The Melting Pot Boils Over

Driving west across New Jersey recently, I was relieved to see the mile markers drop to single digits, and finally to zero. I was struck by a sign posted at the state border that read: “Welcome to Pennsylvania: America Starts Here.” As someone who grew up in Ohio, that seemed to make perfect sense. New Jersey is, perhaps, more “America” than Manhattan; nothing in America is less American than New York. Still, New Jersey isn’t really “America.”

Continuing my trip—I was traveling to visit my mom in Dayton—I wound westward through a 15-mile-wide sliver of West Virginia that serves as a de facto DMZ between the mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions. As I crossed the bridge in Wheeling, Ohio’s welcome sign declared “Ohio—The Heart of it All.” Indeed, the media had yakked a lot last year about the sweet irony of forcing the warring nations of the former Yugoslavia to sign their peace treaty in the “heartland.” There’s no doubt you’re in what the French would call l’Amérique Profonde when you pass through hundreds of miles of open fields or talk to the residents with their hard, earnest faces and blandly confident accents.

Going back east, however, I encountered that same “America Starts Here” sign at the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border. Now, this was confusing. Was Governor Tom Ridge, who signed the sign, implying that West Virginia—or for that matter, Ohio—was less American than Pennsylvania? After all, there are several un-American anomalies unique to Pennsylvanians, not the least of which is something called “Dutch” cooking. (When in Pennsylvania, starvation isn’t always a bad thing.) Anyway, this got me thinking about which places are really “American” in America.

From watching Hollywood movies, you might make the mistake of thinking California is “America”, but the only reason those dry hills and weird L.A. cityscapes are featured so prominently is because directors are too lazy to pack up a camera crew and go somewhere else. Californians are nationally reviled as kooky, New Agey, politically-correct weirdos who lounge in their hot tubs while race riots, mud slides and brush fires rage around them. Clearly, California is not “America.”

The South isn’t “America,” either. Although they’ve produced things that all Americans love—Elvis, greasy breakfast food, racism—they have those dumb accents. And they’re too slow. The ex-Confederacy has ceded the cultural and political dialogue of this country to the Yankees ever since Appomattox. National TV anchormen reflect the cultural norm—ever wonder why neither Tom Brokaw nor Dan Rather drawl? America is so unsouthern that we import cultural icons like Peter Jennings and Michael J. Fox from Canada. No one would give the South a second thought if it weren’t for the Super Tuesday primaries held once every four years.

You can’t count Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming or Montana, either. Sure, mountains get a nod in “America the Beautiful,” but real Americans are suspicious of people who live in the hills. Mountains are for “Deliverance” extras, militia types and flying over. There isn’t much farming there, either. “America” has lots of cows, lots of corn, maybe some grain. You also have to have some minorities—at least a few token ones—and the Rockies are as white as a freshly-bleached piece of Xerox paper.

The Pacific Northwest doesn’t even pretend to be “American.” The only thing Washingtonians and Oregonians have in common with the rest of the United States is that they hate Californians, except more so, because Californians mostly live in Portland and Seattle. It rains all the time, conifers outnumber deciduous trees, which are both outnumbered by dead trees, and bait shops in the middle of nowhere offer double cappuccinos. Americans go to Javaland to test their mellowness with caffeine. It ain’t America.

Then, there’s the stupid states, the places where there’s no proof that anyone actually lives. Idaho, according to a half-decent River Phoenix movie, has a lot of empty space scarred by flat highways, but that’s pretty much what you’d suspect. Then there’s Arkansas, Oklahoma, the Dakotas, etc.

Indiana is only notable as the inconvenient place separating Chicago and Cleveland for no good reason. The Northeast has a lot of stupid states like that. (Who the hell cares about Rhode Island, Maryland, Rhode Island, or Delaware?) New Jersey, long the butt of New York-based comedians’ gags, is more than 50 percent paved. Now that’s stupid. The ultimate stupid states are Hawaii and Alaska. Three decades after statehood, national maps rarely even show these add-ons, and 48-star flags are quickly snapped up at yard sales. Puerto Rico, if granted statehood, would become another stupid state schoolchildren remember to forget.

You can make a case for the Plains states, but not that many people actually live in places like Kansas, Nebraska or Iowa. There’s certainly something very “America” about all those amber waves of wheat and stuff, but there’s the whiteness problem again. Also, they don’t have any real cities. Cities, of course, are the least American thing of all. Nonetheless, the ideal American state would contain one or two decent-sized cities surrounded by a lot of suburbs, surrounded by oceans of agribusiness. Think of California, but with rainfall and without the Californians. Also, ever since “Children of the Corn” and Bob Dole, most real Americans get the willies when they think about the Great Plains.

Our national consciousness centers around the hard-ass Anglicans who landed at Plymouth Rock, but New England is, ironically, not America. They have those weird accents up there, for one thing. They eat seafood that doesn’t come in cubes. Even the conservatives are liberal. The states are all too small. It’s cool, but it just ain’t America. New York, with half its population living in one apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and the other half in heart-shaped tubs in the Catskills, is too schizo to be American. In fact, New Yorkers pride themselves on the very un-Americanness other Americans deride.

So, we’re left with the original Northwest Territory, the area running west from Pittsburgh, south to the Ohio River and just west of the Mississippi River. Minnesota and Iowa are out, however, because it’s so cold there that everyone talks like they’re in Denmark. Also, there are liberals there, and Americans are not liberal. We’ve already ruled out Indiana, but let’s also delete Michigan, which is definitely a dumb state for having both a Lower and Upper Peninsula. What the hell were their cartographers thinking?

Which leaves us with Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin and western Pennsylvania. Delete Pennsylvania because of the strange food. Illinois goes because of Chicago, and it has that New York State identity duality problem between urban and rural. I was in Wisconsin recently, where several people made strong arguments for the land of dairy being, in fact, the “real America.” Actually, Wisconsin has a lot going for it—a few decent-sized cities surrounded by suburbs and lots of farmland in between, conservative whites mixed with enough blacks to be noticeable but not to have any political influence and a pretty average geographical size. Still, it’s all the way up there on the Canadian border, and to me any state that purports to be America has to be in the middle of the country.

Although it’s the last holdout, and I would love to see the place of my origins declared as the only American state in America, Ohio doesn’t quite pass the test of Americanosity either. My hometown, Dayton, used to call itself “America’s Most Average City,” and that was true. Its generic demographics made it a favorite site for pollsters and product testing. The trouble for Ohio is that it’s all city—most of the state’s inhabitants live in one of eight cities, making it one of the most urban places in the Union. America isn’t urban, you know.

Some of you touchy-feely types (hello California!) might conclude from the preceding that there is no such thing as a generic America; that the United States is a brilliant hodgepodge of cultures, mannerisms, architecture, music, foods and attitudes, and that the amalgamation of this social cocktail has created a country that is unique in its diversity and tolerance.

But these days, the only thing Americans have in common is hatred. They hate immigrants from countries other than the ones they came from. They hate members of other races, other religions, other genders, other sexual orientations. The rich hate the poor, and the poor hate them right back. Americans read hate in the newspapers, watch hate on television and talk hate on the radio. Forget business—the business of America is mutual contempt.

America ends here.

(Ted Rall, a syndicated cartoonist and freelance writer based in New York City, has written for Might magazine, Maximumrocknroll, P.O.V., the New York Press and numerous other publications.)

America as Cost-Benefit Analysis

As if our country didn’t already have enough to worry about—advancing technology, downsizing, Pamela Anderson—here come the economics of rape.

An exciting new Justice Department study, “Victim Costs and Consequences: A New Look,” reveals that the “average rape” costs its victim $5,100. This sum is based on such out-of-pocket expenses as medical bills and visits to counselors. So, locking up a rapist at the cost of $20,000 a year—the average annual cost of housing an inmate—obviously doesn’t make good economic sense, the authors say, until you factor in “the effect on the victim’s quality of life,” which then brings the total average rape cost to $87,000.

Therefore it may be a good idea to lock up rapists——assuming, of course, that the average rapist would otherwise have performed at least one average rape every 4.35 years. The Justice Department plans to attach tracking devices to a random sampling of 1,200 average rapists to determine the average rate of rapist recidivism. Criminologists will present their recommendations to the Congressional Budget Office, which will then decide whether it makes more economic sense to put rapists in prison or to let them run amok.

Government analysts have also priced the “lost quality of life” for a murder victim at $1.9 million. This amount includes the average murder victim’s average pain caused by an average bullet or average knife shoved through an average heart or lung, the net total of average relatives’ average bereavement, the average number of days the mourners miss from work and the resulting loss to national productivity, as well as average burial costs and uncovered medical expenses. Do bear in mind, however, that people murdered next year will be entitled to a 4 percent cost-of-living increase to account for inflation, minus depreciation.

The average murder investigation costs only $1,400, which at first glance seems to mean the police could catch only one out of 1,357 murders and still be fiscally ahead of the game. Assuming that the average murderer serves 20 years in prison, however, the cost of housing him would be $400,000. Therefore, from a profit-loss standpoint, it only makes sense to continue pursuing murderers if at least one person is convicted for every 4.75 unnatural deaths (the $400,000 cost of housing an inmate for life, divided by the $1.9 million cost of an average life).

Actually, a number of factors mitigate against even considering rape and murder to be “crimes.” First of all, the American medical industry derives an annual benefit from the livers, kidneys, eyes and other organs donated by murder victims that are worth billions of dollars in transplant fees.

Furthermore, when jailed, a murderer or rapist fails to contribute an average of $45,000 in value-added labor to the economy. Over a 20-year sentence, this comes to a loss of $900,000—plus that additional cost of $1.9 million if the inmate should get murdered in prison.

Additionally, many murder victims are smokers, whose secondhand smoke would undoubtedly have killed many of their acquaintances and coworkers, as well as themselves, had they lived.

The statistical analysis is clear: murder—in reasonable, non-Dahmer quantities—is good for the economy, and should be immediately legalized.

If the inmates currently in American penal institutions were released and given even menial jobs, their increased production would cause the Dow Jones Industrial Average to soar at least 300 points. The Treasury Department is currently calculating the effect of legalized killing on interest rates. In the meantime, this much is certain: While we’re coddling the funeral-going, absentee-worker relatives of murder victims, our stockholders are taking a beating and our Asian competitors are laughing themselves silly.

While we’re on the subject, The Cato Institute reveals that the average welfare family receives $17,500 in government benefits, the post-tax equivalent of a $25,000-a-year job. Given that the minimum wage of $4.25 an hour pays a full-time worker just $8,840 a year, assuming no vacation, at first glance it seems that we’re paying people not to work.

But the Cato study fails to take into account the Justice Department’s analysis, which demonstrates the financial viability of murder and rape. Our society needs to find some way to get people off welfare, and out murdering and raping where they belong. Sure, rape and murder may seem like horrible crimes, but it’s time to let go of antiquated ideas of morality. In the brave new world of 21st century international competition, traditional notions of right and wrong offer nothing to a society trying to maximize its asset-liability ratios.

It’s all in the numbers!

(Ted Rall, a syndicated cartoonist and freelance writer, is the author of All The Rules Have Changed (1995). He was a loan officer and financial analyst from 1985 to 1995.)

©1996 Ted Rall, All Rights Reserved.

Pat Buchanan’s Basic Instinct

Pat Buchanan is the first Republican I’ve ever considered voting for. Since the day in October of 1972 when my mom took me along with her to pass out McGovern fliers, I’ve been a committed Democrat—or at least a militant anti-Republican. When Democrats jumped into bed with Reagan to support his rancid budgetary attack on the 90 percent of Americans who aren’t rich, it broke my heart. Nonetheless, I still turned out to work on Mondale and Dukakis’ Dem-lite campaigns. And I voted for Clinton in 1992. But after four years of watching him appoint and suck up to Republicans, I’ll never vote for him again.

This is where Pat Buchanan comes in. On Monday night, an ABC-TV news commentator noted: “He’s the only candidate talking about issues people really care about.” In particular, out of the single Democratic and nine Republican presidential candidates who entered the Iowa caucuses, Nixon’s ex-speechwriter is the only one who opposes unfettered free trade.

The big trade deals of ’93 and ’94 are old news to the national media, but for the millions of Americans who sense that they’re being managed by their leaders like so much cattle, NAFTA and GATT are key issues.

Since the early 1980s, the United States has joined a long list of countries subjected by bankers and third-rate politicians to “structural adjustment” policies. Under semi-secret agreements like the 1986 Plaza Accord, central banks and multinational corporations have agreed to keep American wages low and unemployment high to control inflation. Citizens never hear about these economic accords, much less get a chance to vote on them.

Only corporate executives, shareholders and complete idiots deny that radical free-trade agreements encourage companies to export high-paying American jobs to countries that convert them to low-paying ones. They reduce wages, worker protection laws and environmental regulations to the lowest common denominator of the participating nations.

In fact, opposition to free trade is one of the few issues that Americans on both sides of the political spectrum agree upon. Yet, so far the former “Crossfire” host has been the only political figure to capitalize on it.

Alarmed by Buchanan’s success at exploiting anti-free trade sentiment, journalists and other candidates have taken to accusing him of socialist economic tendencies.

They’re half right.

Buchanan balances his fiery anti-corporate rhetoric with the rabid Bible-thumping that earned him Molly Ivins’ famous quip about his 1992 address to the Republican National Convention: “I liked it better in the original German.” “This is a victory (…) for conservatives who will bravely stand up for the right of the innocent unborn,” he crowed after his second-place finish in Iowa. He called gay marriages “illicit and immoral.(…) It’s ain’t a marriage (…) and it’s wrong. The core values and core ideas of Western civilization are the Christian faith,” he ranted.

This is where Buchanan loses voters like me. Like many Americans, I consider gay marriages a bit kitschy, but certainly no threat to the Republic. Like many other Roman Catholics, I don’t recommend abortion as the cheap contraception alternative, but other people’s choices are not my business.

The Buchanian platform also includes such proto-fascist standards as expelling illegal immigrants and evicting the United Nations from New York.

If this doesn’t sound familiar, it should.

During the democratic German elections of 1931 and 1932, the only candidate willing to discuss unemployment as a problem rather than a policy was Adolf Hitler. The then-decade-old National-Socialist Party appealed to both right-wing fanatics and disaffected working-class leftists with a witches’ brew of economic nationalism and appeals to individual responsibility. Like Buchanan, they also flirted with the conservative wing of the Catholic Church, and opposed immigration and the League of Nations.

In his classic study, “The Nazi Seizure of Power,” William Allen describes how voters who were frustrated with the traditional political parties turned to the Nazis. In the ’20s and ’30s, while German living standards eroded and unemployment rose, Nazis opened emergency housing and food kitchens for the poor. Hitler’s genius lay in allying traditional conservatives with poor workers.

It’s easy to see how the brilliant former architect of such Nixon-era dirty tricks as the “Southern strategy” that race-baited white and black Democrats is employing similar scuzzy tactics in the Republican primaries. Whether America’s arcane system of representative democracy has now deteriorated to the point that Buchanan will win the White House remains to be seen. Regardless, Buchanan’s early successes serve as a warning. If American voters don’t start to see their economic concerns addressed by mainstream politicians soon, they could easily by seduced by facile extremists.

Pat Buchanan obviously knows his history. Does anyone else?

(Ted Rall, 32, is a syndicated cartoonist and freelance writer living in New York.)

© 1996 Ted Rall, All Rights Reserved.

My friend Debra was born into a Roman Catholic family. She got baptized and confirmed and everything; sometimes she even confessed. But twenty years of reciting the same old liturgies gets pretty tiresome. By the time she turned 35, she only went to mass when her parents came to town.

As time passed, Debra began to fear that her life had lost its meaning. She felt empty, unfocused, aimless. So, one afternoon in the fall, she decided to go shopping for a new religion.

“I can buy any car I want. Why can’t I choose my faith the same way? There’s so many religions out there that my parents never even considered. Who’s to say the Pope’s guys have a monopoly on meaning?”

I was intrigued by Debra’s consumerist approach to finding a higher truth. An erratic Catholic myself, it suddenly occurred to me: “Maybe, despite all evidence to the contrary, God really does exist. Perhaps I’ve just been using the wrong long-distance service provider.” I decided to tag along with Debra and check out what the other guys had to say.

Protestantism

A week later, I agreed to meet Debra after work at an impressive Methodist cathedral on New York’s Fifth Avenue. I got there first, in the middle of a torrential downpour. As I waited outside, I read the Post and checked out the architecture, an obvious rip-off of Westminster Abbey. Prestigious address, though, and within walking distance of work.

Debra arrived. As we entered the church, an ominous sixtysomething minister urged his tiny flock: “Acknowledge your wretchedness!” He went on and on after that, but you know what they say about first impressions. Afterward, at the 84th Street Multiplex, Debra interrogated me, “So, whadja think?”

“My boss reminds me how wretched I am all day long,” I said. “I’m kind of hoping to forget about my wretchedness, not acknowledge it.”

Judaism

Next Debra asked a Jewish friend, Paul, to escort us to Yom Kippur services at a synagogue on the Upper West Side. Famous for its outspoken left-wing rabbi, this Reform temple appealed to our political sensibilities, as well as being convenient to a number of excellent Chinese restaurants.

The day before, Paul called Debra to remind us to buy tickets to the service. “Tickets? What for?” Debra asked. Paul explained that Yom Kippur was an important day of worship, like a Rolling Stones concert. Accordingly, tickets were $50 each, actually a bargain if you thought about it.

We promised to buy Stones tickets the next time they were in town.

Islam

A few nights later, Debra and I were studying the Cliff Notes to the Koran over double cappuccinos at Starbucks. “Islam is pretty cool,” she said. “Listen to this: ‘Hell awaits the infidels.’” I agreed that any religion that allowed you to use the word “infidel” in everyday conversation was worth looking into.

We took the subway uptown to the recently-constructed postmodern mosque on East 96th Street. The gate was closed. Hours weren’t posted.

“How the hell did they get to be America’s fastest-growing religion without being open?” Debra sneered. “You don’t need a mosque, you know,” I said helpfully. “Wherever you are, you just pray five times a day facing Mecca.”

Buddhism

Later that night, Debra and I threw down half-priced margaritas with Tamara, a 30-year-old ex-Southern Baptist from Oregon. She’d become a Buddhist after seeing “The Last Emperor.”

Tamara tugged on a diamond earring. “My cat is like a little bodhisattva. He watches you to find out what object you love the most. Then he breaks it.”

“Eastern religions are too difficult,” Debra whispered to me. “I could never remember all those weird vocabulary words.”

Catholicism

I didn’t hear from Debra for a few weeks. She was too busy sorting through solicitation letters she’d received from the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Christian Scientists and Mormons. She even downloaded a tract on Taoism from the Web.

Then she called me at work, while I was in the middle of editing a trust indenture. “I’ve decided to become a Catholic!” she told me. “It’s familiar, I already know the prayers and the masses are only 45 minutes long.”

Debra had her second confirmation, at a hip, predominantly-gay parish in the West Village, in early December. The church was a modest post-Federalist building, but it was directly across the street from an express subway station. It was a beautiful ceremony, and Debra looked radiant in her puffy white dress. “I think it’s great that you’ve finally found what you’ve been looking for, just in time for Christmas,” I told her supportfully.

Debra looked at me quizzically. “Christmas? I’m doing Kwanzaa this year.”

(Ted Rall, a syndicated editorial cartoonist, is author of All the Rules Have Changed (Rip Off Press, 1995).)