My Kind's Better'n Yours!

(NOTE: Written a few weeks after 9/11, nearly 10 years ago. Some of this is outdated, but it still has something to say)

“Global Enemies Unite, Defeat Intergalactic Invaders”

Leastwise, that’s the way we’ve all kinda figured it would go down when the Martians, Romulans, or some other Evil Empire comes to Earth determined to exterminate, subjugate, or whateverelse-ate us. When push comes to shove, we will choose survival through putting aside our differences, and confront the common enemy from beyond. We’re even seeing a little of that right now in the battle of World v. Terrorists. Seattle and Genoa objections aside, we mostly think global cooperation is a good thing.

And yet, I’d be willing to bet that in this new One World, deep down inside (and if nobody else could call you on it), you still think that Western cultures are inherently superior to those of Asia, Africa, and pre-Columbian America. Don’t you? I mean – Greece and Rome and the rule of English law and the Industrial Revolution and technology and all that. Thanks, the rest of you, for gunpowder and the Buddah and zero and whatnot. But let’s get serious here. The West is the best!

As long as we are being honest, the real truth of the matter is that Americans (the U.S. kind) represent the ultimate progression of Western cultural advancement so far. Our Constitution. Our inventive genius and individualism. Our bring us your tired and your hungry and so forth. Our religious freedom. Our movies and TV shows, for cryin’ out loud! The U.S., with all its flaws, rocks the world, Americans are the luckiest people on Earth, and everyone else is, well – everyone else.

I’ve gotta tell you, though, that even in this great country of ours, we’re not all equal. I’ve lived in New York City, in Wisconsin, in Hawaii, in Idaho, and in Oregon. Great places all. But California’s the place I grew up in and where I live now; Californians have got it all goin’ on! Who else has the beaches, the mountains, AND the deserts? Contiguous 48 states’ highest AND lowest points? Silicon Valley and Hollywood? The world’s 7^th largest economy? And where have, like 75% of the hottest trends in clothing, language, music, etc. come from over the last 50 years? Folks that live elsewhere are…. nice people, but they’re like – whatever…

Actually, it just happens that in The Best State, there’s also a Best Town: San Diego. Northern California is beautiful, but how do you make a living there? San Fran is big fun to visit, but too expensive and too liberal. Smog Angeles is disgustingly crowded, dirty, and shallow. It is San Diego that comes closest to retaining California’s original promise. Cleaner and less crowded than Smell-A, more moderate and affordable than Frisco. SD has beaches, mountains, and deserts all in one county, Mexico as its southern neighbor, no serious earthquakes, a better climate than anywhere else, and gangs that are into chillin’ more so than killin’. We like our buddies up north, but honestly - what rational person would choose to live there rather than here?

Incidentally, I grew up in Imperial Beach, a little suburb on the south end of San Diego. The last affordable (read: gritty) beach town left in Southern California, with great surf year ‘round and a healthy dose of attitude. The rich brats had La Jolla; the goat ropers - Lakeside; the Earthpeople - Ocean Beach, but the real southern Californians were in IB. All those other guys? Posers.

Now, if you lived more than a few blocks from the ocean in IB, then you were still better than someone from, say, National City, or – God forbid - Santee. But the true, the best, IB’ers lived west of 4^th street. I lived on the 200 block of Citrus Avenue, which was the place in town. Close to the ocean, but far enough away not to get flooded. Quieter and classier than the dumpy streets to the south. Home to the town’s vet and about half of its best surfers. The 200 block of Citrus was the spot.

My family, and our house, just happened to be the best on Citrus. Seriously. Our house was the first one built on the block; Cape Cod style, pitched wood shake roof, with an honest-to-goodness white picket fence. Dad was the assistant fire chief in Coronado, mom the PTA president. Sis and I were good lookin’ kids, and even better students.

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One thing about being a kid – you don’t truly realize what you’ve got. I now realize that my family was (even though you don’t go around saying this in public too much) simply better than other families. And we lived in the best part of town, in the best town, in the best state, in the best country in the world. My God - what are the odds? But there it is. So deep down inside, I know that my family – my kind – is better than yours, or anyone else’s in the world for that matter! And that’s kinda sad in a way. For all of YOU.

Now, doubtless, I’m the only one who’s self-centered enough to think this way. But what if – long shot and all - what if the poor schmucks in Kodiak and Kansas and Kabul and every other disadvantaged locale around the world have been thinking all along that they are numero uno, the setters of the bar? Well, as pathetically self-deluding as that would be, it would – now that I think of it, explain a whole lot of stuff….

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Thousands of generations: that’s how long humans have been around, unless you’re still stuck on that whole Creation myth. And it’s only been in the last couple or so that we’ve not had to worry much about survival. I mean, assuming you’re not in the Third World (sadly – most humans still are, but they aren’t reading this), then you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how to keep starvation, epidemics, wild animals, and weather disasters from wiping out you and yours.

But the flip side of that, obviously, is that for thousands of generations, these things were the major preoccupations of humans. Humans who bonded together in groups; extended families. Families that later collected to live together in tribes. Tribes that eventually joined to form confederations of all sorts. Everybody’s, every group’s, efforts were mostly about how to get safe places to live, how to get food, how to get good hunting grounds (later – good farming lands, ore deposits, etc). And how to keep the other guy from taking those things away from you and yours, because for thousands of generations “there’s never enough to go around” was more than just a dispassionate economic mantra. And that’s plenty enough time to pretty well hardwire us of all with certain behaviors and ways of viewing other humans.

So that’s what wars have mostly been about. And racism. And all the other types of isms that discriminate between the many variations of “us” and “them”. We’ve been programmed to take care of Number One first, and the further away someone else is (in all senses of the word “is”, Bubba) then the less likely we have been to care about them, value them, and accept them; the more willing we are to distrust, dislike, or attack them. This whole “me and mine are better’n you and yours” thing is why the NFL and their ilk are able to suck billions of dollars out of our cities’ virtual warriors; an artifice to fill the primal need in a land and time where actual war is inconceivable. Or had been, up until a couple of weeks ago…

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Here in the greatest country in the world, we’ve come so far in recent decades – we really have. Compared to where we were 100, 50, even 20 years ago, Americans are much more tolerant and understanding when it comes to other races, homosexuals, women’s rights, people with disabilities, Jews, Catholics - you name it. Of course, lots of the folks in those “you name it” categories are mad as hell, and ready to tell you what a rotten deal they’re getting even today. But the truth is that things are incalculably better than before, and mostly still heading in the right direction. I’m reminded of a friend from a sophisticated, wealthy European country. After I expressed envy for her country’s rich culture and traditions, she suggested that those were merely signs of her countrymen’s inability to break with the past, and allowed as how America – in constantly embracing new cultures, traditions, and peoples – was actually the place to be envied.

And so we come back to the truism that the U.S. is the best place on Earth. ‘Cuz in a lot of other places, the tolerance and understanding haven’t happened or, depending on your politics, haven’t been given the luxury of happening.

Bin Laden & Company are stuck in the past. A past of struggling to survive, a past of intolerance for other peoples and belief systems, a past where “my kind’s better’n yours” is more than just a smarmy sentiment – rather, it’s a call for no-holds-barred violence. Which then pretty well squashes our “can’t we all just get along?” options for dealing with them…

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Americans have been awfully spoiled. And insulated. We, for the most part, have been ignorant about the desperation, aspirations, and religious convictions of the many millions of people who relate to Bin Laden and his message. We have been more than happy to frolic in the crass materialism and hedonism that have characterized the last couple of decades for too many Americans, while dismissing less fortunate nations and their criticisms of us as essentially irrelevant. For sure, let’s find the bastards behind the 9/11 attacks and eliminate as many of them as we can, and with extreme prejudice! But if that’s all we do, then the very best we can ever hope for is to get even, and how do you get even for the deaths of 3500 innocent people? In a way - a rude, horrific way, we’ve gotten a wake up call, one that could turn out to be the silver lining in this whole deal.

More Americans have rediscovered patriotism, charity, family, houses of worship, and respect for cops, firemen, and the military. This is a good thing. We can and should do more, though. It’s really great that in America scrawny white kids and beefy black kids can sing about what a big pimp gangsta’ they are, and how they’re gonna beat up, rape and/or kill their bitch (girlfriend), their mother, a cop, a faggot, or (e) all of the above. And it’s wonderful that our best ballplayers and business executives here have the opportunity to make 100 (one hundred) times or more than what the highest paid public school teacher earns. It’s also a testament to America’s level of personal freedom that a one-person family can drive an SUV that gets as much as several miles to a gallon of gas, and is large enough for the military to land small planes on.

God bless America for allowing these freedoms and opportunities! But why do we need to glorify these types of choices and allow them to define who we are and what America stands for? Why is gangsta rap fawned over by music critics, the Grammy Awards, and legitimized by the millions of Americans who’ve made it the nation’s second most popular music genre? Why are expensive, wasteful SUVs top sellers everywhere, especially among people who’ve never even seen a dirt road? Why does HBO (not Playboy, but HBO) have a multiple-Emmy winning series (The Sopranos) that will show one guy having sex with a woman doggy style at the same time she's giving another guy oral sex? These are not merely eccentric examples of our freedom of expression and opportunity, found on the margin of American society. These are what we put up front and celebrate as America’s Best!

Well, they’re not the best that we have to offer, and the shock of September 11’s events has helped many Americans see that more than a few members of the emperor’s court are naked. The events of one day alone have caused us to stop and reassess what’s important in this country and in our own lives. We see this already from overpaid athletes and business people who want to spend more time with their families and contribute more to society, and from entertainers who have turned down the violence and profanity a notch or two. Further trauma, from the twin threats of a war against terrorism and a possibly serious recession, will likely add to this trend.

And so the good news is the prospect that a few years from now we’ll be able to look back – wincingly - at the arrogance, irreverence, and just plain stupidity of Eminem, $250 million dollar baseball players, SUVs by Cadillac, oral sex on network television, and the like. Precisely because we have the greatest level of economic, political, and religious freedoms in the world, we have the luxury to change, to move forward from past mistakes and excesses. Wars happen because recent decades of peaceful enlightenment are insufficient to undo millennia of human nature. At least we can come away with something good out of this one. America should create a memorial to the lost heroes of September 11 in the form of putting its head back on straight.

Jon Strebler

11/2001