And then there's America....

A few points from when I was visiting the US for a month in August:

1. America has a history that's shorter than my parent's house. Literally.

2. Everything is big. Everything. From the houses, to the physical corpus of Americans, the egos, the big smiles, the grand scale of the beautiful nature, the amount of homeless people, the tremendous amount of student debt, and I could go on and on.

3. You can get the most delicious meat; from Water Buffalo, to mouth watering Beef Jerky or simply a big fat good old grass-fed steak. For someone who primarily follows a paleo diet, America is fantastic. People complaining about the food (or the lack of choices) they don't go out - do not listen to them.

4. Religion doesen't seem to be practiced based on actual faith (an organic practice) but rather it seems like an "everyday" practice - mechanical and not thoughtful. Phrases such as "We will have X or Y in our prayers" or "God Bless America" is being more abused than a catholic school boy.

5. Could the truth about America only be seen by a foreigner?

6. The need for heroes is nauseating. Whether it's Sully, Chris Kyle or a dude saving a kitten from a tree. Is this tendency due to Americas lack of history? Is it because America missed out on the original baptism of history?

7. The people of America constantly talk about "we". "We are Americans", "We are proud to be (...)", "God Bless America", "We stand together" etc. And still..... you see more homeless people than ants in an anthill, people with low-income cannot afford their medical bills or pay for their children's education. The dying words of Christopher Hitches should be nailed into every billboard sign in the country: "Capitalism. Downfall". On the one hand America wants to be a unity on the other hand they're sadistically stabbing each other in the back.

8. Light. Everything is covered in neon lights. Every house has their lights turned on every second of the day. The night might be dark, but is it full of terrors?

9. People from all around the world has been seduced by American cinema (which is fantastic in many aspects) - American cinema has a constant tendency to portrait its country as a romantic utopian paradise in which all dreams can come to fullfilment. The story about a bullied kid, an american soldier or a cheerleader being intimate with the sports-freak is like LSD or ecstacy for the American people.

Finally i'd like to quote Jean Baudrillard: "It is a world completely rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, puritanism and mental hygiene, poverty and waste, technological futility and aimless violence, and yet I cannot help but feel it has about it something of the drawing of the universe"

#America #Roundtrip #Baudrillard