After a grueling nine hours of deep sleep and the miraculous epiphany that reindeer is tastier than I ever would have thought and steak Fiorenza may be the finest dinner ever, I’m back. To those who sent me emails with links to current stories or questions requiring thousand-word answers plus a legal education, I hate you.
I’ve been gone before, and while it’s hard to keep tabs on interesting things happening in the world about which I’m dying to have my say, I restrained myself. This time, I didn’t bring a computer with me, but skimmed life via smartphone, often yelling at people on the twitters and wondering why no one thought it prudent to stop micro-aggressing me by making me feel guilty about my silence.
One observation came from the juxtaposition of what seems like the perpetual whining noise coming from the youth of the United States as compared to those of Europe: instead of searching under every rock for something to be offended about, to blame for the trauma done their delicate sensibilities, some sounds that needed to be silenced, they were busy living life and having a great time of it.
It’s not that Americans are any more inclined to offend, to rape, to commit crimes, to diminish the sensibilities of others, but that we have become obsessed by it to the extent that it’s an all-consuming quest here, a witch hunt, whereas others can still laugh at themselves and others. Sure, they lack our tradition (and constitutional guarantee) of free speech, but in its place they have a substantially higher threshold of what constitutes offensiveness and a far, far better sense of humor.
One other observation was that, despite the omnipresence of police and soldiers, often carrying machine guns with a cavalier abandon that’s rather shocking to American sensibilities, they weren’t bent on asserting their power over others, but on seeing that things moved along without incident and otherwise not making a big deal of anything. Despite massive and relatively disobedient crowds, I failed to see a single cop touch anyone, lose his cool or feel compelled or entitled to turn to force to prove his authority.
I did, however, see one SWAT Team in action.
Note that they have covered their otherwise brightly colored uniforms with a black cape for stealth. And yet, not a single door was rammed down.
Spending too much time navel-gazing at our own peccadilloes can skew one’s understanding of humanity and the world. It’s good to look elsewhere, not via the media’s prism but at street level. Maybe we would do better by looking for a different place, a fun place, rather than a safe place. It’s a big world out there, and the good news is that it’s not filled with the whiny hand-wringers or violent morons we seem to find so prevalent here. Did I mention the steak Florentine? It’s fabulous.
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Welcome back!
Thanks. It’s great to go away, and great to come home.
You sure know how to make a feller feel bad.
The Ugly American alive and well, uglier than ever.
How much weight did you gain?
Imagine those caped carabinieri standing guard at Gracie Mansion!
According to fitbit, I walked about 8 miles per day. I was free to eat at will.
It’s good to see you back; I was thinking yesterday I missed your smart writing even while hoping your vacation was fun.
A lot of people missed my smart writing, but for entirely different reasons. Thanks.
Welcome back! You were missed.
So… where are the pictures of all the fish you caught?
Is that the Vatican?
What makes you think that?
The flamboyance. Underneath the black robes.
Those Swiss guards are sharp dressers, but they have a mean snarl too.
It’s a good joke to me. ; )
We Americans have a lot to learn from other cultures. This superiority complex we display is naive and frankly embarrassing.
We love our guns, yet the guns in the hands of Europeans are normally a safer bet.
We also love our “immediate need” culture and embrace it like whining brats. To that end, we look past the present, always seeking more “something ” (what that ‘something’ is no one knows).
Meanwhile, life goes by quickly and then we reflect what “could have” been.
Despite this all, I agree we all look forward to coming back home.
I know the people of Srebrenica agree.
Well, the non-male people. The males are, for some reason, rather silent on the matter.
He meant civilized Europe, for crying out loud.
Are the Dutch not civilized? Them having guns did very little good…
When he’s right, he’s right. If Srebrenica was a wakeup call, the Americans were the only ones who got the message.
I belong to a wonderful organization named couchsurfing, org which maintains a registry of people looking for free accommodation, and people willing to offer it. This enables me to maintain a cosmopolitan perspective without traveling. At least 30 single, dual, and triple guests have stayed here. It has become depressingly evident that the Europeans think more analytically and soberly about the world and even have a larger English vocabulary than US college students. The US vocabulary often consists largely of the word “awesome” (as in, “The bathroom is down the hall.” “Oh, awesome!”
As for free speech, it is not protected as ours is, but it exists nonetheless. I hosted a truly remarkable Israeli couple who have made a movie about a gay Israeli falling in love with a Palestinian man, and their next movie is to be about “the terrible plight of German people during Allied bombing in World War II,” which should receive an interesting response when they screen it in their native Israel.
As for litigiousness, it doesn’t come up in conversation, but I did host a French attorney who decided to give up law and make a movie about militant vegans. The one thing the Europeans lack seems to be business sense, coupled with the ability to raise capital for groundbreaking ideas. They all agreed that it’s almost impossible to get money to do anything in Europe. So, perhaps we should count that blessing. We have maverick entrepreneurs motivated by enlightened greed. They do not.
Get off the couch, dude.
I once applied for a room in a shared apartment. The two other guys, who interviewed me, were a British dude about to get accredited as a German teacher and his Indian boyfriend. We were all obviously delighted to have someone new to speak English to, and so we blathered on for an hour and a half while the other applicants waited in the hall. I go home mentally packing my bags.
Couple days later, I get a call from British dude. British dude goes, David, we thought long and hard about taking you. We really wanted to, at first. But you use the word “awesome” so much, every other sentence, and I think, in the long run, it’d make life with you quite difficult. Sorry, mate. We’re still good for a drink.
Awesome story, dude.
Crap, that was meant as a response to Charles. And I know. It’s totally fabu.
I had a couple of American guests who arrived four hours late, complaining they had been unable to find the Grand Canyon. Now, I happen to live only 60 miles from the Grand Canyon. There are HIGHWAY SIGNS. Many of them. But, these people had been just following instructions from their GPS…. I showed them a map. I don’t think they had ever seen one before. “It’s so big,” they said.
In 1970 when I arrived in NYC from the UK I remember thinking, “The US educational system is just awful. We’re sowing seeds, here, which will have bad consequences a few decades from now.” Um, yes.
You realize that David M isn’t American. He just speaks like one.
I see no mention of lutefisk. —-Wuss.;)
Wuss, maybe. Stupid? Nope.