I’m Afraid of Americans
There’s a song about it.
--
No one needs anyone. They don’t even just pretend.
— David Bowie
Anger is poison.
America is the angriest country in the world. We’re angry all the time, and we don’t even see it. David Bowie did. In 1997 he released a song with Nine Inch Nails titled, “I’m Afraid of Americans.”
Almost 25 years later, the music video portrays what it feels like for millions of us now, every single time we step outside.
Bowie couldn’t have predicted our future any better. Two years after its release, the Columbine shooting happened. A couple of years after that, terrorists flew planes into our tallest buildings.
We’ve been at war ever since. If we weren’t fighting terrorists, we’ve been fighting each other. It never stops.
Now that we’re not officially at war anymore, we’re in trouble. There’s no more enemies to fight. We’re too broke to invade anyone.
Our anger has nowhere to go but inside.
This is what it looks like:
Americans celebrate aggression.
Look anywhere in America, and you’ll see violence. Our official pastime is football, a sport where giants knock the shit out of each other over a little leather ball. We watch this game the same day as church, right after asking god to forgive us for all the bad things we did last week.
Our unofficial sport is ultimate fighting.
Consider those words.
Ultimate.
Fighting.
Our national hero is a guy named Joe, who talks about fighting and then goes to a man cave, where he interviews white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, and treats them like experts.
The phrase road rage describes a distinctly American phenomenon. We loose our tempers at the exact time when we should demonstrate…
