Peter Ashlock
Aug 24, 2017 · 2 min read

Americans tend to think they are the navel of the world and that everyone else is secondary. Such a big country tends to have a warped perspective, being so distant from other cultures,unless you have the money and time you cannot really experience other countries intimately. I once had an in-law who grew up speaking French, German, Hungarian, Russian and English, not because of academic interest, but because it was necessary to communicate with all those different kind of people during World War Two.

Those who live in big cities on the coast have the sense of knowing what is going on, when they have no idea what is happening in the rest of the country and since they are not there, it doesn’t count as much. They cherry pick the news to find their world view. Thus we got the idiot in chief who has managed to keep his foot in his mouth and his head up his ass at the same time. The man is truly talented!

The American landscape is equal to anything in the world, but the myths about success are more pervasive. The obstacles to survival and rising above the noise are prodigious and they add new ones all the time. The cost of education is increasingly out of reach, and it is always more expensive to eat food that has little done to it than that which is mangled and managed and processed and packaged. The cost of rent keeps most people from being able to travel or expand their horizons.

The main freedom in America is the fantasy of making money because Henry Ford and Steve Jobs left big marks. Because of that people drool in their footsteps and lust after Teslas, they think Mark Zukerberg is a god, when in fact all his money has done in San Francisco is plaster his name on the general hospital. The tech folks have yet to show any class or culture, only more of the same narcissistic obsessions that consume Silicon Valley. Not everyone worships at their alter. Now we have a homeless population that makes Bankok look serene by comparison. San Francisco is shameful.

Las Vegas is hilarious, the adult Disneyland including invitations to brothels in the desert! Will we next have sex and drug resorts after all fifty states legalize pot? The one thing about America and it’s often all too gauche values is that little is surprising. Even a president whose qualifications were to be on a third rate “reality” TV show and three bankruptcies. The voters who elected him got what they deserved and the rest of us got another form of inedible processed food.

My god, to live on a street named after an artist or writer, a street that is not a tiny alley renamed as an after thought like in San Francisco! I adore Barcelona, and so much of the world, but America is still in preschool.

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