US-Americans: You Can Do Anything

The American man is different than the European: He vehemently expresses his desires. It is but enough for him to imagine someone else losing face in a massive failure.

America once again. And these great people are a kind hardly ever seen in Switzerland. These internal cigar smokers, who speak too loudly, are immortals. In Switzerland, boasting is regarded as almost as embarrassing as slipping out of your pants at the roadside. [The Swiss] like to be humble, polite, and neutral. Thus the neutrality, as shown in quietly granting the former terrorist Carlos* asylum, or somehow killing for a good cause, as the Islamic State group does, is also a fighting for a kind of liberation through faith. So to speak.

And on the topic of faith, I think that despite all the resemblance to ordinary Europeans (limbs, head, etc.), the American is very different from us. They want what everybody wants: the right to be better and to watch TV, but they formulate their wishes differently than we do. Vehemently. You can achieve anything you want. This phrase probably hangs above every child’s bed.

In Germany and Switzerland the phrase above a child’s bed is a little longer: You can achieve a lot if you follow the rules, if you’re not too loud, if you finish what you start, if you don’t cross the street on red, and if you are never too nice – which appears superficial. And if you say anything that seems unappealing, the result due to complying with these rules will be a passive-aggressive mood, which is best for everyone. Forever. Thus let [the tension] grow, don’t make a racket.

The Miracle of Self-Marketing

If having parental support or an extra talent guarantees a good education to the young American, then it is hard to restrain oneself. Their belief in themselves, as strong as a skyscraper, is amazing when one considers the self-marketing miracle: An unbroken will for self-determination, the bleaching of all available body parts and unbridled consumption. Sounds good to me.

Questioning themselves or their existence does not change the fact of their pathetic finitude. It must feel wonderful to merge with the system in which one lives. To be one with the advantages of a lubricated functioning capitalism, in which we all seem to have a choice. One is happy to die as a brilliant athlete or a pessimistic, cranky loser. But can this fundamentalist belief in themselves really give them superhero powers? How will they react when irritated – like a tightly wound coil? [How will they react to] an attack in a dark alley, a crazy [person] with an assault rifle, or diarrhea? What is left apart from their size, their self-confidence, the feeling that everything is under control?

People wear out quickly, and even more quickly lose vision, their aura of invulnerability. Then they are sad, lonely, small and pathetic. Suffice it to say, every person who is extravagantly loud, vain and resilient, apparently looks at the other disdainfully, imagining him or her to have failed enormously in order to [make them less impressive]. In order to like the American, it suffices to imagine him as akin to a toddler. [Have] a blessed and festive evening, a happy weekend, and please keep me in your loving remembrances.

*Translator’s Note: Carlos refers to “Carlos the Jackal,” a Venezuelan terrorist who killed two French agents and an informant in 1975 and recently stated that he and the PLO had free movement through Switzerland at that time.