It happened just the other day, and it represented a new low in my evolving identity as an American abroad. At a cocktail party that I worried was just about to go awry, I found myself surrounded by potentially hostile strangers with accents unlike my own. When one asked where I was from, I was tempted to lie and say: 'Canada'.
Why should I so casually consider shirking my national identity? I am sorry to disappoint Canadians, but it was not out of any great love for their country; rather, it was because of a growing discomfort and embarrassment about my own.
Since the September 11 attacks, the US has transformed into Ugly America, and sometimes, like at that cocktail party, I am cast in the archetypal role of the Ugly American. The conversation usually goes like this: non-Americans scathingly condemn the war in Iraq, ridicule the Bush administration and express their wide-eyed incredulity at the possibility that President George W. Bush could be re-elected. Then, with a wave of the hand, a rolling of the eyes or a shake of the head, they more or less dismiss me and my countrymen as a nation of simpletons. Feeling that such attacks are not just unfair but also downright insulting, I rise to the defence of my homeland. But I find myself grasping at straws. What is there to defend?
It is true that anti-Americanism can be as uninformed and vapid as the American jingoism to which the world has been subjected since September 11. It is also true that many Americans, especially those abroad, do not endorse Mr Bush's reckless response to the terrorist attacks on that fateful day. What seems equally clear, however, is that, no matter who wins Tuesday's presidential election, the country has charted a dangerous new course.
I have run out of cocktail party rebuttals and changed everything but my accent. The old America was, despite its flaws, a boon to the world. This new one is a threat. And the arduous, drawn-out presidential campaign has served only to underscore that threat. Let us not forget that while Mr Bush is the man who waged war on Iraq, Senator John Kerry was among those who voted to launch that war. A genuine anti-war position has not been a feature of the presidential debate.
On the broader subject of terrorism, the two candidates offer no rational approach to the underlying causes of this burgeoning international menace, but instead argue about who is better qualified to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden - who, by the way, might already be dead.