Devolution: Homo Americanus

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Let Us All Be Enabled and Entitled

                I go to the YMCA (herein “the Y”) quite regularly to get a quick work-out in; about five to six days per week.  Now I don’t go this often because I’m some tremendous athlete or big time muscled mass of protein.  I generally go because it’s convenient, happens to be right down the street from my home, and to help keep a formerly dislocated shoulder and surgically repaired knee (arthroscopy) strengthened. The truth is, I do a quick 30-minute run around the neighborhood, and end up at the Y to stretch and do a quickie-5-minute workout.  However, I inevitably end up spending more than the 15-minutes or so that it would actually take to stretch and do my quick exercises.  Why?  Well, it’s to socialize, of course!  I pay big bucks monthly to belong to this Y in order to chat with my primary social circle, the Ladies Club.

                I call my circle of friends the Ladies Club because the three closest friends of mine there are ladies.  Easy enough, right?  Also, the time of day determines this as well.  I generally arrive at the gym anywhere between 7:30am and 8:30am.  Most people are headed into work by this time and there are specific types of people who are at the gym at this time of day: the retired and/or elderly, those with flexible work schedules, and those who do not work or work part-time.   Generally speaking, there are more women there at this hour than men.  (The meat-heads plug up the free-weights in the early evenings, being obnoxiously loud, moaning and groaning like they’re gonna throw-up.  I hate to imagine what they sound like when they have an orgasm…  “Uhhh-waaahhhhhh-rrrr!!!”  Maybe they’re shitting themselves, too.  If so, they deserve it because they’re obnoxious as hell.)

                One morning last week, I did my run and had to rush to the bathroom.  You know, I had some business to take care of after my run, which can double as an unexpectedly effective laxative.  (And it’s completely natural!)  Okay.  Gross.  You didn’t want to know that, I’m sure, but if ever you’re in need of regularity – which by the way, television commercials freely talk about this as well as other bodily functions without so much as an apology nor eliciting from its audience the slightest response to the grotesque – you should take up running or some physical activity that pushes your cardiovascular fitness.  Constipated?  No such thing!

                I went to the sink to wash my hands (I role-model proper hygiene) and came across a man whom I see regularly at the Y.  He is an obese man.  Morbidly obese.  He is friendly enough and we exchange basic pleasantries as usual (“Hi, how are you?”  “Why yes, it is quite cold outside.”  “Yes.  I ran outside.”  “Umm-hmm.  Yes.  Quite cold!”).  Anyway, this man is relegated to a wheelchair and the only time I see him out of the wheelchair is when I should see him doing some exercises in the pool.  Quite painfully and sadly, I might add, to see the state of his physical body.

                I stare straight ahead in the mirror to check my sweaty self out as I scrub-scrub-scrub any potential nasties on my hands with the bubbly soap and water.  I once heard that one should scrub away for about 30-seconds or the approximate length of time it takes to go through the ABCs jingle.  This time, however, I didn’t recite the ABCs.  Mr. Man-in-the-wheelchair was talking to me.  What was remarkable was that he had his shirt off and was at the sink.  I don’t know what he was doing at the sink, except that the next thing I witnessed was quite startling.  There was a white plastic grocery bag and he had reached into it and pulled out something.  What?  What could it be, you ask?  It crinkled in a plastic packaging of its own, and he proceeded to tear it open.

                Chomp!  Chew-chew-chew.  I could smell the sweet smell of processed peanut butter-laden-chocolaty-corn syrup deadlies.  It was a Nutty Bar.  Now I love me some Nutty Bars like the next person, but eating something in a public bathroom, let alone my own bathroom always grosses me out.  Furthermore, such a blatantly bad-for-you food at a gym is akin to sacrilege.  I had to give it up to him though.  He didn’t care about none of that shit.  Chomp!  Chew-chew-chew-how’s the weather-chew-chew-chew.  He did, however, hide in the locker room to chow down rather than to dig into the deadlies in the lobby…

                Later that morning, on my way into work, I was listening to the local radio and they began talking about the strategies of changing the available foodies at the kiddies’ schoolies.  Carrot sticks instead of freedom fries.  Bottled (processed tap) water (by Coca-Cola Co., Pepsi Co.) instead of Sody-Pops.  Give the kids healthier choices!  Discussions on strategies to combat the deadlies ensued.  Stupid shit about trying to get parents to make better choices and teaching their children, blah blah blah.  Why stupid?  Well, because it might be impossible to try to get someone whose daily life is survival (and has always been that way, and always will be) to give a shit about buying carrots and broccoli so they can cook something up that’s healthy.  I don’t disagree with the basic premise, but truly, how do you expect to alter the course of someone’s life when the greater social structural forces are constantly working against them?  (Then the conversation turned briefly to genetics.  I about lost my head…)

                Have you ever noticed how cheap some of this bad-for-you shit is?  Subsidized by the government, no doubt.  Who would give up pop for expensive-ass orange juice?  Cheap-ass potato chips over carrot sticks?  No, thank you.  The Native Americans (Who?  You know, them Injuns) are faced with the challenge of moving away from fat-laden fry bread and other such foods that many see as synonymous with Native American culture.  Do not be fooled.  It is a result of government commodities that made high fat, high starch foods readily available to the masses of Natives compartmentalized to reservation lands.  Similarly, the poor in this country resort to consuming foods in the same manner.  Unless you were raised in a middle- to upper-class, college-educated household, your chances of eating well and appreciating it goes down exponentially.  Try going to a grocery store in a poor neighborhood and see what you find in the patrons’ grocery carts.  Even better, compare the prices of some of the produce with a higher socioeconomic grocery store.  Don’t be surprised to find the prices in the latter to be cheaper.  More people buy the produce that has a limited shelf-life in the better-to-do neighborhoods, so the supply is easier to maintain. 

                So, what exactly are we?  Creatures of habit as dictated by the hypnotizing effects of commercialism and its dizzying dance with consumerism.  Demand that you get to eat whatever the fuck you want.  But demand also that you maintain a good physical appearance.  Don’t forget to demand good health either.  (I know a person who would argue that part of the source of her weight gain is from diet sody-pops.  Well, I really don’t think so but tell you what.  How ‘bout you stop consuming that shit ‘cause its got some aspertame in it.  Now I don’t know much about this controversy, but I just know it ain’t natural.  Did you know that regular drinks such as Coke and Pepsi don’t even use sugar?  I would never have known they use corn syrup until Pepsi came out with their “Throw Back” cans, advertising that they use “real sugar”.  WTF?  I just assumed they always used sugar.  I guess it’s cheaper to use corn syrup.) 

                It never ceases to amaze me that people complain about their weight and appearance, health and well-being, but fail to account for their own contributions that led to their circumstances.  I know that most of us are automatons, slaves to the directives as dictated by commercialism, but really, is it necessary to be so indignant about your physical reality of existence?  I’m sorry, but don’t blame genetics.  I’m pretty sure that if you were born 200 or more years ago, and not born into the bourgeoisie, then you would have a completely different physique and lifestyle.  I mean, your body was meant to be worked, to sweat and toil and labor.  None of this sit behind a computer all day and eat fatty shit.  A good friend of mine recently commented, “You know, I’ve gotten to travel around the world a bit with my work.  The United States is the only country where the poor are fat!  I mean, everywhere else, the poor are thin.”  Well, to that, I say, “Look out World.  Prepare to get fat ‘cause them freedom fries is gonna be just around the corner if it ain’t already!” 

My sympathies go to the working class poor, where access to such information and knowledge, culture and upbringing, make change damn near impossible, as evidenced by the Native American tribe example above. I would imagine it would take a pervasive change in a family across an entire generation before any change of significance is assimilated into an individual’s culture.  Bottom line: ‘t’ain’t gonna happen, I’m afraid.  It’s especially lovely when the well-to-dos such as Sarah Palin or the fat pill-poppin’ fuck, Rush Limbaugh bitches about First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” health campaign for children, arguing that the government is trying to control what its citizens eat.  Um, no dumbasses.  You’re obviously not the one getting hurt by this.  

                Let us not forget that we are biological beings.  We are animals.  We eat, drink, sleep, and shit.  That means that we are meant to use our physical bodies to interact with our physical environment.  It is understandable to fall prey to the plenty that exists in our midst, manifesting as a mass-produced pretty product in glossy packaging at the grocery store.  The mass production includes living things, too, such as chickens, pigs, and cows.  Hell, we humans are practically mass produced.  It’s just that our land of plenty is not the land of milk and honey that the commercials suggest it to be… unless you’re eating some Nutty Bars.  I’ll have a diet sody-pop, too, please.  That’s some good shit.  And I’m being good, ‘cause it’s diet.

Color Matters

                I was listening to NPR yesterday on my drive home from work and heard a fantastic editorial on the recent assassination attempt of US Representative Gabrielle Giffords.  It raised an interesting point, written and read by a Latino woman, Daisy Hernandez.  She spoke not of the obvious, such as violence, hatred, anger, or the “why/how did this happen” style of discussion; but instead, of how relieved she was that the killer was white, and not Latino.  How true this is.  A sad fact, but a truth nonetheless in these United States.  As quoted by a Mexican character in the 2006 movie Bobby, to another Mexican coworker, “Hey, we’re the new niggers, brother.”  Since that movie was depicting an event that took place in 1968, let us update the context to present day 2011 and add Middle Easterners (aye-rabs) and as not yet a close second, the Chinese (who shall carry the burden of representing the global Asian community in its totality), to the list.  And let us not pretend as though black Americans have transcended this world, for they too are of course, still relegated to this class of subhumans.  As a matter of fact, African-Americans are probably the top of the list, or the bottom, depending on how you want to look at it.

                With the recent hubbub about immigration reform and all of the rhetoric surrounding the “illegals”, the hatemongers would have transformed the events in Tucson, Arizona into a frenzied discourse of singling out a people and fueled the already expansive hatred of “the others” into hyperdrive.  Instead, there is now an attempt to reconcile a hatred that can be packaged neatly into bipartisanship.  Bipartisanship is undoubtedly a major source of contention in the United States, with chasms that increasingly separate and divide its citizens.  However, it is but one facet of hatred that happens to be a convenient focal point, as though it is representative of the problem. 

Hatred has been stewing, brewing, and bred both over the course of the history and origins of this country, as well as more recent advents of having a black president, the fall of the global economy and subsequently, overall US global stature, the lattermost of which had been in the making for some time: it’s just that a majority of Americans were too arrogant, myopic, and self-absorbed to have imagined such a possibility, jerking off to their gas guzzling SUVs and whatever else that afforded the individual a sense of status and power.  Such are the effects of distraction: those non-original thoughts that we welcome into our feeble minds as occupier, in place of the human condition that all too often includes pain and challenges, self-reflection and concerted effort for personal change; precisely the things that make the world real, a little too real for comfort.  Pain is not desired.  Therefore despite it being a part of life, it’s much easier to succumb to products that are available to the masses, which serve as distractions.  Hey, where’s my smart phone?

After decades of imagined prosperity cultivated in a culture of self-absorbed individualism, Americans have largely grown accustomed to feel entitled to whatever they want.  This has produced a people whose gluttony cannot be easily quenched, and a mentality whose worldview is a shortsighted one: immediate personal gratification.   To this day, I doubt many Americans have much an idea of where Iraq is or that Africa is not a country, unless you’re referring to South Africa, which, if that were the case, you would have said, “South Africa”.  As a matter of fact, I once attended a party and met several people (adults, mind you, not when I was six, attending a friend’s seven-year birthday party) who adamantly defended their belief that there are 51 States in the United States of America.  Now at least one of these people I can say was a friend at the time, and I don’t put down the fact that he didn’t know something all American kindergartners typically learn: there are 50 States in these You-knighted States of Amahricah.  Okay, my last sentence could arguably be construed as a put-down, but it proves my point precisely: Americans need not know much and still feel entitled to everything.  The irony goes without saying that this country is based on immigration (imperialism) in the 200+ years of its young existence.  However, give any fresh immigrant lineage a generation, maybe a generation and a half, and presto: the inhabitants will feel content to live within an insular reality, eating fatty-patty burgers and freedom fries, as their arteries clog in ghastly traffic jams of fat.  Hey, so long as you’ve got the next distraction, it’s all cool.  Gimme that Verizon i-Phone, man.  I’ll throw this shitty AT&T i-Phone away!  What?  It’s the same goddamned phone?  I don’t care.  I want Verizon anyway so I can talk to my “friends” about how I have the latest i-Phone.

                I do believe that something positive can be garnered from this tragedy.  It is my genuine hope that this is so.  I am certainly not putting down the President’s speech or the left and right coming together even temporarily, despite it being largely superficial.  On the contrary, any reinforcement of unity is a beautiful thing and I am a cheer leader on the sidelines rooting “Go!  Go!  Go!”  What’s so disappointing is that something so drastic needs to occur for people to realize even for a moment that the anonymous Joe Schmoe that you see every day is an actual human being.  He too has connections and origins, feelings and dreams, pains and hopes.  It’s too damned easy to forget that, and become self-absorbed.  I raise my own hand and will condemn myself: Guilty!  However, I confidently and perhaps unjustly shall claim that my guilt in this area is less egregious than that which I observe in others’ actions and behaviors on a daily basis.  At least I’m willing to acknowledge my guilt and otherwise, openly state that I think most people are stupid.

                It seems to me that the overall political climate in the United States is in an uncomfortable state of flux, where the greater population is beginning to realize that things are starting to go south for not only themselves, but the entire country.  For the US, this is felt perhaps most strongly for White America.  Not all whites, mind you, but those who are threatened by their perceived loss of power.  No doubt, a shift in the racial landscape has begun and is continuing to occur.  White majority in the United States has its days numbered.  This is threatening for many people.  Unfortunately, too many of those threatened have no idea that they aren’t even close to being in power.  However, the perceived association with the powerful few allows such individuals to define themselves and orient their social location, which of course, is but a farce.  So long as the perception exists, the social order can continue, at least for a little longer, into the unforeseeable future.

                When things are going smoothly overall, even a slight bump in the road can be felt, seemingly a big, gaping pothole.  However, when you’re driving on a gravel road full of rocks and bumps, the shift in perception from uneven gravel to a pothole is less noticeable.  Perhaps that is why the rather sudden shift from prosperity to economic woefulness in 2008 has resulted in a vulnerable and fearful public, exacerbating tensions and anger through the anxious reality of personal and national uncertainties.  In times like these, it is all too easy to huddle together with others that are seemingly like-minded, similar, and familiar.  Unfortunately, this results in factions of many groups that cannot relate to each other, as they are independently too busy defining who and what they are by what they are not.  Such an exclusionary tactic can only bring temporary relief, if any.  It is time to embrace the pain, the reality of today’s challenging circumstances, and acknowledge that we need each other, as humans, as people, and work together for a better collective future.  Individualist attitudes that solely benefit a select few isn’t working.  Just look at its results that surround not only you, but everyone who has been affected by selfishness.  Shamefully, that just about includes everyone in this global day and age.