I have friends, business associates and family in America. Some are born & bred and some are expats who have chosen to live there. Good luck to them. I myself am awestruck by pictures of Connecticut in the autumn (Fall), a snow-dolloped Vermont in Winter (Winter) and the unconditional charm of the Floridians in January (the annual PGA Show in Orlando).
California, however, worries me, with its chief exports of sunshine, artifice and horseshit.
With the annual Thanksgiving that celebrates the first declaration of independence (when the Founding Fathers made safe anchor in the new world after fleeing a sclerotic and cankerous Europe) comes the countdown to Christmas. And Americans have successfully re-branded this august Christian feast better than most other countries.
But the nation itself remains a ragtag of contradictions: breath-taking wealth and mesmerizing poverty; an infinite capacity for forbearance and a bottomless capacity for lethal violence; an abiding tolerance for religious freedom and a willingness to indulge nihilistic, smug atheism that borders on academic-level spite (but without the intellectual rigour).
Since 1953 Palisades Park in Santa Monica (California) has been home to a Yuletide collection of lifesize Nativity scenes that earned the city the nickname ‘City of the Christmas Story’. In 2009, however, local resident of note, towering intellect and self-appointed jedi protector of the First Amendment Damon Vix (any relation to Rip Torn, Ty Hardin or Bo Twat?) won a small but vocal following for his parsimonious protest on behalf of the disenfranchised Godless citizens of the city of Saint Monica that rendered the 70 year-old diorama tradition politically incorrect and therefore unacceptable under the standards of the new religion of superficial smartarse so revered in the sunshine state.
City authorities rolled over like a settlement of 19th century paraplegic Carmelite prospectors under armed attack by murderous claim-jumpers & bushwackers and awarded 18 of the 21 diorama spaces available to the atheist coalition, so they could pretty-up their bilious monuments to misery.
If this faith thing is such a crap idea, explain why supposedly disinterested non-believers show such a slavish and unimaginative envy with faux-christenings for their newborn children (“naming day”) and appoint friends as pseudo-Godparents (“special person/s”).
If being an omnivore is so louche, why do death-mask vegetarians strive to make grain and tofu substitute look like sausages and burgers and roasts (as in ‘nutroast’)?
If Christmas is so offensive, why push your own vanilla pastiche on the rest? “Christmas without the Christ… Happy mas!” Chanukah without the concept of mercy or compassion in victory? Mazel tov… bring it on!
If institutional religion is so abhorrent why launch your own hilariously titled parody “Pastafarianism” and its deity (sic.) “the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster” (ha-ha… oh, très drôle.)
Mr Vix and his ilk betray a pathological meanness of spirit that can be explained in the nursery playground as ‘social-deficit issues’, and in adult life as ‘being an arse-head’.
By all means, exercise freedom of speech (plead the First). Be joyously and eccentrically different with my blessing. But if you’re not yet too cynical, sociopathic or barmy to celebrate the achievements of the Founding Fathers and the New World renaissance, then why not simply fuck off and do your own thing like they did. Why not REALLY row your own boat?
Over that horizon there…
Get rowing…
Happy Thanksgiving – especially to you dismal nay-sayers, because your own Constitution, based on 17th century Christian principles, optimistically guarantees you the right to talk drivel.
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