WTF America: Fundamentally misunderstanding the problem (Chapter 25)
Fundamentally misunderstanding the problem
This post is kind of heavy, so here's one of my favourite WTF America pictures to take the edge off
So I’ve noticed a recurring theme in this life, as well as in this country I currently live in. Everyone’s got a problem. Doesn’t matter what the problem is, everyone’s got one. They can talk about it for hours, or sometimes they won’t even recognize it as a problem. I’ve discussed this in the confidence chapter, the religion chapter, the working chapter. Because underneath it all, most people actually have the same problem. And that problem is fundamentally misunderstanding the problem in the first place.
Let’s cobble together an example. Imagine if you will that your country in undergoing economic depression (that shouldn’t be a stretch for most of us) and you’re having a rough time of it. You have a job, but taxes are too high, you don’t get paid enough to make ends meet, and overall shit is just kinda fucked. Who do you blame? Well, there’s plenty of people to blame for this problem you have. You could blame the dole spongers, that seem to have money when you don’t. Yeah, that must be it – your taxes are letting them sit on their ass, so they don’t have to work.
Another example; the other political party are in power, and boy they are so much worse than the political party that you support. They enact policies that are harmful to your way of life, that impinge on your freedoms, that make the whole country go to hell in a handbasket. They give welfare (corporate or otherwise) to people, they take away or distribute guns. Damn other party, fucking up your roll.
The issue with these worldviews is that (and sing along with me, now) people are fundamentally misunderstanding the problem. Why are taxes high? Why are your wages low? In 2000, before the market crash, before 9/11, the unemployment rates were really low. Everybody was working. So did everyone decided within those ten years to become the “Non-working class” as I’ve heard them described, or have circumstances changed. Maybe your wages are depressed not because your taxes are too high, but because the market has devalued your labour because there’s an overabundance of labour. When everyone’s looking for a job, and they’re glad to have any job, wages go down.
The $10/$15 minimum wage argument is an interesting one. Most that I’ve talked to think this is either the best idea ever, or it’s the worst idea ever. Let’s begin from the position of the nays – it’ll cause inflation, people don’t deserve the money for the kind of work that pays minimum wage, tips mean that people earn higher than the minimum wage, the minimum wage isn’t supposed to be a living wage. Here’s where people are (sing along) fundamentally understanding the problem – none of that really matters. The isn’t an unemployment crisis right now, there’s a wage crisis. If people can’t afford to spend anything in a demand side economy (I demand; therefore you supply, instead of I supply; therefore you demand) then it doesn’t matter how much is in supply. If wages are higher, then people can buy things, then as demand picks up, supply can pick up which lifts up the whole system. Then there’s more demand for labour as business can’t meet supply, and you see how this cycle perpetuates. The argument about the minimum wage isn’t about the wage itself, it’s about resetting the floor on the labour market so more money is injected on the bottom rung of the working economy.
The other party. Oh the troubles they cause. Their policies are the pits. They don’t represent the will of the people, so we should vote for the party we like and then we’ll get the representation we want. What’s that? Local elections? Nah, we don’t need to turn up for those, they’re not important. And there is where people (sing, sing, sing) fundamentally misunderstand the problem. Back home when there’s an election, a party gets in, and then the opposing party forms what’s called a shadow government. This shadow government appoints ministers, and committee members and whatnot for the purpose of telling people what decisions they’d make, if they had the power. Every single political party that I’ve ever seen on the opposition benches is great at being in opposition. They wouldn’t do this, they would do that, they would like to issue an official statement about the policy that etc etc so on and such other bullshit.
Leading is different. The whole nation is in opposition to you (it must seem) and every decision you make will be second guessed and ridiculed. And maybe that’s a good idea, keep those bastards humble. However, once they flip sides, and the other party gets in, they’re the best leaders in the world. Every party is the best party in the world – when they don’t actually have the power to do anything. Sometimes they’re very good at obstructing the other party, as the GOP has been this last few years.
Switching your vote to the other party, or abstaining from voting, or other things of that nature doesn’t fix the problem you have, because money’s the problem. Politicians vote in accordance with the moneyed interests. Either their own, or a lobbyist, or what they believe is best for the economy of their state, country etc etc. Voting doesn’t impact nearly as meaningful a change as writing to your representatives does. A group of Irish vapers contacted their representatives in Europe and managed to swing a vote. Talking to your government, and making demands of it in those times between elections is what’s important. If you vote, then abdicate responsibility for four years, I guess your vote mattered a little, but you chose the outcome of those four years.
I’ve fundamentally misunderstood problems in the past. With education, and the ability to dissect your media, you get a much better idea of the root cause of problems. I’m not saying that I’m smarter than anyone, and that you must agree with me, I’m just asking that people think more deeply about the causes of their problems. Sometimes they’re not even problems that you have, you just think they’re problems and you have them. Persecution complexes are abound and people believe they have problems that they don’t. Perhaps what’s worse is, in line with the whole ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires’ bit, people ignore problems that exist. Economic issues, racism issues, privilege issues. These things exist here as much as they exist anywhere else.
The main problem with (# # #) fundamentally misunderstanding the problem is that people put their energy and resources in the wrong place. Instead of voting for a good third party, people vote against the guy they hate. Instead of fighting a war on poverty, we fight a war on the poor. Instead of worrying about police brutality, we’re questioning how much of an angel a victim of brutality was. We make these justifications because we approach the world with a worldview that (# # #) fundamentally misunderstands the problem, so we make bad decisions. One could almost call it prejudice.
When I (# # #) fundamentally misunderstand, I ask myself why. Does someone have a vested interest in me not getting it? Am I privileged, or prejudiced, am I wrong, misinformed, misled, or just plain ignorant of some facts that exist.
You would hope that most Americans were a little more media savvy than most people, being that they’re surrounded by media. But sometimes you realize that Americans are a lot like the rest of the people worldwide, and you don’t realize this fact because they’re showing off their best qualities, their empathy, or their humanity. Sometimes Americans can be dicks. Sometimes it’s towards a whole group of people that don’t deserve it. And sometimes they’re the most compassionate people on earth. Mostly they’re both at once, because you can’t condense a people down to a single example.
But since we’re condensing down a year’s worth of personal experience of mine, let’s continue. It bugs when we don’t self-examine. Self-examination, and not just the kind that doctors recommend at least once a week, is important. Everyone should be engaged in it, because when you truly understand yourself, you can begin to understand the people around you. And that’s what I’d like people to fundamentally understand. I’d love it if everybody knew it deep down in their bones. That each of us deserves that which all of us deserve. When we start reducing other people to problems, we strip each other of our humanity. The homeless problem is about people, not the problem. The poverty problem is a problem because people are poor, not because one column of numbers is a perceived drain on another column of numbers. The gun problem, the mental health problem, the employment problem, the wage problem, the national security problem, the problem with kids these days, the problem with the democrats, the problem with the republicans, the problem children, the problem drinkers, the problem with taffy these days….
We reduce other people because then we don’t have to think about it, we can just think about the problem. Problems, a lot of the time are easy to solve when those problems are not not attached to people. “We could solve the homeless problem if we just ticketed people in city centres” is the kind of suggestion that someone took seriously and implemented. But because our old friend (# # #) fundamental misunderstanding, someone thought the problem was that homeless people were sleeping in the city centres, when the real problem is that people have slipped through the cracks and are living on the street.
I’ve said that we need to imagine each other complexely, and that the truth resists simplicity (I believe I have, and if I haven’t before I’m quoting author John Green) and we need to live by those maxims. We need to engage with painful truths about racism, sexism, and violence if we hope to live in a peaceful society. But hey, maybe I’m (# # #)… you get what I’m driving at.
WTF America: Healthcare (Chapter 24)
Healthcare
Something, something, railway to hell. Not every caption is a winner.
Boy have I not been looking forward to this one. It’s been on the list of prospective topics since the beginning of this work, and I’ve dreaded it. Because this topic is so huge and nebulous. It’s like trying to eat a bowling ball – how the hell are you supposed to get into it, to the fleshy center? How to penetrate this thick skin? Oh well, fortune favours those that attempt to write about the American healthcare system. Let’s start with my personal experience of healthcare.
So by all accounts I’m a relatively healthy and robust individual. I’m overweight, but as far as doctors I’ve talked to are concerned, I’m relatively ok. I no longer smoke (I do vape) I walk to keep my trim 215 pound figure. I drink beer, but hopefully not to excess. I ride a bicycle, and I ride like I’m a vehicle most of the time, so I’m unsure how that shakes out on the scale of exercise vs. exposure to danger. I’ve been eating my veggies, drinking my water, and staying off the crack pipe. I’ve never broken a bone, not that I’m aware of, and aside from occasional vertigo tilt after spending a while in the back of a car on the freeway at night, I haven’t had an run ins with the healthcare system. Never spent a night in hospital, aside from the whole being born in a hospital gig. People say when the chips are down “At least you’ve got your health.” I’ve got a pretty good relationship with my health now that I’ve dropped 60 pounds and started eating better.
I feel like I’m the sort of poster child for someone that doesn’t need insurance. I don’t work in a dangerous job, I’m pretty careful, I’ve got all my fingers and toes. I’ve fallen over a few times, but I’m fairly steady on my feet. Aside from the flu, I’ve got all my shots. I’m housebroken. I’m the full package, ladies. Back during my career as an unemployed dole jockey, there were benefits to consider. One of these benefits was the medical card. The medical card is one of those wonderful products of a welfare state, because it’s a benefit you receive because you’re unemployed. It functioned to reduce costs on the individual. Prescriptions were cheaper, stays in the hospital, trips to the emergency room, routine doctor visits for little things, dental checkups, free eye test every two years, that sort of thing. It meant that you could offset the cost of medicine, and of care, so that people didn’t remain chronically sick, because when you’re unemployed and sick, the last thing you need to do is spend the little amount of money you have on getting better. Can’t get a job when you’re sick, so if you’re broke, let’s make it a little easier. It was a good system.
I encountered a similar system when I was living and attending university in Northern Ireland. They have the NHS there, and if you’re a student you can get a card. Just register with a doctor, and you can get what you need for free. No cash money down. Sure, you pay it in taxes over your lifetime, but that’s how socialist healthcare works. “No money down; new knees today! No waiting!” Well there’s some waiting sometimes. I got a tetanus shot, I had blood tests to check for diabetes. I didn’t avail of the NHS all that much – didn’t have a need of it – but it was very nice to know it was there. I had wisdom teeth pulled on the NHS after being referred by a doctor across the border. I’ve had a few wisdoms pulled, never had to pay money for it, because I was unemployed. If you have non-pressing issues like that you can either pay to get it done now, or go on a waiting list and then you’ll get it done later when you get to the top of the list. The NHS even sorted out my tied tongue, for free. It was a good system.
And then I see this system. First off, the model is insurance based, not government based. So you’d imagine that the system would be stacked in favour of insurance companies, and you’d be right. There exists some terms, that make it deliberately hard to understand your insurance. ‘Deductible,’ ‘copay’ and ‘coinsurance’ and I’ve run across these words because as I type the enrollment for the affordable care act is open again this year. The deductible is the amount of money that you have to pay out of pocket before your insurance begins to cover you. So for the first $10,000 (or less) comes out of your pocket, if I’m understanding this correctly. So you get insurance and then it doesn’t pay for anything unless you have to fork out $10,000 first. Thus far this isn’t sounding like a good system.
Then there’s the copay. This is the amount of money that you must pay after the deductible. So you’ve forked out your ten grand, but to stop you using the insurance you have to pay a little bit out of pocket. I don’t understand why anyone would willingly go to the doctor for no reason, and then receive a prescription for no reason. I’m sure these people exist, but you’ll be paying out of pocket even when the insurance is paying for stuff. Add on top of this the monthly premium you have to pay. There are lifetime limits (I think that’s what they’re called) which mean that you will never pay more in a year than a fixed number regardless of the care that you need, but honestly that’s for people with large and chronic medical conditions and bills. I’m sure that’s a small number of people that have insurance, but being sick in America is expensive as shit.
I cannot for the life of me understand coinsurance. It seems to be another copay that applies after you exceed the deductible. Any healthcare pros out there that are reading, I’d love a better explanation of all three terms. I’m baffled in my attempts to protect myself in case I get sick.
So I’ve bantered on about the boner pills, but there are advertisements for everything. Even medications for really niche medical conditions that people have. They’ll even advertise a new medication for a new condition, and they’ll preface this by scattering symptoms around the commercial. “Do you go to sleep at night, or not, and wake up in the morning, or in the night? Do you toss and turn, or do you sleep soundly but still feel groggy? Then you have (some fucking thing wrong with you) and we just so happen to have a pill for it.” And then there’s a litany of disclosures that this medication might kill you, or turn you into a monster truck that craves human flesh or something. It’s baffling.
I don’t pry into the medical lives of my friends, but I’m wondering just how many people around me are on medications at all times. You hear that people are acting like they’re off their meds, and it makes me wonder if they are. Listen to the TV and you’ll believe that everyone should be on something. Everyone’s sick. But if everyone is sick, wouldn’t the healthcare system be better at curing them, or managing their pain, or defeating their illnesses? Medical companies are routinely among those that make the greatest profits worldwide, so why i anybody still sick?
Well clearly people are still sick, because it’s about money. Buy insurance forever, and keep paying the copays and keep coming in under the deductible and you’ve got the world’s greatest money spinner. I’ve heard that the need of medical care, and especially prescriptions is an “Inelastic demand” which means that if it costs $5 you’ll pay because you need it, and if it costs $100 you’ll pay because you need this if you wish to continue being alive. That’s no system that needs to have profit as its goal. That profit model will kill people.
If you’re like me, and a lot of people are despite the insistence from the TV that we’re sick, and you’re sturdy enough, you’ll figure you don’t need insurance. So people don’t pay in, and premiums go up because there’s a smaller pool of paying customers and a larger (relatively) pool of sick people that are drawing from the insurance. These people aren’t wasters, or fraud kingpins; they’re sick. They need healthcare. Used to be if you had a preexisting condition, insurance companies could deny you coverage. They could do all sorts of shit before the Affordable Care Act became law, now it seems that it’s a little better.
But it’s still baffling and money motivated, far as I can tell. I’m not against doctors earning money, or technology marching forward with the proper funding, but the system couldn’t give a shit about that in the grand scheme. Grind money out of the sick, grind money out of the well. Sell the well vitamins, and scare them with how expensive hospital stays are. Tell the well to stay well or the disease bogeyman will get them. Ebola will get them, so sell them hand sanitizer and gas masks. Americans are terrified of getting sick, and I’m sure it’s because everything is so fucking expensive. Just watch the show Breaking Bad if you want a party realistic look at what people will do when they’re scared of dying. Yeah, I get that it’s fiction, but my point stands. When you’re sick, you’ll do anything to get well. You’ll pay outrageous money, and they know that. So they’ll charge you outrageous money. This isn’t a good system.
Pay more in taxes, subsidise healthcare, create a single payer system, nationalize it, offer tax incentives, spend less on the military, or corn subsidies. Do fucking something to fix this. Because this looks to me like some kind of very slow motion disaster. Sick people should only focus on getting well. That’s how you keep a country happy, by keeping them healthy. I know some healthcare professionals, and they’re incredibly dedicated to keeping people out of hospitals. There are sick people in hospitals, and the carers I know wish to get them the fuck out of there, because if they never see you again they did their job. You’re well now. And these are the people that deserve the damn money, not a bunch of… thieves. Insurance is a form of thievery, and these guys are the best in the world at it.
So far no one in my time here has employed the phrase that I’ve been waiting for; “If you don’t like it, then you can get out.” I’ve seen it, it just wasn’t directed at me. I’m growing very fond of this country and its people. But that doesn’t mean that I’m about to just accept those things I see that are repugnant to me. This is not a good system. Needs fixing. Get somebody on that.
WTF America: Religionish (Chapter 23)
Religionish
First you get the power, then you get the women, then you get the tea scented candles
Ohh what a hum dinger. So we know that your average Yanquai is posessed of great confidence. Those in positions of power hold even more. And those who appoint themselves to positions of power hold the greatest confidence of all. Your neighbourhood watch are of the belief that they are arbiters of decency and community, when really they’re a bunch of lawn gnome dictators at best, and people that stalk the streets as wannabe police officers at worst.
Your common or garden variety nosy parker usually contents themselves with being in your business, perhaps the business of a cul-de-sac, occasionally the business of a whole village. Your next level of asshole feels it necessary to command the peoples of a larger area. For example, these are your city councilors, the country officials, Sheriff Joe Arpaio. It’s not enough to simply hold power, these folk feel the need to command it, to grind it out as much as possible, to continue to turn the screws, to eek out ever more, and ever more, and ever more. At this level of power you begin to see people dictate how others must live. They enact policies petty, paltry, and powerful within a limited area. No standing on street corners after 7pm. No trick or treating, no eating in public parks unless one brings enough to share with all other attendees of said park.
Further echelons of power bring further reach, and often further corruption, but as you grease your way further up this downward facing ladder, you’ll find that the expectation is that the greater the power, the greater the reach. So the people of your town believe that they have an impact on the county. The county people believe that they may as well represent your state or province because it’s basically the same thing. States run countries, countries run coalitions, coalitions run continents, so on and so forth, you get what I’m driving at.
However, no matter how far you go in this particular chain or power, your time is (in theory) limited by term limits, or whims of party support, or you simply become too old to elect. This petty fiddle faddle that you institute can be mostly undone once the next guy comes in, which means your power is fairly limited, fairly short lived, and ultimately you become pretty powerless. Checks and balances are a wonderful thing.
So where else do you go for power, if not in the legislative branches of your particular governments? Well you get involved in homeowners associations, or you become a landlord. You run your way up the land and money ladder. There you get to put the screws to people for money, and you will accumulate more money over time, which begets more money with which to oppress the proletariat, if you get my meaning. Money is a powerful motivator, and if you manage to position yourself as wealthy, you will be given not only the power that your money commands, but you’ll be given vastly more power than you deserve. It boggles my mind when people listen to the likes of Donald Trump, but then I remember he has money, ergo he has power, ergo he can say whatever the fuck he likes and people will listen because he has an abundance of the former, and therefore an undeserved overabundance of the latter. Money is power for sure.
But how fleeting is money, how fleeting is that kind of power? Well, it’s remarkably resilient as it purchases the electoral kind of power. Enough money would make most people willing to do most anything. So say you’re unelectable, and you can’t get your hands on money. You could attain power through force. People do it the world over, by installing themselves as warlords, or they become gang members and leaders, or they join armies either organized or otherwise. This is a popular method of gaining power, if the constant chattering of the blinky box in the corner is to be believed. People get themselves to a position of tyranny, and they’re very hard to remove. The only checks and balances seem to be more, ever increasing violence. But you can only oppress people so long. Look at the soviet revolution in 1917, or the Irish, French, or American wars of independence and times of revolution. People, in great enough irritated numbers, will do most anything to oust those in power once they’ve had enough. Everyone’s got their breaking point.
So what’s left, after you’ve gone through all these institutional power structures. Well, there’s always religion, and this is perhaps the most egregious example of power. It’s unelected, it’s everlasting, and it has a leg up on almost all other forms of power out there institutional or otherwise – it’s in your head. Religion doesn’t have to beat you over the head to make you think their way, they just have to scare you into it. By the way, examples around the world will show you that religion is more than willing to beat you over the head physically, given the right circumstances.
But let’s stick to our main thread here. Religion is a power that people internalize, in that they internalize an external power. They give up their personal power, because religion offers answers, and it allows people to abdicate their responsibility. I’m not talking about the personal experience of religion by the way – you can find a way to your own personal Yahweh all the live long day, but when the institution trumps individual thinking, you’ve given up your free will, which I believe is one of the greatest things a human possesses. Free will makes you stand up and say “Hey… we’re getting fucked here, and I for one am at least a little miffed, I don’t know about you guys.” This sentiment is sometimes followed by the throwing of bricks, but at least we’re sort of on the right track as long as people understand their situations.
So you’ve given up your personal power, and you’re surrendered to the church. Now you are a vessel, waiting to be filled, in the language of some church (probably, I’m sure someone has said it) and you are going to be filled with those things that someone has decided. There are plenty of things to take away from the various religious books around the world, but the thing I keep landing back on is the whole “Love they neighbour” kick. The golden rule is to treat others as you would have others treat you. But that’s not important once the man with the power comes in. And there’s always a man who got some power somewhere.
American religion, the limited amounts of it that I have seen, appears to have a very low barrier to entry. There’s no special clothes, no 7 years in seminary, no magical pointy hats and gold cups. You can pretty much get into a building, and start talking, and you’re a church. Start collecting donations, tax free, and you’re a church. “The seventh lamb of the aching heart of the first christ jesus” on the front of your building probably makes you a church too. American religion also seems to be some sort of nailbomb that went off. Infinite splinters, infinite smaller fissures cracking outwards and downwards from larger fissures forms smaller and more specialized churches. They have this word, ‘Christian’ which baffles a boy that grew up with a catholics vs protestants mentality. I’ve heard that people who declare themselves atheist in Northern Ireland are asked a follow up question; “Yeah… but are you a catholic atheist, or a protestant atheist?” which is one of the most ridiculous questions that exists. There’s no christian sensibility that I’ve found, unless I was talking to born again christians, and let us not talk of them.
Actually, let us do. They’re here, and I’m fairly sure this idea started here. Because the lord is forgiveness, you can repent at any time, and you’re in. When asked about the amount of sins one commits during a lifetime, while still accepting the lord as your saviour, fundamentalists have told me that “You still get into heaven… but God won’t be very happy if you were a sinner.” Saved if you do, and saved if you don’t, it seems.
Why do people ascribe to religion. Having retired from catholicism some 10 years ago, I couldn’t tell you anymore. I guess for some, it provides comfort in a scary world, for many it provides a routine that they set their weekly watch by. Some volunteer for their love of community, some feed the homeless, some travel to other countries to build schools while spreading the word. Which kind of seems like an asshole move; “Sure, we’ll build a library, but you guys have to pray with us while we do.” No free lunches, no free libraries. it seems.
But I’ll wager that a lot of people are in it for the power. You can lead a congregation without qualification, if you talk nicely, and you’ve got the confidence, and if people feel that you’ve got the straight dope on the lord. But that’s kind of it. Once people are in that position, they can say whatever they want. And people will listen, even if they hate your message. Which explains the Westboro Baptist Church. No peace a love among these people. “God hates fags” is their rallying cry, if you hadn’t heard, and I’m sure you have. Ignoring these people diminishes their power, because they do it to get a rise out of people. This is trolling, with a bible.
Speaking of trolling with a bible – the religious protestors in my neighbourhood. I’ve mentioned them before, but they’re an example of this little bit of power mentality. Once they gain even a grain, a modicum, a speck of power, they immediately turn it to the work of oppression. They browbeat people, they shout at people, they display their images and they bring hatred. About 50 yards away from the taco shop. They’ve got this maelstrom of tiny power, confidence, bigotry, and nosy parker syndrome that makes them stand out there to tell people what to do. Combine the little-power that religious leadership brings, with the belief that if you don’t yell at people you’ll go to hell, and add in a dash of “I can’t think for myself” and you’ve got these people.
Kimberlee has a wonderfully calming phrase; “They’re doing the best with the information they have.” And she’s right. They’ve received information, and they believe that it’s the best information out there, and they’re living by it. I live by the best information I can get my hands on. But when you go to organized religion like that, and you abdicate responsibility, are you really doing your best, as a person or a reported child of the lord?
The religion here runs the range from that “Gimme that good old religion” religion, to the new “Fuck the unbelievers, we’re the only true faith” people. And honestly, it doesn’t look like religion to me most of the time. Looks like people with that little-power, that micro tyranny that sits in the minds of followers and punishes them when they have a thought. When you get people to punish themselves before they even act, I guess you’ve gotten your hands on the greatest power you can access.
Enterprising religious assholes.
WTF America: Another planet (Chapter 22)
Another Planet
Follow me on a journey. You had taken your protein pills, you have put your helmet on. You’ve been blasted into space, and your mission to be the first dude out the door on a new planet. As you travel, you see the place you come from fade behind you, and you travel past star systems, nebulae, and cosmic wonders. Your mind travels as you travel, you consider just what you’ll find when you arrive.
You fly, weightlessly, through clouds of neon and xenon, the atoms crackle against the hull as you are safe inside, shielded from the radioactive malestrom outside. Your new home is far away, and you’ve been briefed on some basic information. You know some landmarks, you’ve been warned about the local plants that you don’t want to eat, and the local animals that you don’t want to poke with a stick.
Your verdant fields of green will be replaced with sparse vegetation, with a lot of rocky outcrops, scattered rocks, and sandy plains. You won’t be able to see the activity of glaciers, because the landing zone wasn’t on as high a latitude as your home country. You were nominated for this great honour by your friends, your romans, your countrymen, and you’ll be the first. Like I said, you’ve been given some scant information, so really you have some soft information. It’s not a hard and crunchy fact. It’s not a truth that you can measure against, it’s a truth you can test again and again.
But you land on the planet, and you find 7-11s, and cadillacs, and some weird version of football that primarily arranged around big men colliding against one another while grabbing an egg shaped ball, with their hands. Little kicking, no sphere. It’s not like the reports at all. Much more to the point, this planet is inhabited by strange aliens. They’re around 6 feet tall, they look similar to you, but not the same, and the say things like “Hi Helen” and “Thanks, Obama!” This was not in the report. So these humanoids consume foods, some of which is similar to the foods you grew up with, but the ingredients can be very different.
So they look humanoid, but you come to the conclusion at some point that this species evolved independently from yours. It’s like when you hear about life on other planets, and there are creatures that somehow figured out how to live on sulfur instead of air, or something. It’s not quite the same. It’s like a mirror world.
Honestly, culture is the big thing that makes this planet different. Sure, you can chalk weather and such down to axial tilt and the rotation around the local star, but the majority of the stumblings blocks in integrating with this society will be cultural. But the plan wasn’t even necessarily to integrate with this culture. The paperwork didn’t tell you that there would even be humanoids, so you’ve got to learn their ways fast. I liken it to the story they tell about the first thanksgiving (More on that in a later chapter) The way I heard it was that the native americans taught the pilgrims to farm during their first year on The Northern American continent, and then they had a big harvest festival to celebrate. Additionally I’ve heard that the pilgrims were a bunch of morons in search of cold, so without native intervention they’d have frozen to death and starved, because it’s hard to eat gold.
As with most human cultures that happen upon an outsider, this culture you’ve stumbled upon took you in. They give you some local food, they give you a funny tasting drink, they dust you off, and they get you out of that silly spacesuit that is too hot for the local climate. They begin to explain, through a series of gestures and some words that you apparently have in common, how this planet functions. They appoint a king every few years, and everyone hates him during his term. They tell you how their interesting food works, and the marvellous processes they’ve derived for making something called ‘Whipped Topping.’ You explain to them your culture, you tell them about your planet, and your journey across the stars, and they seem interested. The more you tell them, the more both parties realize that there are more and more things in common. The present you with a beer like substance, and a cheese like substance, and a tv show like substance. It’s all there, but it’s all slightly different.
Ok, I’ll put this tortured metaphor to bed. My point is that there’s a sense of the uncanny for me, a lot of the time. I was out in the desert with some friends, shooting for most of the day, so my brain is full of sound and fury right now, but I’ve been comparing it to last year when we went shooting. I was a new person in this country, and had never really handled a gun before, and I had never encountered this sort of environment before. I didn’t know where the social faux pas were, to the point that when I received a compliment on my good shooting, I was sure that I had done something wrong. When you live on planet America, it kind of resets your expectations of how people are going to act. It’s best to ask if you don’t know, because in my experience people love to talk and they’re more than happy to talk when it comes to a subject they know well. I’ve found this to be pretty universal wherever I’ve been.
Your expectation is that, I guess, people will be much the same and that’s true to an extent. But Americans, because of their differences in culture, are like a different species of people that has evolved in isolation in tandem with yours. You share the same root species, but there was a branching at some point where things diverged. To make a crass point, interbreeding is still possible, but I feel like Americans are a distinct species compared to me and my people. Distinct enough to note differences, and those differences are distinct enough that I felt it necessary to write this book about it.
I’ve gone native on this new planet. Their way of life makes a lot of sense, once you start to swing your perspective around until it lines up with the way they live, and their culture. When surrounded by the abundant food, and the firearms, and the politics, and the ways of thinking, you can feel your brain start to make different connections. I’m sure that there’s no American brain, but I’m fairly certain there’s an American way of thinking. I’m not sure that I’m totally on board with it, but I feel the species gap narrowing, because no matter how great the cultural gap, it can be bridged. I didn’t realize for a long time today that one of my shooting mates was British. She’d lived here for so long that she looked American to me, and she sounded that way too.
I wonder if this is the fate of explorers that come to Planet America. The culture surrounds you, takes you in, you forget that there are other worlds out there, because your thought process extends only as far as the planet you live on. Obviously I’m aware this is planet earth, I’m employing an extended metaphor. But this is how it’s felt to me. And if you’re able to get back to your home planet, what do you tell them? What information do you bring? Like living on the moon and settling down – would the children be so accustomed to the local gravity that they couldn’t possibly live back on old terra? Then the cultural valve suddenly flows in the other direction. They become the explorers, going back to the old world, and they see the difference. But do they see difference, or do they just not see the things they know?
I know when I got here that I was searching for markers of the old planet here. And things may have rhymed, but they were not interchangeable. Maybe that’s how you settle on a new planet – by not attempting to make it like the old one. This new one has it’s own atmosphere, it’s own ecosystem, it’s own humanoids. So plant, sow, explore, tame, observe, understand. You’d be amazed at the things that can grow and flourish here. And they’re all things that weren’t in the mission statement, things that weren’t in the paperwork.
WTF America: Is Arizona Insane? (Chapter 21)
Is Arizona insane?
Crazy to sell Christmas tress in Arizona? Yes.
So when I moved here there were questions. Many questions. The main question from Americans was; why of all places that you could choose, would you choose Arizona? Well the simple answer, and the answer most representative of the truth is as follows. Kimberlee, my wonderful wife, is from California and she was having a little bit of a tricky time freelancing. It was satisfying work, but it was a lot to handle and the money wasn’t quite where we wanted it to be. So Kim was offered a corporate-ish job in Arizona and she took it. After a year or so of working there the company said she wasn’t a good fit, and she was handed a severance. Then the freelancing started up again, but this time it was in Arizona, not in California. This is the first time Kimberlee has lived outside of California by the way.
The simple answer is that I had planned to move to California. But, as the song goes, My love grows where my Rosemary goes. And nobody knows like me, fellas. So part we waited on the immigration process until Kim moved to Arizona and got settled. One of the reasons she moved was to provide more stability for the immigration process, so you guess you could say that it’s my fault that I ended up in Arizona.
A lot of what I hear from people that live in Arizona – because most moved here, I’ve let a lot less natives than I anticipated – is that they moved here because it’s cheaper than California. They stay because it’s cheaper than California. They settle down, and buy houses, and raise children, and start businesses because it’s cheaper than California. And it is. Moving from there to here upgraded Kimberlee from a one bedroom condo-flat to a 3 bedroom house for the same price. Food is cheaper, utilities are cheaper other than electrical – because you need air conditioning when you live one quarter of a mile from the surface of the sun – living’s cheaper. It’s more close to things than a lot of other places. I’m sure Kansas is a lot cheaper than California, but people don’t migrate there for the cost of living. I’ve heard that Ohio, a midwestern state, has fielded the most astronauts, which makes you wonder; is living in the middle of the country so bad that you have to leave the planet? (Research shows this as false – New York has fielded something like 33, the highest of any individual state)
I’ve thought about the other states. Kim and I have had discussion about places to retire, in time, or places to visit. I’ve got some good friends in the Carolinas and I’ve been told, extant of snowier winters, it’s just like Ireland. I’ve also been told that Washington state, home of Seattle, has the same weather as Ireland. I’ve also heard that immigrants have tended to set up in the places that felt like home, so the Germans and Jewish people are all over the North East, the Northern states like North Dakota and Montana have plenty of Scandinavians, and the Spanish, French, and Portuguese set up down around Florida and the Gulf coast.
So where would I settle, had I not settled in Arizona. First answer would probably be ‘Not Arizona’ but again, love-rosemary-all-that. California had plenty of fun people, and lovely weather all day most every day. I’m tempted by other places, places that get snow occasionally. I’ve lived most of my life clinging to the shore next to the Atlantic ocean, so the salty smell of that vast cold ocean might feel more like home. By the by; the Pacific ocean doesn’t smell right to me. It smells faintly of boiled cabbage, instead of the frigid salty nature of the Atlantic in the fall. It’s odd to enjoy an entire ocean at once, but had I to pick a favourite, it would be the one that surrounded the rock.
So this response from people, this question about Arizona, I puzzled at. And I now know why it is; people think Arizona is insane. So around the world people tell jokes about the country that fields the stupid people. Most often I’ve heard that the stupid nations are Ireland and Poland. But within these countries, who are the stupid people? Well in Ireland it’s people from county Kerry. Having never met a Kerryman, I can’t speak to the validity of this claim. I’m not sure which jokes the Polish tell, but I’m sure they have them too. So where are America’s stupid people?
Florida, mostly. “Florida man…” is the start of many headlines. For example, “Florida man tries to stop chainsaw blade with genitals, discovers that genitals are not fit for purpose.” When you add ‘Florida man’ to a headline, people are ready for this kind of shit. If anybody remembers the ‘bath salts zombies’ stories that the internet was freaking out about, them was Florida fellows. And again, the jokes have regional variants, so Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, and any of the other southern states are often the butt of these jokes.
But Arizona isn’t know for being full of stupid people. As far as I can tell, given reporting and responses from the public, Arizona is crazy. It’s full of people that are insane, they have too many guns, they believe in too little government, they’re trampling on the rights of women, gay people, minorities, white people… the list goes on. From external news media, you’d believe that Arizona was constantly on fire because of the collective mass of fucking crazy people rubbing together. Spontaneous explosion from an excessive buildup of bat-shit. People point to Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the nutter that built a tent city in the prisons in his county. He’s suing Obama you know, over a recent move from the president on immigration. He was a leading voice in saying that Obama was a foreign citizen, and thus shouldn’t be president. He’s been accused of racial profiling, he’s behind the law that allows the police to check the immigration status of people that are in the commission of crimes, even if that crime is simple speeding. Note that an immigration officer told me that I was less likely to have a problem with that law, and note that the law is a direct incentive to profile racially.
Arizona’s governor, until recently, was Jan Brewer, and she was in favour of this ‘stop and papers please’ law. Combine that with the jabbering about the border fence, and the contingent of libertarians, and libertarian friendly policies in this state, and outsiders come to the belief that Arizona is not only crazy, but it’s dangerous to its own people, and to the rest of the people in the United States. My perspective is different living here.
I’ve broken bread with these people, in the metaphorical sense. They’ve sheltered me in times of need, they’ve protected me, they’ve taken care of me. They’ve taken care of Kimberlee too. I’m an immigrant, and they’ve been totally inviting, inclusive and very happy to have me around. This is the thing to remember; if it bleeds it leads. The reporting will almost exclusively focus on the worst of what’s happening in the world, and the perspective of a country that’s leaning towards equality for more and more people (Ideally all, in time) Arizona looks bad. There are policies here that people disagree with a lot, and I understand that. Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a prick. From what I’ve read he’s interested in ruling like some Sheriff of old, swinging a big stick and commanding power everywhere the light touches. But I’ve never met Mr. Joe. I live in his county, but the only encounter I’ve had with Maricopa specific services was the local courthouse that issued my marriage certificate. And there’s the key – most people in Arizona do not run-afoul of Joe, or former governor Jan Brewer. Most Americans will never get a chance to give the president a piece of their mind, because these people are by and large figureheads.
The actual representatives that are drafting this backwards legislation are local representatives that come from your area. These assholes are your neighbours, and you might very well have voted for them. The system doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but above a certain point of legislation, you’ll never encounter these people. They might as well be kings and queens for all the impact their lives have on ours. Sure, they come up with laws that we’re supposed to live by, but with the amount of laws that are on the books some things are bound to be unenforceable. We’re locking people up in the prison system for marijuana possession, but Arizona has legal medical marijuana, or it’s supposed to, but that hasn’t stopped street level says. The drug war is unwinnable.
So consider if you will, your outrage. Think about how mad you get about the actions of Arizona. Then ask yourself if you live in the United States. If you do not, be less mad about Arizona. If you do live in the United States, but you do not live in the southwest, be less mad about Arizona. If you live in Arizona, and you can vote and change things, be less mad about Arizona and get that change. If you believe that your district has been gerrymandered to shit, then work on changing that too. People get all too mad about things that do not impact their lives on a daily basis. Most people in Arizona don’t encounter the laws that people go crazy over. I’m not advocating political indolence, and I’m not saying that the law doesn’t matter.
There are assholes here. There are a bunch of catholic fundamentalists that protest, I want to say at least once a week, outside the Planned Parenthood clinic in our community. I never see these people in the neighbourhood aside from when they’re outside with reprehensible signs shouting down a paper megaphone. They pray hard. I’ve never seen people pray HARD, but that’s the best I can tell you about the actions of these people. However, terminating a pregnancy in Ireland is illegal. And however further – there are protesters there involved in the exact same behaviour. My point is – there are assholes everywhere, and there are fucked up laws everywhere. If these fucked up laws bother you, then do what it is you can to change these laws, to make the country, county, town, and village you live in better. Make the world you want to live in. Bitching about a state making a decision you don’t like, when you don’t live there doesn’t do a whole lot to help the place you do live in.
I’m not saying you can’t have an opinion on Arizona, I’m not saying you can’t be mad at it. We live in a global world, and it’s wise to be aware of this world, so you can get a barometer on what can be considered worldwide societal progress. But one crazy person in power half a world away doesn’t make the world darker, not if you’re out there making the world brighter.
So is Arizona mad? Madder than a big bag of spiders? Yeah, I guess it is. But the world’s as mad as a bag of spiders if you keep looking at isolated incidents, laws, places and people. Take your world as a whole. Tame that bag of spiders, one arachnid at a time.
WTF America: The warm fuzzy blanket (Chapter 20)
The Warm Fuzzy Blanket
I've never been to the US/Mexico border. This is the best representation or borders I have.
No, not talking about a comforter or a snuggie. The warm blanket that wraps Americans is America itself. Follow me down this thought path. Something like 20 percent of Americans own passports, last I heard this conjecture, so there are plenty of people that will never leave their own country to go to another one. (A small amount of research tells me the number is closer to 46 percent, so maybe take the rest of what I say with many grains of salt)
So Americans go to Mexico, they go to Canada, they go to many island nations in the Caribbean where umbrella drinks are abound. They do leave their country, and there’s a strong representation of military service, so a lot of Americans see the world that way. I wonder if you need a passport to be in the military. I’m sure there are plenty of people in Ireland, the UK and other European countries that never leave their country. But it’s harder back home to stay in one country the whole time. It’s hard to stay in the one town your whole life these days. There are plenty of things that happen in Ireland that will require you to go to Dublin, the capital city. Every Irish person will at some point or another end up in Dublin, without fail. Even if it’s just to go to the airport, because there’s only really one international airport in Ireland, and it’s in Dublin.
European nations live very cheek by jowl. And with the lax border practices between those countries, and various agreements between countries, you can actually walk from one country to another without encountering a checkpoint. No fence. No passport, no wall, no angry man with a gun looking at people funny. You just drive into Germany for the day. You take the train to Amsterdam, or Monaco. I went to college in Northern Ireland – part of the UK, and I spent the weekends across the border in Donegal. You’d have had a hard time doing that 30 or 40 years prior, what with the troubles and all.
Maybe this is one of the main mindset difference between the Irish and the Americans. Irish people have a legacy of emigration. I have it in every living generation of my family, and a couple before that too. My ancestors went to Europe, to England, to America, to Canada. They came to Ireland from Scotland in the first place. I come from a long line of migrators. But people don’t often expatriate from America, and if they do it’s nowhere near the amount that leaves from Ireland as a percentage of the population. Ireland has seen about 1 percent of its population leave every year in the last few years as the young, educated populace found the job market unable to support them. You don’t have to leave America if you’re an American citizen.
There’s so much country here that you’d have a hard time seeing it all in a lifetime. There’s a meme game going around on Facebook at time of writing that has you post a map, and it colours in the states within the US that you’ve visited. All I’ve seen of this country so far is bits of Southern California, bits of the Valley – i.e. the greater Phoenix metropolitan area – and a terminal or two in JFK Airport. Oh, and a bar in the Atlanta airport, and a few gates. That’s not even enough of a representative sample to participate in the meme. Or quiz, whatever you fancy calling it. It’s shown me that most of the Americans I know are at least fairly widely travelled within their own country at least.
The arid deserts that stretch all the way from Mexico to Monument Valley in Utah. The skyscrapers of east coast cities, the urban sprawl of Los Angeles as seen from Griffith Observatory. The wide open plains of Kansas, the rocky mountains, the appalachian mountains, the grand canyon, the mississippi river. New Orleans during Mardi Gras, San Francisco during Pride, Rhode Island in the fall, Seattle in the spring, Alaska under Aurora Borealis. There’s plenty of country to go around, and there’s a mass of diversity to be had among the people, and the places to see. The diversity in food alone is probably worth visiting all 50 states for. Ed Byrne, another Irish comedian, remarked that upon discovering you were Irish, Americans at American tourist destinations would say “I bet you don’t have anything like this back in Ireland.” His response was that we’d have nowhere to put it if we did have a grand canyon, or mount rushmore.
Ireland’s small. I’m sure I’ve said that before. But to make up for its smallness, it’s close to other European nations. And that’s where the diversity in Europe lies – quite close by. You can drive to mainland Europe from Ireland if you wanted to you know. You take your car to Northern Ireland, and get on a ferry to Scotland. Then drive to London and get on the channel tunnel, and bing bang bosh, the train scoots you under the channel and you’re in Paris. From there you can keep driving until you reach China if you have the time and the inclination. America is smaller than that distance, but it’s a more manageable distance. You could visit it all in a lifetime if you dedicated yourself to it. Many do. There’s plenty of retired couples putting their cash into an RV and rolling along the roads to see what there is to be seeing. There’s that open road again.
But how’s the intellectual landscape. Also diverse, but how is the understanding of the world outside these borders? If I’m honest, often confrontational. So a story has been developing here for a while now, and it involves people crossing the Mexico/America border without papers. Right there, I know I’ve probably lost some of you. Because people who cross the border without papers should be deported, and that’s the end of that conversation. But my reading has told me that a lot of the people reaching the border are unaccompanied minor from central America, not from Mexico. So that’s kids. Getting from El Salvador to America, because conditions are so poor there, and because people are being killed. That sounds like the behaviour of refugees to me.
But the rhetoric around the border, especially here in a border state, is so harsh that you’d think that Balrogs, and Tarrasques, and mothertrucking liches riding chaos dragons were all that comes across that border. Build the fence higher, add more barbed wire, send the army down there and start shooting at anyone seen walking in the vicinity Politicians attacked each other a lot in the political ads running up to the election on their border record. I get it, people are scared of terrorists. I saw several mentions that ISIS/ISIL/whatever were coming across the border to strike at the American homeland, so elect governor asshole because his fence is bigger, his fence is longer, his fence has a moat full of electric eels and navy seals. Don’t elect governor jerk because his fence has holes, or isn’t a fence, or his plan is to build some sort of superhighway right into the state, so all the Mexicans will come in and eat all our flags, and work all our guns, and teach all our children. Or some such nonsense.
I’ve heard people casually suggest that we should nuke Syria and Iraq because ISIS/ISIL/whatever are there. Pre-emptive strikes seem to be fairly popular in the rhetoric when it comes to foreign affairs. And being a pinko, commie, socialist pacifist, that doesn’t jive with my pill hugging, tree popping look at the world. I get it, your local media covers what happens here. And I get that most of the time what comes back into the country from overseas is war noise, or conflict noise, because if it bleeds it’s news, and if it’s news from elsewhere it’s probably about war. The six o’clock news here will have a fuzzy bunny story at the end, but it’s always about American fuzzy bunnies.
This leads to the impression that the world outside of the US is dangerous, or because it’s not like America, it’s tyrannical. There was somewhat of a panic caused when “Europe banned Fireball whiskey!” For the uninitiated, Fireball is a whiskey liqueur with cinnamon in it. Atomic fireball style cinnamon. Really hot, burning cinnamon. I don’t understand the desire to make whiskey even more fiery, but whatever tickles your pickles mate. To cut to the chase – ‘Europe’ didn’t ban anything. Norway, Sweden, and Finland recalled Fireball because it had levels of propylene glycol in it that exceeded recommended standards. This was a problem with one batch, it seems, and I’m sure Fireball will be back on shelves in no time. But the myth is out there now, both that Europe banned it, and that there’s anti-freeze in Fireball. There isn’t by the way. Propylene glycol is used in lots of things, like my e-liquid. It’s most likely in your toothpaste or your ice cream. Go check, I’ll wait.
So America can act as a warm fuzzy blanket. It comforts people, because it says that the outside world is scary, but you’re safe here. But in all honesty, the rest of the world isn’t a threat. As much as people outside the US bitch about it, you’d be amazed at the amount of people that would break your arm to get a free plane ticket out of your hand. Americans save us all their lives to visit their homelands in Europe. During the good times in Ireland, people were flying to New York City to do their Christmas shopping. No shit, they’d stay a few days, shop til they dropped, and then they’d fly home because the weak dollar was super good for Europe, and the Irish at the time.
There’s nothing to fear from the border, or the people crossing it. Ok well maybe there’s some stuff to fear, but look at the cuisine of the states next to the border with Mexico vs the Canadian border. Much less boiled meat and heart clogging gravy down here I’d wager. Immigrants are what built this country. I’ll remind you that the only difference between the people that cross the border, and me is paperwork. Nobody has reacted badly to me being an immigrant. People are intrigued, people ask about where I’m from, people are curious about my ways and customs. I’ve gotten tons of people to listen to my stories, because I’m a novelty. But I’m no different.
So how insular is the US? More than it should be, I reckon. The internet is changing things though. People are seeing the world that’s out there, and they’re no longer content to listen to a bunch of people telling them that the fucking Ruskies or whoever is coming over the hill to get them. People are coming over the hill, and you wouldn’t believe how good their food is. Or their music. Or their bullshit stories that everyone seems so interested in.
WTF America: Car Culture (Chapter 19)
Car Culture
The concrete octopus-fuck junctions always make me awed, and nervous
A V8 engine. The open road. A 1967 Shelby Mustang. A turbocharger kicking on as you ease the needle over 3,000 rpm, or a supercharger whining up to speed like jet engine, barely contained underneath the hood. A pickup truck, a chevrolet el camino, a Ford, a Chrysler, an Oldsmobile. Americans love their cars.
In all truth the car wasn’t invented here, not really, but they credit Henry Ford with bringing the assembly line model across from gun manufacturers, and making the car something that more people could own. The first cars were a bit shit, if we’re honest. They ran on lamp oil, they could go a few miles. It was a carriage with a mechanical horse in it. Interesting that we still measure things in horsepower. I always get a chuckle when I think of a Dodge charger being dragged along by 300 horses.
Whether it’s a restored coupe from the 50’s, or a chop top rat rod, a Nissan Skyline, or a monster truck, I understand the interest in cars. I very much enjoy machinery. I used to watch a lot of those custom motorcycle, and car building shows that were on the Discovery channel on the Irish version of cable. They call it Sky, and it’s a satellite service in case you were interested. I stopped watching that business when it became more about the horseshit manufactured in fighting between the stars. I recall the last one I watched. I had a free hour, so many years after I stopped watching the reality tv with the moustache men in it (And that is what these shows have become. Shouty moustaches) I flicked on the tv and there was Jesse James. I was pleased – I had liked his specials years before that, and now he had a new show where he had just set up a shop in Texas to get away from some toxic environment that existed at the previous shop. I shall offer you as near I can my exact experience.
So the show opens, and the voice over guy teases that there’s a celebrity guest on the way during this episode. There will be a reveal later, stay and watch, they’ll be here later. I couldn’t give a shit about a celebrity guest, I’m here for motorcycles. So there’s a guy grinding on a bike frame for a few seconds, and then we’re outside. Some deliveries come in, there’s a minor argument, and then we go to advertisements. I’m 15 minutes into this program, and I have yet to see a motorcycle. After the break we are treated to 10 minutes of Jesse James talking about this truck that he’s selling. It’s the last thing tying him to the old shop, because it has the old shop logos on it. So he sells it. More commercials. 20 minutes in, haven’t seen a motorcycle. We come back, and a fight happens. I don’t even recall the reason, but the next ten minutes are spent on this fight between Jesse and some manager that’s done something wrong, but his wife is having a baby tomorrow, so they make up. After commercial, and another reminder about the celebrity, they have another, different fight. 40 minutes in – no motorcycle building. People have always seem to get interrupted with bullshit right as they’re about to make progress on the actual building on motorcycles. The next 20 minutes are threats of firing, threats of quitting, and then as the fucking celebrity is about to walk in, the show ends, and I am told that in the next episode I will know who it was.
Never did find out, because I’d just been subjected to a motorcycle building program that contained 20 minutes of commercials, and 40 minutes of not building any fucking motorcycles. Had to resort to watching Fred Dibnah talk about steam engines to get my mechanisms fix. British television is a lot better about instructing viewers about machinery and it’s impact on society, if you like learning about the impacts of steam power. And I do.
But American culture is strongly focused on everything that came after the model T ford. America did exist before this time – I checked – but it seems that the period 1776-1900 is often skipped over pretty quickly. Independence, then westward expansion, then the civil war, then some more westward expansion, then the turn of the century. I feel that I should look into this time period some more. It seems very formative, and I’m probably missing out on some interesting information.
But the car, the car, the car. No longer did it take 40 years to get from one coast to another. No more pony express, no sir. Now there was loading the whole family into the buick and heading to Florida for the summer. Now there was getting out onto the nice, fairly new, interstate highway system to drive on. Post war America is when the country radically realigns, and it is now stood firmly behind the car. The hells angels were formed during this period, and there’s a bunch of people that are firmly aligned behind the idea of love for the open road.
The open road concept feels very American to me. This idea that the country is huge, and there’s still something to be explored. All you need is a car. A camaro, a ford ranger, a VW van, a pinto, a pontiac. The conveyance isn’t important. What matters is that you can go, you can live, you can be free, because you have a car and all that’s stopping you from going is a quick trip to the gas station. And the country is big from all reports, and it will take some days to cross it if your goal is just coast to coast driving. Historic route 66, that takes you all the way from Chicago (Originally it seems, not sure about now) to Santa Monica California. I can only image what it would be like to make that run now, or at any point in the past. Scraping the ice off your car during a Chicago winter, and deciding that you’ve had enough, and hopping on the 66. America’s highway. A few days later, you’re on the sunny beaches of Santa Monica, a world away. It’s a suitably impressive image that I one day might want to recreate. To see the plains roll away behind you as you approach the Rocky Mountains, and then seeing the coast rise to meet you. Sounds suitably majestic.
The problem with the car culture is another product of postwar America – the suburbs. I’ve bitched about the suburbs before in this text, but I feel that the point needs iterating in a different fashion. Sure, it’s hard to get around without a car, that much is obvious. But… it’s hard to be an American without a car. This country is built not only by Detroit muscle, but it’s built for Detroit muscle. The distance between the houses is often dictated by the amount of space the driveways need. Two car garages are common on most suburban homes, and isn’t that a nice bit of aspirational thinking. You need two cars to fill that garage, so get two. More cars, bigger cars, faster cars. Because the car is the thing that can harness the nebulous freedom that you’re endowed with as an American. Your levis and your coke don’t necessarily mean freedom, despite what the enterprising pricks might tell you. The car does mean freedom.
But as with every positive, there’s the darker sides. One of the biggest killers of people in the US, and Ireland, and most countries with high car ownership rates is the cars themselves. People fear flying, but it’s the safest method of travel when you consider miles covered per passenger. Cars get into wrecks far more often. Obviously medical conditions account for most of the top ten causes of death, but car deaths are right up there. Car accidents are the biggest killer of teens aged 13-19, even if parents are terrified of kidnappers, and smoking, and drinking, and volleyball or whatever else the media told you is coming for your kids this year. Then there’s the pollution, the reliance on gasoline, which causes it’s own problems. But there are other drawbacks.
Do you think that we’re dismissing other technologies and systems, like robust public transport, high speed rail, better city design, and a dozen other really exciting things, because we’re so focused on cars? I know for a fact we are, because I ride a bicycle. Drivers will get mad at you, aggressively mad, because you dare to even ride a bicycle in the roadway. I’ll set you a scene. Kimberlee and I have to get to a bus stop, because we need to go into Phoenix to the social security office to get my number. We need to ride a few blocks before we get to the stop, and part of the journey doesn’t have a sidewalk. So we’re left with two options – either ride as close to the kerb as we can manage and risk getting clipped as somebody drives too close, or we ‘take the lane.’ This involves riding two by two, so that if someone wants to pass, they must change lanes. If we had been a single slow car we would not have provoked such ire.
The kind of rage usually reserved for somebody taking a shit in your breakfast cereal. The rage you’d find spewing from some drunken hooting dickhole at a hockey riot. Riding a mere foot or two behind the bicycles, laying on the horn like it was going out of style. I don’t know if you’ve had two tons of steel and asshole breathing down your neck, but it’s remarkably fucking threatening. Three drivers engaged in this behaviour. Because we tried NAY; DARED to waste precious seconds of your life by making you change lanes. Fuck pirates, the lot of them. I was very agitated, and yelling some unpleasantries at these drivers, because you fucking would be. Drivers act like cyclists shouldn’t be on the road at all. The road’s for cars, don’t you know, so I’ll be an asshole all day because you get around using your legs.
Speaking of assholes, there’s a thing here called ‘Rolling coal.’ There’s a certain crowd here, and it’s the same people that like to put bodykits on their cars back home, and put loud tailpipes on there, and to get their car ‘chipped’ and all sort of other nonsense. The types that like to speed on the backroads in the middle of the night, for the thrill of the race. Well, the thrill right until you wrap your car around a tree or two. There are speed focused gear heads here too, but the coal rollers are of a different ilk. Much as I dare to ride a bicycle, there are some that dare to drive a hybrid. They do it for the gas mileage, they do it to drive a toyota, they do it for the tax breaks, they do it because they care about the planet – whatever, not my business. The coal rollers believe this to be an affront to everything good and proper. So they install some aftermarket systems into their cars which dumps unburned diesel or gas into their tailpipes, and this produces voluminous clouds of choking black smoke. They’ll fire this up in front of a prius, behind a prius, between priuses, outside a prius convention, or anywhere else that’s apparently appropriate. Way to sound like level headed citizens. Public discourse through public pollution. Shite jockeys and fuck knockers, the whole lot of them.
I’m no eco-warrior. I ride a bike because I don’t have a car, nor do I know how to pilot one. I know the basics of making a car move, but I don’t have a drivers licence, nor have I received enough training, formal or informal, to reliably wrangle a single horse power, let alone a few hundred of them. But getting a car has been on my mind since I arrived. Let alone the distance limitations of a bicycle, let alone always making sure you have a ride somewhere and back from somewhere, let alone the hassle you get as a cyclist – you need a car to be a productive and included American. I’ve made some great friends, that are usually happy to go out of their way to pick me and the wife up, but without that lifeline we’d have been some very lonely people.
Imagine the economic impacts of not having a car in a country where the public transport is less than amazing. Can’t drive to job interviews, can’t drive to career open days, can’t drive to get your groceries so you’re limited to what you can carry, can’t drive to parties, can’t drive to vote, can’t drive to much of anything without a fucking car.
Where there are cars, there is car culture. But when America got its hands on the car, it decided to built everything around it. It’s difficult to think outside of this metal box.
WTF America: Homogenity (Chapter 18)
Homogeneity
Limit 4 per customer? I thought this was America
So there’s this widespread apprehension back home that all Americans are the same. People have some popular phrases people employ that highlight this idea, such as “Well you know in America, they (insert nonsense)” or “Them Americans, they’re always (further nonsense)” People seem to be of the belief that Americans are a monoculture. And I can see where they’d come to that conclusion.
Take for example some of the icons of American culture that make it overseas. Americans may be saddened to know that your wonderful food traditions are being represented by McDonalds franchises around the world. McDonalds does a pretty poor job at representing America. Low wages, substandard ingredients, frozen food, quick bullshit over lengthier substantive items. Wait…
Ok, fair point, but McDonalds does represent the American experience of low prices, quick service, and widespread enterprise over cottage industry. They train people that work in McDonalds to make things as much alike one another as possible, and ideally the experience from one McDonalds should not vary by any great degree. There’s no place for individuality within the franchises, lest the brand lose its brand profile. Ask non-Americans to identify American things and you’ll get a lot of answers that include McDonalds, Pepsi, and Coke. Also gun, cars, too much food, and other things that seem indicative of American culture to outsiders. Also action movies. To those outside the US, there’s little room for nuance when identifying American cultural products. Every movie is a Hollywood, Michael Bay crap-fest. While I’m on the subject; fuck Michael Bay. For a lot of reasons. Every burger is a Big Mac, ever record is Taylor Swift, or Katy Perry, every drink is a coke, or a bud light.
Homogenized, mass-market, watered down, flavourless, milquetoast, 2.2 kids, middle of the road, uninspiring, mediocre pap is what filters out of the United States, most of the time. There are gems, like Pacific Rim, or Moon Pies, or Dr. Pepper, but for the most part it’s popular garbage that sets itself in the mind of outsiders, instead of the interesting unknowns that stays within American borders.
Reflections of these interesting relatively unknown things, such as a decent burrito, are copied by outsiders. You would cringe, you would weep for mother Tex-Mex if you saw the paltry offerings that make it across the ocean, that are pretending to be Mexican food. It’s dismal. Nachos aren’t just tortilla chips with melted cheddar cheese on them. If it is not spicy, it is not ‘taco seasoning.’ There’s an Irish cultural artifact that is a shame upon my homeland. They call it a Taco-chip.
Imagine if you will, a heap of french fries. You’re with me so far. Then it’s time to put ‘taco sauce’ on it. That’s the first in a short line of missteps that continue to go unpunished. This taco sauce resembles no Mexican/Tex-Mex cooking you’ve ever seen. It’s usually pink. Upon this congealed heap ground beef is piled, and that ground beef may have been threatened with the idea of proper taco spicing, but it came through the experience remarkably unscathed. Then you pile this not with good queso, or any other decent cheese fit for the purpose, but you put some sharp cheddar on it. This culinary nightmare, this bastard of food, this nonsense of a dish is consumed whole heartedly on Friday and Saturday nights by drunk people, because no other people would consume this had they ever wrapped their chops around a decent burrito, or a real taco.
When you are presented with artifacts of culture that you’ve never experienced, you do the best you can to piece together the experience. It’s like receiving a piece of Ikea furniture, but the instructions are to a very similar but distinctly different piece of furniture. When you realize that it won’t be the same, you fall back on whatever you can guess. You make logical leaps, you insert information where there is none, and very often you get it wrong.
I feel like most cultures have this problem. For example, Americans will refer to it as St. Patty’s day, and this is incorrect. People respond with “It’s St. Paddy’s day, idiots!” but often fail to explain why it is wrong. For those not in the know, when you take a word from another language and convert it to English, the spelling sometimes changes. The original name for Patrick in Irish was Padraig, or Padhraig, or a number of other variants. There’s no T sound in that name. This is why Padraig becomes Paddy, but Patrick does not become Patty. The rules of the Irish language carry over into English, but if you’ve never encountered the Irish language you don’t know these rules.
Irish people don’t know the rules for American food, or most American anything else. It’s a cross cultural lack of exchange. Culture is merely surrounding activities with context, and when you move the artifacts to other cultures, they’ll apply their own context to them in lieu of yours, because they don’t know the source material. This is why the ‘taco-chip’ exists. This is why American pints of Canadian Guinness will never taste the same no matter how much Diageo tries.
So the monoculture. I understand why people believe that other countries exist as a monoculture, because unless you’ve experienced the local nuance, you’ll never imagine that country differently. “The French are assholes” is a popular sentiment from people that have never been to France, and from people that have only visited Paris as a tourist. “All Americans are fat” is an easy statement to make when the only America you’re exposed to on television is reports on obesity in the news, or reality tv shows about people getting stomach staples. Or you see Paula Deen making butter fried butter soup.
The United States is as nuanced as most countries, but most other countries don’t export their cultural products to other countries. You see Chinese restaurants worldwide, but I doubt that you’ve ever been to the Chinese version of McDonalds. If there is such a thing. It’s not really a mark of American cultural imperialism, as so many people seem to fear, it’s more a mark of the American flavour of capitalism. The world is there to be conquered for profit, so enterprising assholes that you wouldn’t speak to if you were related to the pricks, decide to take their brand of mass market, watered down bullshit to the rest of the world. Not because they believe they have a good product, but because they believe that there’s good money to be moneyed as they money money money money money.
America doesn’t have a mass market culture, it just happens to have such a massive marketing arm that everyone appears to have the same thing, at the same time. With faster distribution methods, the internet, and massive advertising budgets, enterprising pricks are unstoppable. Their message will be the message, at all times. So it’s hard to hear about New Orleans cuisine outside of New Orleans, or it’s hard to understand what the fuck a Yooper is, because BUD LIGHT NOW COMES IN AN ALUMINIUM BOTTLE. GET SOME. PARTICIPATE IN AMERICA. WITH BUD LIGHT. NO SERIOUSLY, BUD LIGHT IS TOTALLY GOOD. SURE IT IS.
This keyboard doesn’t have caps lock. I had to hold shift that entire time, just to get you close to American marketing. The big noise drowns out the little music that makes the world better. American craft beer has a wonderful scene, and some amazing seasonal beers, and year round brews that are honestly some of the best beers I’ve ever had. But you hear about Bud light, because they have the marketing money. American food, when mixed in with the traditions and ingredients of immigrants becomes interminably better, but all you hear about is Velveeta fucking imitation bullshit fondue cheese, like it’s the only cheese on the planet. Because if those enterprising pricks had their way, there would only be one product. To their chagrin, there isn’t. There’s a wonderful world of nuance on this American planet, and it’s in between the same shit. Between the Wal-marts, and the Targets, and the Old Navys, and the Wendys and the McDonalds, there’s a world. A world full of wonders, and nuance, and interesting little artifacts of culture, taste, smell and sound.
But you don’t see it, because they don’t market it. But that’s no big deal. You’ve got the internet, and you can search out these little things. I encourage Americans to do the same. Ireland isn’t a mono-culture either. It’s not all potatoes, whiskey, and special potatoes for making special whiskey. We’ve got food that isn’t boiled meat and boiled cabbage. There are beers that aren’t Guinness. There are people that aren’t alcoholics. There are colours other than green. There are phrases other than Slainte.
Any any Americans that happen to be in a position of power – export things that are better. There’s novelty in exporting twinkies, and red vines, and there’s some cross cultural exchange that can be had there, but there’s better stuff to be had. There are things that are integral parts of your culture that are worthy of sending to other people. There are also things that are not worth exporting. Like mountain dew – Satan’s radioactive urine.
Imagine other countries complexity. They’re full of people just like you. Some of them like shitty Mac and Cheese, some of them won’t accept anything other than the very best caviar. There are assholes on both ends of the spectrum, and every gradation between and often these people are the prime target of the enterprising assholes. I’ve noted a fair few people in Donegal putting ice in Coors light, because they realize just how bad Coors light tastes when it’s warm. So to them I say, instead of buying crappy American beer, drink good American beer. Or just drink better beer. Expand your cultural horizons, and then maybe we can get to a point where genuine cultural exchange is happening.
Then maybe we can do away with phrases like “Well, in America…” and “Well Irish people…” We can understand each other better. And please tell me, dear readers, that nobody is of the belief that Velveeta is either good, or actually cheese. Don’t listen to those enterprising assholes.
WTF America: Everything will be OK (Chapter 17)
Everything will be OK
Even the animal hospital murals are optimistic
When you grow up on an island, a small island made of rock, and covered in grass and more rocks, you gain a certain perspective on the world. Your world is quite small when all you know of it is a dot on a map, clinging to the side of the Atlantic ocean. That same ocean that is cold, and expansive. That ocean that took our loved ones and ancestors in more ways than one. The ocean that extinguishes the sun every night, that brings storms, rain, and fish and whatnot. It feels like the kind of perspective that you’d gain if you stood on the edge of the world, were it flat. You could look off into infinity and see that point where distance blurs and all you see is curvature.
The Irish have never really conquered anything. It’s been said that our style of invasion is more of an infestation, which is why there are so many countries around the world with Irish pubs, and there are more people that can claim Irish ancestry than could ever fit on the island. But we don’t take over things in the way that Spain, or France or England did. We were taken over, assisted, and abandoned by these people are various points in time. We’re not a country that makes world history, we’re a country that world history happens to. I’ll not go so far as to say we’re a footnote, but we’re not on a permanent member on the UN security council.
So when you’re small, and you’re surrounded by infinity, you can get kinda pessimistic. It often feels like the world is just happening around Ireland, and once a year people remember we exist by pinching each other and turning their technicolor yawn green. I don’t recall Irish people celebrating the 4th of July or anything. There’s not an equivalent day where we drape ourselves in American flags and roast marshmallows over burning pickup trucks or anything.
This pessimism is tempered by a really interesting fatalism that I’m not sure other countries understand. The people of the old country will make some really morbid statements, and everyone will laugh, because it’s the appropriate response. “I’m so hungry I’d eat an old man’s ass through a wicker chair” pops to mind. But there are other times where people will rattle off a bunch of stuff about how well, or poorly, their life is going and they’ll remark “Sure but I could be dead. I guess that would be worse/better.” Maybe we’ve never conquered anyone because of this fatalism. “The whole world’s fucked, but hey… you’ve got to laugh. You’d cry if you didn’t” is a prevalent attitude.
I haven’t noticed Americans sharing in this attitude. When things are going poorly, people will say that they’re going poorly, and then they’ll ask for help. Or people will spontaneously offer help, and it will be received. Nobody would say “Ah, sure you’re still living. Buck up, and fuck up would ya?”
By the way, I miss telling people to “fuck up” instead of “shut up.” It’s a phrase dripping with ire, masculinity, and the right amount of ridiculous. Also if I was to use the phrase “Ah jaysus; here comes that happy fucker” here, few people would understand why I was angry at someone else for being happy.
Americans are too helpful to let you be miserable for any extended period of time, at least the one’s I’ve met. It’s not that Irish people are unhelpful, they’re just a lot more business-minding going on. And not going on – Irish people have this amazing capacity to know your business before you do, but they’ll never say anything because knowledge is only power if it’s a secret, and you can watch someone walk headlong into a fucking mistake. They’ll tell you afterwards that they knew the whole time, as a method of rubbing salt in the wound. Not all Irish people are like this. This is a book of jokes, and observations. Relax Irish people, I may speak this way for I am one of you. And youse know you’re a right shower of cunts when you want to be.
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires” so the John Steinbeck quote goes. I think this phrase is mostly true because of the embarrassed millionaires part, never mind the socialism bit – there are resources out there, and you’re entitled to them, you just don’t have them yet. As an American you deserve a high standard of living, because you’re an American. Americans deserve a nice car, and a big house, and the other things, by virtue of being born here. There’s the other part of this that says you are only entitled to these things through work, and yeah, but the point stands.
Americans aren’t pessimistic in the way the Irish are, because there’s no belief that they don’t deserve something, should they earn it. Irish people are big on hiding their light under a bushel. You daren’t show that you’ve done well for yourself, because you’ll be pilloried. There will be snide remarks. Fuck ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ this is just bitching about success. When you’re of the belief that you’re economically oppressed, or functionally oppressed, or oppressed as a people, it’s hard to get out of that mindset. A lot of this belief is legitimate, but the Irish carry their cultural suffering around like the cross of Christ. It is heavy, and it is painful, and times were and are miserable, and have I mentioned how much this cross weighs? It’s heavy, you know.
American pessimism is a much more general pessimism. Politicians are not honest, of course pizza isn’t good for you, I’m unlikely to win the lottery. The general stuff that you’re aware of, because it’s stuff you should be pessimistic about. Irish pessimism is largely actioned through the phrase “Sure, what can you do?” There’s a lot you can do. You can get training, you can work harder, you can run for office, you can vote, you can protest, you can start a business, you can write a book, you can paint a painting, you can build a bomb, you can engage with the rest of society in an attempt to better it, or to destroy it. Do anything. Do anything other than saying “Sure, what can you do?” because you’re totally abdicating responsibility for the direction your country takes.
Citizens of the US do no such laurel sitting. They do run for office, even if they have zero qualifications to do so, because they believe. People don’t really tell them no, even if they disagree with them. There’s a belief that something can be done. Aside from the phrase “You can’t fight city hall” which I love for some unknown reason. They protest, they vote (Well, some of them, probably not enough for a truly representative sample) they change things. Because nobody dared tell them they couldn’t.
More often than not if you told an Irish people they couldn’t do something, they’d agree with you. Because that’s the culture. “What would you be doing that for?” Run for office – you’ll lose. Protest – no one will listen. Open a shop – no one will go there. I don’t get why Irish people are always interested in bringing one another down at home. Abroad the Irish will support the hell out of each other. That said, if you haven’t seen the water meter protests that are going on, check those out. Plenty of people are getting the lead out of their ass to make their voice known, and that’s wonderful to see. A democracy functions properly when the citizens are active.
To discuss business ownership, I shall bring you an anecdote from Donegal Town. There were two developers that wanted to build shopping centres. Neither wanted the other to have their shopping centre first (or at all) so they blocked each other. When you submit a planning permission application, people can object to it, which halts construction, and banjaxes the plans. So you have to start over. These bastards did this for something like 11 years. Never mind that both would have made profit, and the consumers of Donegal would have had more than one grocery store, they blocked each other. Couldn’t be letting that other guy have a single thing, was the attitude. They kept up this bickering for years until finally they reached a settlement and they agreed that construction would go ahead, on opposite ends of the town.
Then the housing and construction markets tanked in 2008, and both projects went on the chiller indefinitely. Well done lads. You fucked it for everyone. In the last few years some construction has happened, but it’s nowhere near what it should have been. For years Donegal Town has had no cinema, it didn’t have a shoe store for a long time, for the longest time there was only one men’s clothes shop. This is a small tourist town that shuts down for most of the year, because people couldn’t stop themselves from obstructing one another in case someone made out better than they did. Couldn’t let nobody have nothing. Not one fucking iota of success.
None of that here. You compete or you fucking die. If your business doesn’t gain, and maintain competitiveness, it closes. And nobody thinks this is a bad thing. If you work hard, you can prosper, so the saying goes. And people here really believe that. People start businesses all the time, people don’t take being fired as a life ending upset. The time between jobs here is more hellish than at home, by a long way. But the time between jobs is usually shorter. If you’re skilled, they’ll find work for you. Whereas at home if work can’t be found, well tough. Go wait.
Americans are optimistic, even at the worst of times. This optimism is often of a maniacal nature. Even in the worst of circumstance, there’s the belief that you can make it to the top. You’re a millionaire, you’re just waiting on the check. Through poverty, through unemployment, through natural disaster, through having the entire deck stacked against them institutionally and otherwise. The deck is stacked for some people. There are people out there for various reasons that will never get ahead, will never be millionaires. But that doesn’t stop an American. Never tell him what he can’t do. Never tell him the odds. Never for one minute try to convince an American there’s something that she can’t do. Don’t you dare tell her that she’ll never own a maserati, never have a hot body, because she’ll work bitch, and she’ll prove you wrong. So very very wrong.
I’ve seen Irish people prove other people wrong, but I’ve seen it done more often out of spite. I feel like Americans are less prone to spite, because there’s abundance here. There at least appears to be unlimited resources, so why wouldn’t you go out there and get your slice? You just have to work for it, and you’ll get it. Honest.
There’s this belief that Americans have, some Americans, that they’re exceptional. Sometimes they’re just exceptional because they’re Americans. I’ve rarely seen an Irish person with the belief that they were exceptional. We believe we’re special, especially when we’re overseas, because we become oddly exotic. I’d describe myself as odd, different, noteworthy, and a number of other things, but never exceptional.
From what I’ve seen there’s a general background hum in the US. This hum says “We’re exceptional.” “We’re number one.” “Everything will be ok.” It says these things, regardless if they are true or not. And Americans believe them. Regardless if they’re true or not.
And in the words of Billy Connolly – I’d rather be told to have a nice day by someone who doesn’t mean it, than be told to fuck off by someone who does mean it.
WTF America: Anniversaries (Chapter 16)
Anniversaries
Photo by Jessia Hately, courtesy of www.wetakenicepictures.com
You get reflective around anniversaries. Well I do, and all of my anniversaries happen around the same time. Kimberlee and I met around this time. We started talking one on one around this time. I visited the US around this time, for the first time, in 2009. Kimberlee visited Ireland in 2010 around this time. I moved here around this time a year ago. I got married on this day last year.
When this period of reflection began, this year didn’t feel like a year at all. Interestingly it felt like around 6 weeks, or maybe 3 months. Enough time to pass that you know it wasn’t a week or two ago, but no significant period of time. You’d describe it as a few weeks ago, or the other day. I feel like maybe it’s because I’ve been happy. It’s not like I’ve spent my entire life miserable or anything, but I had a fairly angry teenage period, and was sullen throughout high school, and most of college. And for a few years after college too. Returning from the US was painful, and it made the time thereafter longer. The only thing that punctuated my weeks was the dole pickup. I only had to leave the house once a week, so that’s all I did for a while. I became one with my chair.
That time became long, and slow. It was a grinding period wherein all I was doing was waiting. When you wait for time to happen, it does, but at a pretty excruciating pace. Slower than one second per second it seems. Some infinities are larger or smaller than others, and my personal 2 year infinity felt much like I’ve described it.
But this period of time, between October 31st 2013 and October 31st 2014 was short. Really short. I thought establishing a life would be harder, but it seemed to be pretty easy, honestly, once I had gotten the components together. Social security number, job, apartment, that sort of thing. I guess the time before and after feel so elastic because getting here and getting married was the end of a story. You build it up in your mind that this is the ending, the closing chapter, the end to two years of being so unjustly separated.
But, obviously, it’s the beginning. Of a new life, of a marriage, of a lifetime in another country. But it doesn’t really feel that way. They never go into the happily ever after in fairly tales because the happily ever after isn’t the interesting bit. There’s no drama without conflict, and as much as I’ve tried to serve up heaping dollops of character development, drams, villains and heroes in this book, this year has been very normal. Kimberlee and I worked together to earn our keep in this world. We cooked meals for each other, we shared the house work, we slept in the same bed, we went to parties, we drank beer, and went grocery shopping. Can you imagine Jasmine from Aladdin buying a cabbage? No, because who cares. It’s not all that interesting to most people. Honestly, if I had just moved here from New Jersey I don’t know that this book would exist. Most people in this position would tell you about the long distance relationship, and the challenges the relationship encountered. And then you get on a plane, or you drive to the opposite coast for a few days, and the story is kind of over. In fact, the story would probably end with the phrase “And the rest is history” because it is. It’s just a series of events that occurred after you left the theatre and someone came in to sweep up popcorn.
Because of the nature of social media, I know this year happened. It’s all listed up there, with date stamps, and pictures and people that I’ve met this year clicking like when I’ve said something they find interesting, or adorable, about a man encountering spray cheese for the first time. Which by the way, spray cheese is the American version of marmite. There’s no one that’s indifferent. This is either the worst thing ever, or the finest of American culinary engineering. This year happened. I have proof. This book is proof. But it still doesn’t feel real, because so much of it doesn’t feel new or different any more.
When you move to a new country, I feel like the key to achieving this normality – if that’s what you’re looking for – is not to try and engage with your world like you did with your old country. When I came here in 2011, I was always on the lookout for Irish things, and trying to live in the Irish way. That’s all well and good in the short term, but you’ll end up spending way over the odds on normal items, because now they’re in the ethnic foods section. I was told by a friend that had lived in the US previously that blending in was key, and while I don’t think I’m actively trying to blend in, I think I’m passing very well. My accent has always been pretty mild, but what little accent I had had softened further, as I pick up on the diphthongs of the people around me. A diphthong by the way is the sound that happens when you say two vowel sounds together, and in most cases it forms a consonant sound. This is where accents primarily come from by the way – different cultures have different diphthongs, and that’s where the variance comes from. So you pick it up from them.
You pick up the local habits and mannerisms, you start eating their food, and you start living the way they do, and pretty soon you’ve kinda gone native. I haven’t picked up a lot of American indulgences in the last year. I do now maintain a bottle of ranch dressing in my fridge, because chicken wings, celery, carrots, and pizza crusts are vastly improved by it’s presence as far as I’m concerned. I drink RC cola sometimes. I’m partial to a moon pie, I grab some twinkies on occasion. I spend more time around coffee shops that I do bars.
I’m trying to think about how much this experience has changed me, because usually at this point in a book, you’re starting to learn some lessons. The plot has developed substantially, and now you’re invested in your hero’s journey. You’re in it to the end by this point, hopefully. So around the middle of a book the usual thing is to present the main character with a point of no return. But we did that in chapter two, and I’m already in the US. So I guess I should lay some wisdom on you.
Well I’d like to but I don’t have a whole lot of it. One of the take home facts I can give you is that Americans are normal. Surprising I know, but it’s true. Yeah, they’re a little shinier, and a little happier, and maybe their opinions are louder, and the don’t drink as much and they own too many guns, but they’re normal folk. They put their pants on in the morning, same as you do. I was nervous when I arrived that I wouldn’t fit in with them. I’d be an oddity, there would be too many barriers, and we just wouldn’t get each other. But they’ve been remarkably welcoming as a group. I’ve found several of them that are willing to listen to me wax lyrical about the old country – because I enjoy being an oddity – and it’s fun for me. I like to think that I can facilitate a cross cultural exchange.
People also like to show me off. People will introduce me as “Dave; he’s Irish. As in from Ireland. Like he’s an immigrant. He only got here a year ago!” I’d protest, but I love the attention. It’s fun to be different, even while blending in.
I wish I had great wisdom to bring you on the subject of marriage and living in the US. Mostly it’s just normal. Never go to bed angry, either at your spouse or at America. Always try to have a rational conversation when you’re angry at each other, either your spouse or America. Don’t hold grudges against your spouse or America – they’re both doing their best with what they have, and honestly your spouse and America know that you can be pretty hard to deal with too. Kimberlee and I had waited 5 years to be together, so what’s most important to us now is just spending time together. Those things that are normal, like sitting on the couch together, are special to us. So I guess never take your relationship with your spouse, or America, for granted.
You know what? Pop psychology, and canned advice, goes a long way to telling you what sort of relationship you should have with your country. Nurture your America, care for it, look out for it’s interests. But let it grow and change, let it be itself, allow it the space to understand itself as a young and growing nation. I believe the sequel to this book may have to be a self-help book for constitutional democracies.
So here’s to the United States of America, where I’ve just spent my first full year of marriage. I’ve learned that Americans, mostly, are just normal people. Don’t believe the hype when people tell you Americans are insane, or they’re a bunch of gun toting psychos, or they eat cheesecake instead of brushing their teeth, or whatever other prejudiced nonsense is out there. The Irish have positive stereotypes, and that can do us a dis-service too. It’s normal here. Amazingly normal most of the time. And then sometimes you visit a gun store for the first time, and it behaves like a cathedral. Or you visit the grocery store and there’s religious breakfast cereal. Or the tv sells you boner pills.
Nah, I’m full of shit, it’s really weird here. I mean really. What the fuck is spray cheese.