| « | Why $4.00+ per Gallon? It's Artificial! |
»
|
|
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Sleepless in Manhattan
Call me slow if you like, but it's taken a while to sink in that if I'm going to be an Eternity Road writer, I'll have to talk about politics at least some of the time. A good time for that is when I can't sleep. The night's already been ruined, so why not?
I'm an American by choice. I came here as a teenaged girl. I've been here for more than half my life now, and as much as I love this country, I still don't understand its people. Maybe I never will.
Why do you spend so much of your time making rules for one another?
You probably don't think of that as one of your hobbies. But do you have any recent memories of that "there ought to be a law" impulse? I'd be surprised if you didn't.
I'm a marketing consultant. Just now, my major client is a large clothing designer and maker. Except for a few rules about fabrics and labeling, there don't seem to be many laws about what a clothing manufacturer is allowed to make or sell. But spend an hour around anyone in this business, and you'll hear enough social-engineering proposals to fill a law library.
I was chatting about this with Fran a couple of days ago -- he absolutely refuses to play chess with me -- and he told me something that stood me on my head. I hadn't known about sumptuary laws. Apparently they didn't work very well -- surprise, surprise -- but the whole idea of laws that target clothing, to create a difference of appearance between classes of people, is insane whether it could be enforced or not.
At least Americans haven't gotten that crazy yet. Have we?
I try to remember the "we" part. I'm not an outsider here, even if I wasn't born here. But looking at some of the things "we" do to "us" is enough to make me wonder if "we" don't suffer from some sort of self-hatred syndrome that makes us want to be tied up hand and foot with laws about everything under the Sun.
I have a friend back in Los Angeles that I miss terribly. She works in an illegal trade, and has for the past ten years. She's completely at ease about breaking the law to earn her living, but even she has all sorts of ideas about laws "we ought to have," to "protect" people from themselves.
Shouldn't we put a wet towel over this nonsense before "The Land of the Free" becomes a punchline for the late-night talk shows?
Forgive my crankiness, please. (I don't mean to infringe on the Curmudgeon Emeritus's domain.) I'd like to walk off some of this irritation, but I'm not crazy enough to stroll around New York at this hour without a gun. Well, that way it's no worse than Los Angeles, anyway.
Comments
Fetiche, if I may be so bold, I think the problem is that you have chosen to spend your time in the very worst parts of the country. Just look at your choices: LA and New York. Get out of those awful cities and try the real United States, where the real people live. I only go to those places when I am passing though an airport, and I make that as brief as possible.
America is a very nice place, but you need to try living in America, not the fringe points where it touches the rest of the world. Come visit us in Iowa, for example. Then I think your outlook might change.
Posted by on 03/18/2008 at 09:51 PMWhat he said
Posted by on 03/20/2008 at 05:42 PM
Comment Form
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
