Reviewing the Inconveniences of American Civilization

Today is a rainy day here in sunny Los Angeles. As my pants and jacket dry off here in my cubicle let’s take some time to review the continual inconveniences of the current state of my local civilization. Surely it must be an act of subversion to dare to critique any civilization founded by “the greatest empire television has ever seen”—to quote Monty Python’s Flying Circus—but there are a few naughty bits that must be worth mentioning. Before I shoot the real bullets, let’s list the meta-bullets:

My inconveniences are insignificant compared to the street existence of a small boy in Iraq and the village death of a little girl in Darfur. However, the assumption here is that my inconveniences are caused by the same “universal” mindset developed during the imperialist revolutions culminating in the Roman, Messiah-killing age we live in now.
It may seem strange for many who have only seen Los Angeles on television to get complaints from a native Angelino.And now for something completely different:
The almost continuous inconvenience here in Los Angeles is the traffic. It is so bad it even gets into my poetry. When I was a young, white liberal I used to get upset about white people not “believing” Black history. Egocentrism causes more sadness than giddy delusions of grandeur. Such pathetic sadness went away when I realized that these are certainly the same white people sitting in a traffic jam thinking nothing of it—thinking nothing about the “black” history of how the diesel engine was used with fossil fuel instead of vegetable fuel and the deliberate sabotage and underdevelopment of public (communal) transportation. Nevertheless, my triumph over ego is limited: I still hate traffic jams—but I know what caused them so I do not have the road rage of the ignorant.
Another prominent inconvenience is the difficulty in finding and procuring real food. Our local supermarket chain Trader Joes went heavy into GMO a few years ago drastically reducing the surface area. When we walk into any of the “normal” chains like Ralphs it is almost like walking into a desert: there is very little life-renewing food in the store—just call out to all the high glycemic index carbohydrates and ask them walk out the store—the store will be almost empty. So we are forced to shop at expensive-ass Whole Foods or stumble upon a farmer’s market. I am completely aware of how silly this sounds to most of the civilized folk of Los Angeles and I am aware that there is little sympathy for this inconvenience. So now let’s have a fake conversation about the obesity epidemic in North American children… One related tidbit: when many people see me they often think I was born and raised in the continent Africa (which, dude, is totally cool). One of the reasons I think they think this is because I am not obese—many, many “African Americans” my age are obese—a clear sign of assimilation. And I say this not out of arrogance because my mother and father—many in my family—suffer greatly from her past American food styles. Sufia Giza and I chatted about this back in 2003. Did I mention that we buy bottled water exclusively—effectively permitting the commercial sector to sell us our potable water?
The dominant monthly inconvenience is paying rent. My father had me and mother and brother living in a house by the time he was 24. I am almost twice his age and renting an apartment! Here’s a cliché: housing costs are too high in Los Angeles. But, again, historical, metrical information is the savior from neurosis: the dollar is now currency—back in my father’s day, the dollar was money. Also there was a law passed when I was a child that encouraged the development of commercial property over residential property. Oh yeah: there’s my personal relationship to finance that I can quickly summarize by comparing my debt status to that of an African country financing with IMF auspices.
Rainy days like this one reminds me of the inconvenience related to driving into work. As a computer programmer, it is outright insulting to have drive into work. But this one circles back to the traffic thing…
One yearly disappointment, at tax time, is not really knowing what my taxes are doing apart from killing people in Darfur and Iraq. I’m pretty sure my funds are being used to provide money for oil barons who are saving up for their own rainy day… I don’t see my taxes educating American children or preventing young people from being punished by law enforcement (instead of being rehabilitated by community empowerment). Whatever “rabid and ironic racism” white people are wont to accuse me of, it does not provide excuses as to why education, featuring the development of thinking powers, does not happen en masse in my “community.”I’m going to go with this one: Cities are ego centers for the white town fathers of all colors. In China and in India, billions are evacuating the underdeveloped villages and are packing into the giant slave ship slums. They are dreaming of a semblance the lifestyle I dislike today. Oh, I am so ungrateful!

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