So…it looks like this is my week to post responses to Real History Lisa’s posts.
OK.
She wrote one yesterday (in an apparent crisis of confidence…I can relate) called America is Dying. Her evidence? For starters, a live version of Wheel of Fortune in Florida that was attended by thousands of people.
Like I said…I can relate.
And then she extended THAT evidence to include the usual litany of things that are wrong with America. To which I can ALSO relate.
But there’s more.
MUCH more.
And I wrote a comment to her post that, as often happens with me, turned into a stand-alone post.
So here it is.
We ain’t dead yet.
Not by a long shot.
Read on.
No, Lisa.
In the ’50s, my father’s essentially good-hearted American parents sat slack-jawed in front of the TV set watching Lawrence Welk and pro wrestling. They thought that Jews, Italians, Blacks, Asians and anydamnedbody else who was not just like them were inferior beings. That was the way it was in Norman Rockwell’s America. I am a surviving eyewitness to this.
I was there.
Waking up.
Being born.
So were you, at whatever time you came up.
So were ALL of us.
America is NOT dying.
It is in the process of being reborn.
Those thousands at the live Wheel of Fortune show? And the other millions like them?
They are being left behind.
They are the afterbirth.
I firmly believe this. Please read my month-old diary Meet-up in the Working-class Boonies for further evidence.
Yes, there are millions who are still driving their murderous SUVS, eating bad food at bad restaurants and chain-storing their asses off. But they are in decline. People are awakening because they must, if for no other reason. (As is there was EVER another reason for awakening.)
Their SUVS are getting too expensive to operate.
Their bad food is literally killing them off. As is their bad medicine. At best, it is making them uncompetitive. Those millions of Mexicans who marched last month? They were marching on freshly cooked chilé rellenos and good rice and beans. Where was the middle class? Inside. Because their fast food-fed asses were too weak and too stupid to march.
Their chain stores are providing inferior goods and services. They are NOT cheaper. Their products break. And poison people. Their hiring practices and bottom-line buying drive societies into economic decline.
Why am I not like my grandparents?
Evolution.
Which continues, driven as it has always been driven by one concept and one concept only.
Survival of the fittest.
NOT survival of the fattest, or dinosaurs would still rule the earth.
Will America experience a regression, will it no longer be Boss of the World?
Yes.
‘Bout time.
It is dying?
No.
Just going through an adjustment.
It is STILL the most noble attempt at multicultural and multiracial co-existence that has ever happened in the history of the world.
I watched Clint Eastwood’s truly wonderful paean to blues pianists last night on PBS.
Fats Domino woke me up in 1958 or thereabouts. Among a number of OTHER “others.”
Johnny Cash.
Little Richard.
Dinah Washington.
And eventually a whole lot of OTHER other others.
Here come some OTHER mother. Always and forever in America. (Barring the unforeseen nuclear-driven collapse. Praise God and pass the jalapenos. Which I ate in some sushi yesterday. ONLY in America. Good, too. Yellowtail, scallions and jalapenos. Only in America.)
I am telling you once again, the blues will save America.
ALL them blues.
Mexican blues.
Black blues.
Caribbean blues.
Country blues.
Rap blues.
ALL them blues.
And Wheel of Fortune will join all the other quaint cultural memories like The Lawrence Welk Show on the memory shelf of history.
Think UP, Lisa.
Evolution progresses, as it must.
Think UP.
We gonna be alright again.
Any day now.
Aaaaaany day…
Think UP, Lisa.
We ain’t finished yet.
Not nearly.
Later…
AG
