There is, as we know, an idealized vision of European life held in the imagination of the average American Chomsky reader. Suave, French and Italian intellectuals in their stylish scarves, skimming through Sartre in sun-dappled cafes, sipping espressos, their heads full of historical and cultural knowledge, smug in their easily-affordable healthcare and 16 weeks of annual vacation. Well, I hate to break it to you little Medieval Poetry majors, but this vision is entirely true. Based on my experience, just sitting among these subdued Euros can make a Portland denizen want to break down in sweet, liberal tears (like the snowflakes we are). Where do they get off, these little multi-lingual sophisticates, secure in their rich cultural history and tasteful fashions while we’ve had to endure the Disney-fied inanities and jackbooted puritanism of our 24-hour, drive-thru, infotainment, megachurch, celebrity-porn, Super Bowl lifestyles?
But as a great man once asked, why curse the darkness when you can light a candle and torch the place? As those who have endured my persistent irritations will attest, I’ve been cursing the darkness of American culture since the debut of Jabber Jaw. When it comes to grievances against our great nation, I’m like a gaping baby bird, waiting eagerly to be stuffed with Hitchens quotes and Bill Moyers segments. And the desire to bitchslap America is hardly in short supply these days, what with the Trump regime providing a Golden Coral buffet of America’s worst impulses. We’re all tired and demoralized, beaten down not just by this psychopathic president, but the unending stream of reality shows, tabloid media, and miracle products which delivered this bloated Moses unto his deplorables. Everyone I know would like to pack up and vamoose to an advanced civilization.
And well, that’s what I’m about to do. Fancying myself a persecuted dissident, in just a few days I will be escaping to the country known for its adoption of political refugees, Germany. And you can believe that, as the wife and I have been furiously preparing for this move, selling our tokens of capitalist materialism (aka my Big Boy figures and Ultraman DVDs), I have been fueled by a lifelong fury against shallow, American excess, from the Gulf War to Baby Yoda. Yet now, somehow, with the furniture gone, my job resigned, the cabinets Wheaties-free, ready to torch the place and run away, I find myself softening my view of Big, Stupid America as the hour draws near to flee its oily shores. In keeping with the great contradiction that is America itself, I find that what makes this country so relentlessly butt-ugly is often precisely what I will miss. Kindly indulge me as I provide a few heartfelt examples.
I will miss the aggrandizement and high-octane hucksterism. World’s biggest! World’s greatest! You could already be a winner! Don’t miss the opportunity of a lifetime! The non-stop, carnival barker snow jobs that have built this country since the natives traded their land for trinkets and small pox. In Germany, there are no TV ads or billboards for shyster lawyers or prescription drugs with crippling side effects for the shyster lawyers to sue over. From what I’ve seen, the only type of advertising legally allowed in Germany is for cell phone service. And we all know cell phone companies would never take advantage of anyone.
I’m going to miss the televangelists, the pro wrestlers, the porn stars – all the purveyors of the alternate realities Americans worship. I’m going to miss reality show contestants being forced to eat bugs and round-the-clock coverage of celebrity drunk driving arrests. I’ll miss the history documentaries full of ghosts, aliens, government cover-ups, and no actual history. I’ll miss Coca-Cola ads pretending to be movies. I’ll miss all the high-definition exploi-tainment Americans embrace as a lifestyle choice so they don’t have to think about how they’re never going to pay off their student loans.
I’ll miss the aggression, even the occasional threat of violence, that radiates through the culture, stimulating us into teeth-gnashing night sweats and doughnut binges. I’ve been raised with the clenched fists of constant American tension, and I feel somewhat lost without it. When strolling the quiet streets of Düsseldorf, with its Vulcan-esque pedestrians solemnly minding their own business, I yearn for a voice to explode in the distance, “I’ll kill you, mother fucker!” It would feel like home. On a more subtle level, I will miss the American tendency to mercilessly berate others for their fashions, careers, life choices, simple mistakes, and general lack of intelligence as an expression of love.
I will miss American ingenuity. Not the kind that invents the Thighmaster, but the redneck know-how that can power a satellite dish in the thunderstorm with baling wire and a lawn mower battery. I’ll miss having neighbors who have a winch installed on their trucks who are also experts in taxidermy.
I’ll miss the rugged individual tradespeople who do it themselves and do it badly. The indecipherable logos on the local repair shop. The tragic attempts to recreate Elmo in icing in the supermarket bakery. The appliance stores with random hours in concrete bunkers, looking like the dumps were foreclosed on decades ago. I’ll miss hopeless, no-budget entrepreneurs like the lawn maintenance guy who wanted me to take a photo of his advertising flyer because he only made one copy. I’ll miss the fast food joints and convenience stores, run by surly teens, hungover hipsters, and disgruntled carny types who have no business working in customer service.
I’ll miss the Dollar Store, Big Lots, Ollies, or any of the other retail dumpsters where unsold product has been passed down the mercantile food chain on its last stop before the garbage barge. If I dig through those piles of discount merch long enough, there’s going to be a public domain Mickey Rooney film for three dollars that I simply must have. Good luck finding bins of cheap, Chinese crap in the highly-regulated fatherland.
I’m going to miss driving. I’ll be selling the car before we leave and henceforth adopting the life of streamlined, European public transport. The trains run on time, generally, but I’ll miss operating my very own land cruiser. I’ll miss wasting gallons of gas for a trip across town just to see if Office Depot has those paperclips I like, with an empty backseat in case I decide to put a couple of new microwaves or flatscreens on the credit card while I’m out. I’ll miss roadside America, the truck stops full of quick-energy poison, confederate flag belt buckles, and Duck Dynasty shot glasses. I’ll miss neon-lit Waffle Houses in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by darkened nothingness, where skillet-fried food is consumed at an unreasonable hour, the mind blurred by miles of interstate and AM radio call-in shows. I’ll miss automatic car washes.
I’ll miss the Mexican restaurants – Germans know nothing of Mexican food – and I’ll miss the vital Latinos who manage them, whom I dearly hope will completely take over the country in the coming years. I’ll miss toaster strudel, Chef Boy-R-Dee, Hot Pockets, Cheez Whiz, and all the other crap I never eat but will long for once it’s gone. I will miss the wide availability of boiled peanuts.
And I truly hope I will one day have the opportunity to miss Hollywood. I kind of doubt it, though. The THX roar of CG apocalypse and the bellowing slapstick of SNL alums can be heard all over the world. But maybe someday, when I’m overstuffed with classical art and European political history, I will again yearn for a Jason Bourne skyscraper plunge into an army of 3-D Transformers and wisecracking Legos. Sometimes you just get a craving for that sort of trans fat.
Most of all, I will miss the thrift stores, antique malls, and flea markets, those living museums of America’s tortured soul. The mystic totems of the nation’s hyper-capitalist anxiety line those shelves: the ventriloquist ministry LPs, the scented Elvis candles, the 9-11 commemorative collector’s plates, the Victoria Principal jazzercise videos. Gen Xers like me love these places because, by God, we’re the generation who fully understands the correct response to America’s eternal onslaught of commercial desperation: kitsch appreciation and savage ridicule. For to love America is to laugh about and love its garbage, a kind of Stockholm syndrome writ large. Accepting the culture as a cosmic joke is the only recourse left to thinking Americans hoping to maintain some glimmer of sanity in Kardashian Kountry.
I was vacationing in Vienna a few years ago, hanging around the museum quarter after spending the afternoon gaping at Hundertwasser and Schiele paintings. As the sun was setting, I looked out over the courtyard, admiring the other tourists, pushing strollers and idling about in their tasteful winter wear. Watching their casual manner, I was struck by a judgement about these people. These were the sort of well-read, confident citizens who would never even consider traveling to Disney World. And I realized, to my dismay, that I will never really understand Europe, never know how to properly respond to this culture, because I do not despise it.
My fellow Americans, the Old Country is a brave new world that awaits me, with no Soma in sight. Light a candle for me.
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