The Sadness of America

[Bekah]

At 12:24 PM -0400 10/9/05, Kevin Birmingham wrote:
>  > "Perhaps sadness and melancholy are sentiments we Europeans bring 
>to America."
>
>So is America genuinely sad or is the sadness really just an import? 
>Because I'm trying to figure out which patent overstatement we 
>should deal with here.


I live in a small town and very rarely get to big cities but I feel a 
deep sadness when I see the sprawl of LA,  Atlanta, or Dallas. 
They're all the same,  all over the land, and it's all about bigger 
houses to fill with more plastic things  from  more shopping centers 
with parking lots full of more SUVs.  There's no overstatement here 
(but I don't know about the sadness of non-Americans.)

And a scary (or sad)  thing is,  this is what the Third World wants 
(Read Collapse - by Jared Diamond),    more things,   from disposable 
diapers to big plastic boom-boxes.

The US doesn't have any kind of authentic culture to preserve  or 
export (unless you count TV and rock and roll and movies and plastic 
things and blue jeans).    Culture is Disneyland and travel is about 
gift shops.   Only San Francisco,  Boston and New York have their own 
urban ambiance.  There are some historical sites and the rest is 
commercialized hype.  Why do the foreign tourists want to come to see 
the US?   Las Vegas?  (yes,  sad to say, imo.)   Why do I go to 
Helsinki or Paris?

Bekah