My basic idea on it, and I've written this before, is that, if you seriously were that shocked by Trump being elected , by the white supremacy that quickly ofllowed after, or the homophobia, et cetera, then you maybe need to take a look around you and make sure you're living in America. Cause if you were really that shocked by Trump, there is a part of me that doesn't think you are. The basic American has been a bit of a moron, a masculinity obsessed misogynist, and an ignorant homophobe/racist, for about as long as I can remember. I for one do not ever recall living in a country that was filled with anything **but** people like that. Growing up in the States, I was introduced to my first race riot at 13, and my first real life nazi with a swastika tattoo,w ho spoke to me of the Aryan Brotherhood, at 14. I was often threatened as a teenager, by older American men, that, if I ever got into trouble with the US law, I would have no choice but to become a "nazi", in order to defend myself against "hordes of angry murderous blacks who would beat me to death in my prison cell if I did not take a stand" And don't even get me started on the masculinity coin: American masculinity was indeed a prison that seemed deranged and terrifying. I wanted to be like my friends online from England, where masculinity seemed much more enjoyable and not nearly as mean and toxic. The English created David Bowie, John Lennon, Elton John, and Mick Jagger. The Americans just do nothing but occasionally listen to them on the radio; and then turn around and say they're fags et cetera....
So this was the American reality I was presented with from a very young age. They seemed like a bunch of hicks. It seemed like a trashy culture. And this was generally no matter where I looked. New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas, New Orleans, Baltimore, Oakland -- all of the places seemed to have a weird , threatening , and potentially racist and murderous underbelly to them. All of them seemed beyond "infested" with a gang culture of either white or black, of a hyper masculine culture, and of a culture that was decidedly anti-queer, anti-art, anti- anything that wasn't inherently violent or based around strength, etc.
So when I look out to the culture now and I see all of this shock, I am very surprised. Where, exactly, are these people who are shocked coming from? And how come they were never there to defend me when I was a kid, at family holidays, or school year after school year, when I would regularly be accosted and harangued by "proud Americans" who hated everything from long hair on boys, to literature, to poetry, to Europe, to history. Where in good fuck were these people? These so called defenders of this liberal idealism? Where in good fuck were y'all?
The truth is that these people were, I think, always in very specific pockets of this culture --pockets I ain't no part of, cus I got no dime -- which is exactly what the conservatives say about them. So basically, even though I, as an outcast, hate conservatives more than you can ever imagine, I also have to agree with them on that one point: These fucking people who claim to be the defenders of all this liberalism are absolutely no where to be found when the battle actually counts. I do not seem to ever see them in reality. They do not seem to be the typical American I have ever run into. So in a way, they don't really seem American. They seem, quite frankly, too intelligent and well-read to be American. And if *that* sounds offensive to you, and you're a conservative or something, then I also say again: I don't think you really live in the same America as me. How come?
Well it's simple and goes something like this: For all of my life, I have passed a lot of time on the internet. It began when I was a kid, because my neighborhood was often considered too dangerous to venture into, and it continued straight into adulthood. And while all this internet browsing was going on, I came across a very particular pattern years and years ago, when I was about 12 really, that never seemed to change. The pattern was that almost everyone i met online who seemed even slightly interested in anything even minimally intellectual was, as a rule, hardly ever an American. Literally, nine times out of ten, the most artistic or intelligent/open minded people I would wind up meeting online - and this goes back to the old mIRC days of the late 90s, to the message board days, et cetera -- were almost always not Americans.
I thus, when I was very young, began to kind of critique and even, to a degree, stereotype my own country and the people in it. I started to see them as being kind of inadequate, and stupid. I saw that American culture seemed rather "Backwater" in respect to the rest of the developed world. I didn't wanna do this, and I didn't "magically create the idea". I t was something that came to me after iliterally years of only running into intellectual sorts overseas, and never homegrown. I would sit in my room on my computer meeting these extraordinarily well-read people , but they never were from here. They were always from those northern Scandinavian countries Bernie Sanders now obsessively references, or from England, or Germany, or Japan. They were always from somewhere else. Nobody was ever from America.If they were, they were always from fucking California. It was like a rule after awhile: you meet a smart American, he or she is probably gonna say they're from Cali.
My fellow Americans who materialized either in reality or online were always pretty one dimensional, and you knew who they were right away: They were terrifid of the arts, of gays, they often seemed racist, they fetishized American military, they got a big kick out of being "Beyond masculine" men etc. They're the people who are now Trump voters. And they do not shock me and never have. If anythig, I grew completely accustomed to having to live around these people years and years ago. It becme a sort of accepted "handicap" of my reality: I was going to be forever trapped with a bunch of close minded assholes for my countrymen, but at least I could always hope to meet people who could do complex things like read, on the internet, who never seemed to be American.
Years ago, when I was younger, I remember being pretty frustrated about how dumb most fellow Americans I would meet were. I thought it was crappy and I wanted it to change because I felt lonely in my pursuit of being an "intellectual". But eventually I got over it, as I'm saying. Eventually I even sort of started to find it oddly endearing. It was like I went online to meet people who were deep and profound, who almost always just seemed to materialize overseas, and then I could slip back into the standard American reality, with a bunch of near illiterates who apparently never read a newspaper in their life, when I wanted to cool off and just be "Easy" and "simple". So I got to this place where I didn't mind the idiot American vibe anymore. I started to find it funny, comical, and as I said, endearing. I started to find it almost oddly lovable.
The so-called "dumbed down" American culture all became a sort of place to just relax inside for me. It was my dumb and simple home. My ridiculously asinine, backwater kinfolk from Rhode Island. They were morons, and they annoyed the hell out of me, but I knew that I had to deal with them, because I lived in their country . Then, however, this Trump thing happened, and I started to read, in absolute wonder, about how "angry" "confused' and "shocked' half of the country apparently was, and I was , of course, shocked myself. Were these really the same Americans I had always regarded as so simple and foolish and void of any intellectualism? My Lord, I could remember thinking, how much these little fools have grown in the few years I have disregarded them! How much they have truly grown! I was almost .. you know, my mind really was almost blown.
So now I think -- if you're a liberal -- I want you to see things from my perspective for a second, and what I want you to do is to understand that, for me, this whole Trump thing and the immense backlash against him and his homophobia and his racism, it doesn't really seem like I'm living in a period that is backwards, like everyone keeps saying. No.To me, it actually all seems like I'm now living in a period that is decidedly moving FORWARDS. It seems like these little dumb Americans that I always arrogantly mocked with my European and overseas friends -- it seems like they're finally growing. They are actually engaged in widespread political discussion now. They seem to be taking a bigger stand against racism and homophobia and anti-intellectualism than ever before. Do they still usually seem like idiots in comparison to the Europeans I've met, who always seem oddly informed and well-read? Yes. I willl admit they do. They still don't seem to read Dostoevsky as much as those beguiling Europeans do. In Europe you go anywhere, it seems, and you find that even relatively good looking and big breasted women occasionally make a point of it to read Dostoevsky and Camus and so forth. The Americans aren't there yet: Talking to most American women with big breasts, or even little breasts, is about as fun as swallowing a switchblade at a Hells' Angel "get together". They still don't seem to take in anything on such a profound level as the Europeans, I am sorry to admit. And as for the American gay scene, which I suppose is of some interest in an article about Democrats and stuff, it often seems like many of them are merely trying to portray Peter Pan come to life, if he did a kilo of cocaine and decided to start cutting hair. European gays don't tend to act like that; it seems they also take time to read Dostoevsky and Camus as well.....
But,whatever the case, do they seem radically more intelligent than they did years ago in the past? Yes. They definitely do. And this I know for a fact.
Therefore again, to me, it all seems like progress. It all seems good. Go on you little young Americans, go on and fight the good fight! I'm proud of y'all. Damn proud.
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