CULTURAL COMMENTARY: AMERICAN TRASH – TALKING Living with my brother in law and

CULTURAL COMMENTARY: AMERICAN TRASH – TALKING

Living with my brother in law and re-learning the fine art of american repartee. Americans evolved to add ‘macho’ and ‘hyperbole’ to British wit – creating absurd exaggerations as harmless insults.

And it is like a comfort food if you’ve been away for a long time – especially amongst the eastern slavs.

Americans also have a physicality that we share with our Russian Cousins, unlike our continental relations – whom always seem a touch effeminate to us. And this combination of macho insult, and traditional british intellectual insult, is a verbal sport that binds us.

Ukrainans and Russians not only don’t find it funny, but think it is stupid. Hyperbole – another american trait – self effacing humor, self ridicule, and reciprocal humiliation, about one’s intelligence, character and masculinity, is alien to them. And I found myself constantly ‘corrected’ by the women in my life.

However, this kind of humor can be used to form bonds of trust across vast differences in experience – and that is what was needed by americans whether in the military, the working class labor pool, or in our social and family groups.

And for all my effeteness I love every ridiculous bit of it.

Would I rather live as far as possible from one of america’s ‘immigrant cities’ (plantations)? Absolutely. Would I prefer to live in europe where the state is more protective of consumers? Yes I would. Would I rather live among the slavs? Yes. I would.

I would sacrifice institutional veracity for a land where family is more important than individual and government; where men are free to act as men, and women as women; and where entertainment is provided by friends and travel instead of purchases. Because the future for a person in the east is family amidst limited consumption of non-familial goods. And the future of a person in the west is a little box of an apartment waiting to die – alone.

Government in america, ad the hands of jewish socialists and New England puritans has destroyed the family, the culture, and nearly, the civilization.

The price one pay’s is one’s comfort foods: institutional, cultural, and material.

And it is a fair trade.