When Facebook Becomes Blogging

 

Why I didn't move to Europe when I had the chance (y'know... aside from disabilities...)

We are so not the best country in the world, we're probably not even in the top 50, but we are, without a doubt, the most exciting, the most diverse, the most fun, and the most ridiculous place on earth. We are clearly the world's most decadent country that has such amazing amazing features and qualities and achievements and advantages amid such a welter of shit. One day soon, all that good stuff and all that shit are clearly primed to do battle with each other, and once the battle is over, everybody left will realize the things we have in common, then cross-pollinate and synthesize. Perhaps creating a stable, decent place like the EU now is, that is far less diverse intellectually because everybody has come to realize how much bullshit got us to an explosion of death. Whatever it is, it will be kind of boring compared to what our country is now. The standard of living may be objectively quite a bit better, but whether whatever's in our future seems like a dream to us now, it will be less interesting, and less fun, and the new funnest place on earth will migrate, probably to somewhere in Asia. So many people here wish that we could replace all the shit with better stuff, but shit is fertilizer, and everything and anything that's good and dynamic and creative and life-sustaining in this country and everywhere else in the world grew from existential fecal matter. What creates joy is the overcoming of conflict - and objectively, it is so much better to not have conflict, but without conflict, there is no need for invention, no need for thought, no need reflect and evolve. Once we cleanse America of its shit, it's just another 1950's when everything again feels like a heterogenous prison in which personal expression that deviates from the norm becomes a near impossibility. Whether it's good or bad, it won't be as fun, and for all the shitty things we've all lived through in the last twenty years, politically and personally, I'm gonna miss this America we all were formed by. There'd be no golden age of cuisine without all that shitty McDonalds and Pizza Hut baseline to measure it against. There'd be no Peak TV without Two-and-a-Half Men and Big Bang Theory on the one hand and special-effects eardrum busters in the movie theaters on the other. There'd be no modern comedy without mobs clamoring for censorship. There'd be no massive boom of long form journalism without fake news on the one hand and critical theory bullshit on the other. There'd be no internet without the world's worst people commandeering it. No thriving local scenes of music and theater and restaurants and brewing without mass produced corporatized nation-wide products. There'd be no explosion of scientific research without a Christianist backlash. There'd be no Obama without the modern Republican Party. So much of living in America is terrible, but without the terrible, there's nothing particularly great either. So even if this era is drawing to a close, whatever comes next, I'm so glad I got to live through all this with you.