[Reader-list] American Builds A Dream World -- And Moves Into It

[Are Flagan]

Re: 1/14/03 12:35, "t byfield" <tbyfield at panix.com>:

> america's west is a myth, to be sure, but it's also stunningly beautiful.

Which goes a long way to explain why the fastest growing city in America is
Las Vegas...and why the Hoover dam now looks like LANDmark on both sides
(when we passed in Jan.) thanks to the drought and all those pretty lights
on the strip...and why paths in Yosemite are busier with fully equipped
summer camp white kids than the zebra crossings in uptown NY...and why it
costs $50 for a season pass to nature's ranger policed and managed
finest...and why every gas guzzling 4WD SUV ad is set in a crimson
sunset...and why the Native American rez is a study in despair, even with
casino money to play with and fast food for winter...and why so much
beautiful terrain is great for "n-u-k-l-e-a-r" (Bushy phonetics) testing,
unless you live downwind...and you get the other postcard...

American cultural history is not primarily informed or defined by
anti-urbanism and anti-cosmopolitanism; it is informed by imperial
expropriation of the frontier and exploitative progress to and beyond
breaking points. (Same thing, different words.) But let's not twist our
tongues into nonsense the way many Americans do to profess their
anti-intellectualism, which, even in less subtle terms that I agree with, is
the mounting character of this nation.

(The anti- prefix t employs throughout, however, has seen much widespread
use lately, as anyone who questions the justifying nonsense of this upcoming
war, even those who fundamentally asks what problem it is actually supposed
to solve and how, is hit with the blanket label of being anti-American (with
"us" or against "us"). How, and not necessarily in which terms, America
chooses to define itself these days says something about its current
substance, and this finger pointing back and forth to an increasingly vacant
core (inhabited by struggling or bust yet powerful corporations and balding
eagles with highly flammable flags behind them) is an insult to the
knowledge and skills and beauty etc. that the US of A possesses. It is
overdue time to ditch and dismiss the anti- fix for nothing and reclaim some
other defining terms...)

All IMO,

-af