Some Anti-American Notes. Well, Not That Anti

In the Middle of Nowhere

American cities have no downtowns. Well, there’s a district in each town called “downtown,” but it’s only a group of commercial high buildings gathered around a little city hall from the 30’s. This center is pretty lively during the weekly business hours and somewhat deserted the rest of the time. Such places used to be dangerous areas about 20 years ago.

You sometimes happen to come across a historical district, like Ybors City in Tampa. Over a distance of two or three blocks, you will find some shops, restaurants, tourists and an entire collection of ethnic-historical knick-knacks that are sold in a period cardboard decor. There’s even a history museum with a few bits and pieces.

Once the historical boundary has been crossed, you end up in the middle of nowhere and you’re going to move from one no-man’s-land to another, going through some exactly similar spaces scattered with motels, fast food restaurants and shopping malls with huge parking lots. Non-central spaces are a way to see things differently.

Nothing’s high or low, there are no authorities and subjects but equal communities that are patrolled by the cops.

Even Washington, this very powerful city, has a power whose significance is totally different from a European one. The city is more representative of the American empire with its two zones. On the one hand is the executive side represented by the White House, agencies and administrations; and on the other, the Capitol’s legislative hill. The entire city, with its compact yet huge buildings (the FBI, the Pentagon, museums) is the true expression of the American people’s empire. In France, we have the Republic’s pretty palaces, and the prefecture building in the provincial towns. Just take a look at the way Sarkozy considers those prefects: as if they were a kind of little representative presidents.

We have to admit that the American nowhere places are kind of nice. It’s just that we don’t really know where we are.

In order to solve the problem, let’s turn on the TV-set. Commercials for pizzas or mortgages keep popping up, whereas another channel is dedicated to a frantic preacher pronouncing the sacred word: dollar.

Something Supernatural

Every time I travel through the United States, I’m flabbergasted by those TV films or shows whose main themes revolve around possession, exorcism, disappearing into the anti-world, creatures from “Lovecraft” crawling through the cracks of the walls. Saturday is definitely THE day when all TV channels offer their viewers pictures of ghosts, walking dead people and vampires. The supernatural is in every imagination whereas in the real world, technology and organization rule.

Speaking of organization, I was at a Starbucks in Washington the other day. At not even 9 o’clock in the morning, a line was standing in front of the cash register. An employee started to run from behind the counter, the same way a rugby player would try to escape from a line-out. He was going up the line to take the pre-orders and directly convey them to the employee who was in charge of making coffee. As a result, the traffic jam didn’t actually take place at the cash register anymore, it had moved to the counter where everyone was waiting for a customized coffee. Not that much of a change, but an organized one.

What about technology now? I’m being given a receipt for my payment at the hamburger shop, along with a strange saucer made of black plastic that’s starting to twinkle and sparkle, vibrating at the same time like a Mexican bean. At last my hamburger, with mustard and no French fries and coleslaw but no onion rings, is ready. I get the feeling that there’s an electronic chip in this burger.

Technology here is obviously almighty and omnipresent, so much so that it tends to be quite banal. Its presence is exactly where you wouldn’t expect it, co-existing with some remains of the craft industry, just where it isn’t meant to be. A total faith in technical causality.

The related paradox is that technological failures are exclusively perceived as if they were born of the union between a supernatural being and the devil himself. It all has to work so perfectly that when it doesn’t, it’s because the devil got involved in it all.

We Europeans, particularly the French people (although Italy and Spain could as well be mentioned) are used to malfunctions – sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it works almost miraculously. It works when it just doesn’t fail. Causes have their effects, but only when they don’t fail, we are used to a form of weak causality.

When your train arrives (or leaves) on time in Marseille, Rouen, Mantes or Bayonne, it’s because the CGT* or Sud wanted it, because the catenaries aren’t broken or yet the storm didn’t make the dead leaves fall down.

Indeed, we don’t need any supernatural element in our society: indetermination is part of causality, which sometimes happens to be supernatural itself. For example: the reason why it will rain in Tuscany is because their government is made up of thieves!

Anyway, the USA perfectly matches Kant’s theories**: there is an absolute determined order of phenomenon and a transcendence of what is supernatural. In case one of both would be malfunctioning, while the other one is undoubtedly responsible for what’s wrong.

You would never hear an American president say (just like Sarkozy did during his TV-broadcasted New Year wishes to the French people on December, 31): “I have promised that the same causes would not produce the same effects any longer.” He would be taken for the devil himself.

I’m coming to the conclusion that Sarkozy, despite what his enemies keep saying, is very, very, very French. Being French doesn’t mean wearing a beret on your head and carrying a baguette under your arm; it simply means believing that what is supernatural is part of the natural order (almost pre-Kant-ian in some way). Everything works in the strictest Republican legality – although being manipulated by strings is not so bad.

The Plastic Kingdom

Since those people move continuously and are obsessed by hygiene, what better way than having at their disposal all they need wrapped in plastic or polythene or any other similar material: cups, cutlery, boxes and trays. Nothing should be reusable, but anything could be disposable and of course recyclable (at least in theory). You find yourself trying and trying to cut soft things with soft instruments. Oldenburg was a genius when he designed his soft and bushed sculptures.

Controls

Entering the United States is no picnic.

We’re very far away from the mess you can see at Charles de Gaulle airport at around 6 o’clock in the morning. When the airport police staff members don’t look very awake and pretend they control the visitors entering French territory.

No matter whether you are in New York or Miami, you will have to stand in line for at least one or two hours, you will be photographed, you will have four fingers of each hand fingerprinted, and then the thumbs. They don’t control your private parts yet, but if someday a terrorist ever dares using his weiner, then we’ll have to be very careful! The inner controls are even fussier, especially if your passport is foreign. However, politeness rules and it makes a heck of a lot change from being spot-checked by our rude and simple-minded cops. It’s somewhat curious that our police officers get a good training but aren’t apparently taught that politeness is an appreciated factor of non-violence.

Whenever you wish to cross a border, the questioning is thorough. I am brought to the conclusion that holding conferences in either Canada or in the United States sounds like a bizarre activity in the eyes of immigration officers. Maybe I should try and pretend to be a preacher, it could make things easier.

P.S.: Some readers, among whom the 11 ‘o clock commentators, a time that should be used to submit some blog readers to a breathalyzer, have accused me of anti-obese racism. So in case I have been misunderstood, here is my explanation: if I am afraid of obese people when I am on a plane, it’s because seats are already not that large, and those obese people I mentioned generally spill out onto their neighbors. A second point, under the form of a riddle, to those who accuse me of racism: What is the difference between a black and an obese person? Answer: you don’t turn black because you eat.

Sorry to lay it on a bit thick, but the notion of political correctness is about to kill freedom of speech.

*CGT: Confédération Générale des Travailleurs, a major association of the French trade unions.

**Kant: German philosopher (1724-1804). He founded an “idealistic” school (bound with transcendence) that has its name.