There’s a problem with America.
And it’s your hometown.
The suburbs.
That’s right the suburbs are killing America. Well along with the terrorists. And apparently the Democrats. Or maybe I’ve just been watching too much Fox News. And I use the term “News” lightly there. Anyway, the suburbs are bad. This is a news flash I know. But that’s what I’m here for- to bring you breaking news. I’m like New York 1 for the mentally handicapped. I’m Roma Torey for the kids in the slow class. But even slow kids have likely experienced having out of town visitors come here to the city and watching how they handle all the people. It’s quite fascinating as I’m sure we can all attest. And if you cant, well then your visitors must not be from the suburbs. As such they have probably seen people who weren’t just like them before and know how to deal with them. People from the suburbs…well not so much.
See in the suburbs each community can sustain itself without any outside interference, meaning there’s never any need to interact with any others. And each suburb attracts people who are roughly all in the same economic bracket and all generally of the same social class. Sure there’s the Walthorphes whose house reportedly cost a cool million. And there are the Richardsons who never mow their lawn and haven’t painted their house in 30 years. And there’s Old Man Johnson who lives in the old house at the end of the block that everyone thinks eats small children. And then there’s the Rodriguezes two streets over, but they’re the good kind of Mexicans. The kind that works hard and acts white. But other than that, everyone is about the same. And best of all you can travel alone in your car from place to place choosing on your own the people who wish to interact with. And hey all those damn minorities and punk kids who work at the drug store, well you’re able to view them only as people that wait on you and not as people who are like you know, people. So life is all good.
But it wasn’t always like this.
Back in the day everyone used to mix together. White straight people. White gay people who acted like straight people. Jews. And even women! Oh the horror! This of course was true everywhere except New York.
New York was just Jews.
But now, no one mixes together anywhere.
Except New York.
In New York you have to take the subway or the bus nearly every day, often several times a day, and as such you encounter all walks of life. One neighborhood bleeds into the next and everything sort of blends together. You share a building with all types of random people. People different than yourself are unavoidable. And as a result we learn to be much more tolerant. Well, except of old people. There’s a reason they are kept away from the rest of the population every else except New York. Because they are evil. And slow. Ungodly slow. And also ungodly evil. But everyone else, we New Yorkers tolerate. Well except the Puerto Ricans. Them and their damn parade making me feel like an outsider. How dare they separate themselves and exclude everyone else from their society and their fun. Its just plain wrong I tell ya. But anyway, point is we here in New York love everyone. Even A-Rod.
But in the suburbs they don’t. No those Christians in the suburbs love to hate. But they don’t do it from a place of malice. Oh no- they do it form a place of fear. They don’t actually know any blacks, or Hispanics or, worst of all, gays, so it’s easy for them to buy into all the stereotypes. And that’s why this segregation of society in the suburbs is what will ultimately destroy us all. Other problems will go away. War, pestilence, reality TV, and George Bush will all pass. But what George Bush preyed on to get into to power will remain. Fear, distrust of others, and a lack of understanding and compassion for your fellow man. As long as our existences become more and more insular we can be manipulated easier and easier into fear, mistrust, and irrational violence. Not to give away the fact that I’ve seen “Bowling for Columbine” one too many times, but the amount gun violence in this country as opposed to all other nations can be most directly tied to our collective level of fear. And as long as we can be divided into black and white, red and blue, Christian and evil unpatriotic godless heathens, and made to fight amongst ourselves we won’t need terrorists to destroy us; we’ll do the job just fine ourselves. After all, Rome didn’t fall from the outside but from within. You would think we would learn from history, but then again history has shown us that we don’t. And that why its important now that we act before its too late. We need to get people from the suburbs and expose them to all walks of life. We need everyone to go to a national mixer. And most of all, we need to stop making our country a “suburb of the world”. While everyone else struggles together, we live isolated just outside, only driving into the city when we need something from it. But the city isn’t just where the football stadium and courthouse are located. It’s full of people- people worth knowing and people who we’re in this thing together with. So in a country where “Crash” is considered profound and provocative instead of obvious and melodramatic it’s clearly imperative that we begin in earnest the national discussion about the world being bigger than our own circle of friends.
For example, most of the rest of the world views our war against Iraq as directly linked to our support of Israel, whereas I doubt anyone in America would make that same assumption. In fact the average American on the street probably doesn’t even know that we even do support Israel. It’s this sort of international dialogue and understanding that would really end the war on terror. But sadly we somehow think more terror will do the trick.
And so it’s on this note- the quest for expanding my world view, the quest for greater international understanding, this quest to avoid getting dysentery from foreign drinking water- that I depart these fine shores for Europe.
In case you’ve been living under a rock and somehow missed the memo, I will be in Europe for the next month. So unfortunately that means the journal will be on hiatus. Actually there’s about an 85% chance that I might at some point find a computer with internet access and post the transcript of a conversation I recently had with Usher, but we’ll see. Other than that though, I wont be posting any reports from the road so to speak. But please don’t forget about us here at Fred the Online Journal while we’re gone. We appreciate your support and would hate to lose it just due to your poor memory skills. In fact, as many (and by “many” I mean almost none) of you know, August 2nd, the day I return, will be the one year anniversary of Fred, and to mark the occasion there will be a brand new site with pretty graphics and stuff, and also potential personal shout outs to some of our favorite people who make this all worthwhile. Maybe even you. So come on back if you are a loser and care about potentially seeing your name in print. Plus you’ll get to read all sorts of new content full of opinions about whether French people are really as charming as Julie Delpy, why Catholicism is killing the Vatican, and what it feels like to poop in foreign toilets. Also on tap is Fred the Online Journal’s long awaited Opus- a rant of unparalleled length and vigor about Sex and the City.
So come on back now you here!
And have a great July.
Much Love
-Fred the Online Journal
(What, you actually expected a conclusion?…)
