence him, not me, they suggest.
A P.E.I. hammer thief tells a court, “This is not who I am.” Patrick Brown said the same thing on the night he resigned as Ontario Conservative Party leader after being accused of sexual misconduct. “I reject these accusations in the strongest possible terms. This is not how I’m raised. This is not who I am.”
Hulk Hogan used the phrase when he apologized for hideously racist remarks on tape. So did a North Carolina baby thief and a South Carolina woman who helped gang rape a sailor. So did a Lethbridge woman filmed screaming racist abuse in a Dennys, and a teenager in Glace Bay, N.S., who helped torture a boy with cerebral palsy by using him as a human bridge and walking on this back.
And then there’s Mark Zuckerberg saying Facebook’s crimes against humanity are “not who we are.” Yes, they are, very much so.
As the ironic website SorryWatch points out, it’s not good enough. “Like Prospero, you’ve got to say, ‘This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.’ ” But Americans have been trained to run for cover after a generation of therapyspeak.
The problem is that your behaviour is often precisely who you are, unless you find it anathema. If you’re a mean drunk, your inner jerk is going to come out of hiding and make himself known. People construct a “me,” a face they present to the world, but it leaves other people unconvinced.
Edward “Eddie” Gallagher, a longserving American navy SEAL, is in military court, charged with having shot at Iraqi civilians and stabbing a teenage Daesh prisoner to death with a knife he crafted himself.
Like the Trump boys, he posed in “deer kill” photos with the bloody corpse and an American flag. He was highly decorated, but find me an American soldier who isn’t.
According to the New York Times, Gallagher’s soldiers saw him shoot into civilian crowds, at young girls walking along a riverbank and an old man carrying a water jug, while threatening to kill his fellow soldiers too.
They were so alarmed that they altered his sniper rifle to make it less accurate and fired warning shots to scare Iraqis away from this soldier they considered unhinged. He thought himself an excellent sniper but other snipers considered him trigger-happy and out of control.
And what did Gallagher’s wife say? “This is not who Eddie is.”
Co-workers often know men better than their wives do. His defence lawyer says many soldiers have done what Gallagher did and so what. The navy says “he handed (Daesh) propaganda manna from heaven. His actions are everything (Daesh) says we are.”
And who are Americans? Daesh is precisely what Daesh is. It knows itself. President Obama used to tell Americans, “That is not who we are.” During his eight years in office, he said it 46 times on issues such as immigration, health care and education.
When President Trump was elected in 2016, it became clear that he knew exactly who Americans were: racist, contemptuous of education, eager to cut health care for others, happy to tear small children from their parents and cage them and so on.
He could see himself mirrored in those MAGA crowds and who’s to say he was wrong?
As Guardian writer Tim Dowling, an American, writes, the phrase is “selfexculpatory, if not completely delusional. It’s like handing over your (resumé) at a job interview and saying: “This is not who I am, by the way.”
The facts speak for themselves. You are what you do, unless you have vital information to the contrary.
I often think that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a higher opinion of Canadians than we do of ourselves. But that is who we are, trying to live up to our reputation as peaceful and rational while counting coins and worrying about immigration levels. Is Doug Ford who we are? Really? I mean, we have a choice.