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May 19, 2008
The United States Trip
It is official. Shawn has reached a settlement with his former employer, so we will be visiting the United States for several weeks to visit our parents. We will also be doing a bit of sightseeing along the way in places like Chicago, Cleveland, Toronto and New York.
I already have mixed feelings about the trip.
On the positive side, it will be great to see the folks and our friends, and to catch up on what is going on. I will delight in going out to a bar, being able to choose a whiskey from a list that has more than just eight Scotches and one Bourbon, then sitting back to enjoy some real jazz played on a real piano, not a synthesizer with a built-in drum kit. I will revel in the cool cascade of iced air that pours forth from the open freezer case as I try to decide which of the ten varieties of Morningstar Farms® burgers I want, or maybe I'll just get a box of Boca® Bratwurst, some sauerkraut and pumpernickel buns. I might just buy some electronics without the 270% markup.
Yet while I look forward to basking in the unrestrained consumerism that is perhaps the best remaining aspect of life in the United States, I fear just being there. It is funny to us that gringos coming to visit invariably ask if it's safe here in Guadalajara, because it's so quiet and calm around where we live. Here one has to be cautious about the occasional cab driver that wants to overcharge you by ten pesos, the government official that promises to fix the roads and then absconds with half the funds for the project, or the sharp pieces of metal that jut forth from the crumbling remains of some neglected building, started long ago but never completed. There is danger here, but it does not seem to have the same violent, lethal quality that danger in the United States has.
Sure, Mexico has some dangerous places. News stories appear with an alarming frequency about the escalating war between the narcotraficantes and the authorities. Charles just recently reminded me that, while I fall in love with Mexico City every time I visit the Zona Rosa for a few days, in neighborhoods of the capital that have not been sanitized for public consumption, people are afraid to walk the streets at night or wear jewelry outside. There are parts of Mexico that are dangerous, but in general, for most people, Guadalajara just isn't. It is a big city where one should be cautious, but overall, it's a nice, quiet place.
In contrast, in the United States, it's the nice, quiet places that scare me the most. It will be a long time before I forget the experience of driving across the United States with Shawn about a year before we left, going to Massachusetts to get married. Along the way, we got our fair share of weird looks from front desk clerks when we checked to a reservation for only one bed and caused many an eye to roll when we asked for the salad without the apple-smoked bacon or the flame-broiled chicken breast on top. Yet it was the public opinion we heard on the radio driving through nice, quiet places that finally got to us.
"Them immigrants come here tuh steal awr jobs, 'n' they don' even bother tuh learn them some English!" one caller to a talk show railed. "They needs tuh learn the language if'n they wanna live here."
Another, calling in to answer the host's question about how the audience would feel if Condoleezza Rice ran for president, said, "I don't think America is ready for a black woman to be president." She was not the only caller to have such sentiments, although other callers said, "I don't think America is ready for a black woman to be president."
The last time we visited the United States, in April 2007, while stuck waiting in an airport, the TV monitors were showing an Anderson Cooper special on CNN. Despite plenty of ongoing real news (a bomb set by Al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq in the cafeteria of the National Assembly of Iraq kills eight people, 33 people are killed and 29 others wounded by shooter Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech, former Russian President Boris Yeltsin dies at the age of 76), Cooper was immersed in an hour-long, special presentation investigating the gay question.
Once again we will be driving across the United States, and I hope that this time we find that Americans have gotten tired of discussing whether homosexuals and people of color deserve any rights and have moved on to discussing what new direction they want the country to take. I hope that we are surprised to find our fellow citizens engaged in a respectful and intelligent debate about things like the economy, education, or technology instead of fiercely arguing the source of the next great threat to life and liberty and the best way to snuff it out entirely before it takes over.
The last time we were traveling across the United States, the whole place seemed like one big paranoid science fiction film from the 50s, where people are threatened by some metaphoric mouse and end up razing entire cities in their fearful panic, trying to cleanse the world of the menace that never really was. The events of September 11, 2001 were not yet five years past, the War on Terror was blindly lashing out against inappropriate targets, and the American public was too numbed to give a damn that their government was torturing prisoners, wasting billions and illegally monitoring their communications. Maybe enough time has now elapsed that Americans are ready to get back on the horse and take their place at the reins of one of the most powerful countries in the world, tackling difficult problems and returning the nation to a place where at least the ideas of truth and justice have some value. Or will rising inflation of key goods, a collapsing housing market and an impending recession bring out the worst in people?
If history is any indication, I'm afraid we are to be disappointed.
Posted by crispy at May 19, 2008 07:08 AM
Comments
The oligarchs want us afraid and fighting each other. Thus it shall be.
Fortunately or no, I'm too ensconced in my cocoon to care about anything.
Posted by: Mark Allen at May 20, 2008 05:20 AM
But just think - you will get to see the "Glow in the Dark" White Squirrels!! heh heh
I am envious of you two getting to spend time with the folks. Enjoy, have a great trip, and be sure to post some photos!!!
Posted by: Carol at May 20, 2008 08:14 AM
I meant to mention: Why the crapola fudgsicles would you listen to talk radio? I have yet to hear anything intelligent being discussed. You might as well plop your brain into a blender.
[crispy says: Where we were located, it was either talk radio or modern country music. My apologies to country music fans, but given a choice like that, it's going to be talk radio every time.]
Posted by: Mark Allen at May 20, 2008 11:28 AM
“The financial crisis that we now face was created by design. It is intended to destroy the labor movement, crush the middle class, quash Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, reduce our foreign debt by 50 or 60%, force a restructuring of America’s debt, privatize all public assets and resources, and create a new regime of austerity measures which will divert more wealth to the banking and corporate establishment.”
Posted by: brett at May 20, 2008 02:08 PM
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security aren't mentioned in the Constitution, so good riddance.
I'm feeling some whatever coming on. Good old Amerikan whatever.
Posted by: Mark Allen at May 20, 2008 10:08 PM
Boy, I just won't shut up.
"Where we were located, it was either talk radio or modern country music. My apologies to country music fans, but given a choice like that, it's going to be talk radio every time."
I much prefer silence or iPoddage to anything ever played on a filthy, tricksy radio
[crispy says: It was 2005. The car was from 2001. We didn't have an iPod, nor a car stereo that would allow us to plug in an audio device like an iPod.]
Posted by: Mark Allen at May 21, 2008 05:11 AM
Radio sucks nowadays, I just heard the same turdy top 40 song 3 times in an house. Knife to ear, knife to ear :(
Posted by: Akira at May 21, 2008 05:27 PM
Ah, yes. We use a crappy FM transmitter we used to use for a CD player. Your years are no excuse!
I am drunk.
Posted by: Mark Allen at May 21, 2008 08:57 PM
At least the toilets will be free. I would still bring my own paper though...
[crispy says: ...and one can actually flush the toilet paper.]
Posted by: Ian at May 23, 2008 06:22 AM