I hear a lot about the real America. I’m told it’s a very particular kind of place. It’s the heartland with its God-fearing and armed Christians which is the real America. Not the perverted coasts. Not elitist New York or liberal Hollywood.
Problem is, I love the fake America. I’m an immigrant–I know, we’re not quite as fashionable as we used to be–and I definitely didn’t come here for the real America. If I wanted to be surrounded by farms and church-goers, I could’ve stayed in rural Eastern Europe. Those of us around the world who dream of America dream of a glamorous and exciting place. I dreamed of the land of skyscrapers and city skylines, of jazz and rap. I didn’t think of Americans as people who followed conservative tradition, I thought of them as people who outraged their elders by doing inappropriate dances, and doing them with inappropriate dance partners. My parents imitated Americans with jeans and hippie hair and rock’n’roll. When we lived behind the Iron Curtain and we fantasized about the States, we didn’t fantasize about being a televangelist (except maybe for their wealth).
Our patriotic pundits like to remind us that America is exceptional. I agree that it is. But if it looked like they wish it did, it wouldn’t be exceptional at all. There are already plenty of narrow-minded and theocratic places on this planet–there’s no need for more. There’s not nearly enough of the mixed-up and the crazy and the sinful. Those are the parts of America I love the most. And I hope that God or Goddess will continue to bless them for many years to come.
eurobrat 
07/19/2014 at 10:56 am
And we in The West fantasized that you were all hardcore communists who wanted to hit us over the head with a hammer, slit out throats with a sickle, take all of our property and distribute it equally. That’s why we were told we had to kill all of you, to protect our materialistic system and its deeply ingrained income inequality.
07/19/2014 at 12:54 pm
Oh, we also heard a lot of propaganda telling us you were going to kill us all…just as there was propaganda telling you we were going to kill you. And that’s how they had us cowering in fear for all those decades…isn’t that a neat trick they played on us!
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07/20/2014 at 2:18 pm
Oh, yeah. And it almost worked, too. You should have seen me during East-West hockey games. Here’s a short clip of how Canadians used to deal with those evil commie bastards. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxzimDYlTCs
(Oh… I think I just had an orgasm. Sorry, 1970’s Broad Street Bullies clips are better than porn for me.)
That was, until I started visiting East Germany. Not only was everyone more friendly than back home in Canuckistan, even the border guard who caught me smuggling Western propaganda (a bunch of flyers on explaining the democratic system of West Germany) smiled, took the propaganda and let me pass through without so much as a body cavity search. Jesus, I get much worse treatment almost every time I fly at an American airport! Crotch pats, rape-scans and tazer-point shoe removals.
Sure, East Germany was run by authoritarian assholes out to spy on and control their citizens. But let’s face it, what nation isn’t these days? They were just a little ahead of their time.
07/21/2014 at 5:54 pm
I probably won’t enthuse about East Germany, as we had our own less pleasant visit there while getting away from Poland. Life in the Eastern bloc really was miserable. That being said, it’s true that behind the walls of a cruel totalitarian state were many ordinary, often warm and hospitable, people who had no say in what their gov’t was doing. And it’s disturbing to see the direction our current “national security” state is heading in
Also, I should know that a Canadian would treat me to a hockey video 🙂 well played, sedate me, well played.