A friend sent this email to a few of us old gradeschool/highschool buddies:
"As the summer moves along and the days pass since my birthday (this past Sunday, 24 July), my thoughts reflect on how things are here and how they might be back where you guys are. There's been a fair bit of antiamericanism being kicked around on this continent, enough for a local university to offer a program of study on the subject. It's actually reached the stage where I identify myself as Irish if a dodgy character asks
me where I'm from. On my recent trip to Croatia, particularly so. On your side of the lake, I get the sense from the NYTimes website that support for the war has dropped off and that people recognise they were fed a lot of bull in the beginning re why the whole thing was warranted. But the US economy continues to swell, so much so that tax revenue was up significantly despite Bush's tax cuts.
So where are yall's thoughts re the status of your country and its place in the universe, or at least the world? Let's hear from everyone."
And my response:
Eating lunch, so I have a bit of time to respond - btw, listening to an oldie but goodie on the old iTunes - Bauhaus' "The Sky's Gone Out" from the early 80s. Next up will be the surpisingly arty Swedish black metal band, Opeth.
Anyway, there is a laundy list of problems with America right now:
- our economy is doing GREAT - if you're a top 1% earner or a corporation. The rest of us sit in a sweat knowing that at any moment a kid in China or India might be able to take our job for a 1/10th of the salary. We all know the archetypical story of the fella in the rust belt who saw the writing on the wall and got the hell out of his manufacturing job and took classes and got a degree in IT. His former plant closed but he had a swell job maintaining the servers - until a kid in China or India took his job for a 1/10th of the salary. He did everything right but still got screwed. And let's not forget that to obtain the typcial American dream (nice job, house, coupla kids, a car) is like impossible now. If I want the privelege of living in a warzone-like neighborhood here in NYC I had better be prepared to shell out over 600K for a crappy one bedroom. Not kidding. Let's not get started on healthcare or educational costs.
- Meanwhile, the folks in India and China sure as hell aren't interested in doing our crap work indefinitely. So we continue to ship our crap work over there even when they are poised to become true innovative competitors - the first wave of Chinese made and designed cheap autos is set to debut soon. Yet we continue to "outsource" to a nation that will bury us economically within a generation. A recent article in the NYTimes seems to suggest that we Americans must become this "innovative, designer" class of citizen: design and create products and "micro-outsource" the labor to Indonesia or some crap. Yup - all 275 million of us Americans are going to design and sell cheap, foreign made products.
- Meanwhile, the only thing Americans are concerned with is our pop culture. We are obsessed with celebrity to the point where every pretty girl with a cellphone in the US thinks she IS a celebrity. In my part of the world, note well the preponderance of mega exclusive lounges and clubs, weekends in the "Hamptons" (a term which infuriates me - which Hampton are you talking about, you slack jawed production assistant? There's only like 5 of them) etc etc. How's Brad and Angelina doing? Tom and Katy? Please kill me now.
- Meanwhile, except for some exceptions in the major cities, every American is fat. Disgustingly, roly poly, polyunsaturated fat fat. Big American flag shirt and denim shorts wearing blimp ass fat Fat. Yet the health "industry" rakes in billions. Yup.
- Meanwhile, Christian Talibanists have been emboldened in a frightening way. While Europe is getting its shit together slowly but surely, we are debating evolution. And our "liberal" politicans simply CAN'T go on record as supporting gay marriage (and about that - WTF??? OK - let me get this straight. You support civil unions as in, gays can get every legal and economic right of a married couple except we don't call it a marriage. But these civil unioned gays can easily go to the Universalist Church or the Unitarian Church or various other willing denoms and get married, in front of the community and God. Get this - if you support gay civil unions but you don't support gay marriage then you are violating the religious protection clause of the fucking Constitution of the United States. You know - the same clause that allows the Roman Catholics, the Baptists, the Jews, the Hindus and the Muslims to NOT marry gays in their churches or mosques or temples. This is so obvious it makes my head hurt, but while our children simply DON'T do math or science anymore, we need to debate fucking gay marriage.)
- Don't get me started about GW Bush.
- Meanwhile, I fully realize that a President Gore would have saber rattled if not actually engaged Iraq. I understand there were/are strategic implications to that region and that a POTUS other than Bush would have done something about Hussein's non compliance with UN sanction. The problem is is that Bush tied Iraq not just to the War on Terror (tm) (r) but to our very personal safety. As in - if we don't get this fucker he's gonna give OBL a fistfull of money to kill us. He'll give him nukes or something! We're all gonna die! So the weapons weren't there, so what? We ACTUALLY invaded Iraq to "draw the terrorists to one place." Um, no? OK - get this! Out of the kindness of our hearts we have liberated the oppressed people of Iraq. As opposed to say a dozen different African nations, or maybe Haiti, that needed liberating. Iraq's got oil and shit. Bunch of neo-con pussies.
- meanwhile, American soldiers are still waiting to be greeted with those grateful flowers and kisses. But I "hate America" because I protested the war from the get go and still want to know the timetable for the troops' return.
The bottom line is this: Americans, for the most part, have lost their legendary spirit and gumption. We are fat, we are stupid, we are lazy and we are obsessed with the lowest common denominator pop "culture" offered to us. And when we are not consuming that culture or consuming a super sized Number 7 Whacky Meal we are reading all about celebrities (well - Americans can no longer read - we instead watch television shows where talking heads tell us all about those celebrities. These talking heads often become a form of celeb themselves. NB: Pat O'Brien) or shoving a handful of pills down our throats to make us "skinny." And we take pills for everything now. Remember that brief time when I was shy? I think that was 5th grade? Turns out I wasn't shy: I had Social Anxiety Disorder. There's a pill for that you know.
And because of this cloud of fat, pills, Christian Talibanism and pop culture obscuring our vision, we keep electing leaders who will gladly send you off to die for a lie, do nothing to protect you, will do anything to maximize the profits of their corporate greedpig ilk and would gladly sell you and your family down the river if it meant a vote or a tax break.
Stay in Hungary.
END OF REPLY
Yeah I was negative. Yeah, I'm a bit insulting. But I can't simply apply this degrading of our nation to the GOP's ability to "frame" better than the Dems. That's part of it - but when we have a citizenship that is blissfully unaware of just about anything except what sort of trouble Lindsay Lohan is in or whatever, how can progress ever be made?
Ah well, the weekend's almost here and the heatwave has snapped - I'll feel better. But what are your thoughts?