It's Occurred To Me...

Way back when I first started blogging I was fresh home from the war in Iraq. My mind was awash with thoughts, feelings and sentiments; I was eager to take advantage of my renewed lease on life.

Sure, I'd been dealing with a robotic kind of stupidity non-stop for a bit over fifteen months, but now I was home and would finally be able to ease that particular burden!

What I didn't realize at the time was by coming home to America and leaving the war I was, in a way, merely exchanging one form of stupidity for another. Sure, I was getting away from bombs and bullets; but I was also coming back to traffic jams and a form of social anarchy.

Sure I wouldn't be forced to stand in lines for idiotic things which seemed interminable, but I was coming back to deal, interminably, with idiots who can't seem to properly handle standing in line for anything at all.

Worse still, while I had been dealing with lots of stupid people in the military unit I was then attached to, there were still enough good folk so that I was not only exposed to a variety of individuals from differing backgrounds but also forced due to circumstances to cope with a variety of situations.

I didn't realize my brain, while shutting down in some areas, was highly stimulated in other areas, areas I didn't easily recognize or, for that matter, particularly care for when I could recognize them. However, I failed to recognize the positive aspects of said stimulation as well.

I lost much of my language ability through disuse but gained a sense of patience; I never performed mathematical operations but I was able to quickly calculate variations on themes in order to safely chain down a heretofore unknown piece of heavy equipment; I seldom got stimulating conversation from the people around me but I had the chance to interact with a lot of foreign nationals and share in their joys and sorrows on the road, to experience even small bits of their varying cultures in passing.

Coming home I began to pour out my mind on an electronic piece of paper, posting it for all the world to see should they care to view it. I was enthusiastic and it showed.

Sadly, it seems of late (meaning the last year, perhaps year and a half) I've become something of a bitch.

I don't like this and I'm trying hard to figure out what's happened to me, why this terrible transformation has come to pass. I'm no longer humorous the way I once was; my humor is less joyous and more sardonic these days when it occurs at all.

And after taking a good look around, after thinking about it while trapped in pointless traffic this morning, I've come to realize that I let America get to me.

I love my country for what it once stood for, what it could stand for again someday, maybe. I love the idea of freedom and opportunity and all that.

Still, looking around, there's simply no denying that the majority of our people are... well, they're just pretty damned small and stupid. They have an inflated sense of self, an unrealistically challenged view of the world at large. They're petty in nature while attempting to aggrandize themselves with charitable causes which are, generally, purely liberal in nature rather than especially helpful. They don't really want to help because there's a solution to be offered, they want to help because it's fashionable. They don't want to promote things like general Equality, they want to be king without actually being king.

I don't like writing posts about things like sexism and racism; it's my preference to write funny things, things which make people smile and laugh, feel good for a moment, get a giggle out of life. It's just that... well,...

I'm having trouble telling the difference anymore because my humor has become so bitter. When I see the things I really and truly SEE each and every day part of me laughs inside, and so I think it might be funny. When I get in front of the computer I'm thinking about things, laughing at them because they're just so damnably unbelievable, so ludicrous that there's pretty much nowhere to go except for laughter and head-shaking.

Only, when I begin to type the funny part just won't seem to come.

Here in America people proudly claim things such as coffee snobbery, making remarks like "Oh, I'm a coffee snob. I only drink [insert product here]." Such people will explain in condescending tones why it is, for example, improper to make the statement I love coffee if you're the sort of person who adds cream and sugar because once you add these inferior substances it's no longer real coffee.

Well, it didn't turn into a wart when I added my stuff, now did it?!?

In Europe, during all my time there, the coffee was absolutely excellent and I never ran into a single, solitary person who gave a good damn about how I drank mine. I saw people drinking espresso, the real stuff, completely black... or with huge heaps of sugar... or by adding cream... or with the foamed cream and added sugar whereby they enjoyed a cappuccino.

I never met a single coffee snob, not one. In America I've encountered, even here in my small, ignorant portion of the country, dozens who proudly proclaimed it, as though this affectation somehow made them cultured.

But coffee is, no pun intended, small beans in the grand scheme of American stupidity. There's just SOOOO much more.

In all my world travels I've definitely encountered racism; and nowhere else save here in the allegedly great Melting Pot has it been so forcibly shoved down my throat at each and every turn; nowhere else save here does it matter so much on a daily basis without a civil war actually going on.

In America a black person is African-American, not black; and yet a young lady I once knew, a tall blonde who grew up in South Africa and moved here for University and marriage, was screamed at and nearly expelled from the Department of Motor Vehicles when she put down African-American for her nationality -- dual citizenship notwithstanding!

Americans have some pretty screwed up ideas about what it means to be an American, too. When you ask anyone about their heritage, nobody says "I'm an American," they always respond Scottish, Irish, German, Norwegian, what have you. It's as though they want to say "I'm from anywhere but here!"

In America, Saint Patrick's Day involves wearing green, dyeing an entire river green, taking all the music of Irish origin people can find and making a giant deal out of it, swooning in delight at the sound of Uilleann pipes whilst sucking on Guinness and claiming to prefer it to other draughts. Why? Because any given person so expounding on the qualities is, of course, a beer snob.

I don't recall such stuff from Europe, or more specifically from Ireland.

There's sexism everywhere, whether you wish (in your Freedom) to be a practicioner or not.

In Europe and Asia I really didn't hear much being made about the things Men do versus the things Women do, except in England. People just did things like politely hold doors for one another or rudely ignore others, regardless of gender.

Here in America... well, let me put it this way: The blog I just deleted, the really bitchy one where I happened to mention the Feminist Majority Foundation as part of a list of other organizations? None of you are aware of this, but my blog was actually visited by someone from the Fem-Maj-Foun, from their site in Arlington, VA.

Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.

The problem, in the end, is not that I'm living in America; it's that I've finally been indoctrinated with an American frame of mind, an American way of thinking that really, until the last couple of years, was never part of my personality. I honestly fear that were I to travel just now people would do a thing they've never, ever done with me and mutter among themselves Hmph -- typical American.

That would be bad; I lived abroad for years and no matter what anyone may think of this comment, when traveling abroad I can think of no greater shame than to be what foreign nationals consider a typical American.

I've got to relax, lighten up, find new stimulus, new friends, boost my rotting brain.