Aug 31, 2018

TW wrote:

To:Marco S*****,Flavio B*********

Ciao Ragazzi,

These Americans have discovered a genius solution to the summer mosquito problem: forest fires! My location is safe for now but we are surrounded by enormous out of control fires ignited last month by lightning, and I am sandwiched between the major fires of northern California and southern Oregon, with the smoke here limiting visibility to a couple of meters, not kilometers. People who must go outside are wearing medical masks. The smoke of these combined fires has been reported to have reached as far as New York City 5000 kilometers east (seriously). Even I -a professional smoker- walk outside and choke before I can even light a cigarette.

They say it has been this way every summer for the past 3 years. The snakes are hot and angry and because they have no natural way to regulate the temperature of their ugly bodies they keep trying to come in to my cabin. I found a scorpion in my bed -after I got up- and I have a scorpion-shaped scar growing on my breast. The interior of the cabin is a solid kaleidoscope of insects every size, shape, and color…It’s a fucking zoo in here…I think I need an elephant gun. Meanwhile, outside my window: I haven’t seen signs of the big beasts for some months, although I still hear the coyotes…Now the little deer have grown horns and the wild turkeys had dozens of babies. My nicest companions are a pair of lizards who I call Lemmy and Liz -they are very curious and very friendly- who come running to sit next to me every time I am outside. They do push ups when they are excited.

I do not talk with the people here, but I do much watching and listening; my area is a perfect petri dish of Trumpism, which is an opportunistic infection sparked by the collapsing of the empire. I dream of Italy, but then I remember how it too is plummeting. But apart from some foundational cultural differences, you and I are watching the same flesh eating disease devouring the world.

The bridge collapse in Genoa was big news here. America also has ignored its infrastructure to the point of danger, and the same problem even exists now in Germany. A simple research shows me that in Italy spending on building and maintaining Italian roads fell by 62% between 2007 and 2015 (according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). A government at least in theory should provide safe service, but private corporations don’t care. What Italy and Europe and America needs is what Franklin Roosevelt did with the WPA and other new programs: The WPA built many thousands of roads, bridges, dams and buildings of good quality -and it also solved the unemployment problems of the Great Depression. It was called the New Deal for a good reason. Roosevelt also made laws insuring banks and fencing off their investment/speculation activities (which Bill Clinton undid, so setting the stage for the 2008 crash…It was speculation by Lehman Brothers here that started the world crisis ). In Europe this is traditionally the role of the Social Democrat parties. -What conservatives voters do not understand is that Social Democrats’ reason for existing is to save capitalism.

At least the Genoa disaster was not blamed on migrants. The fashion here, like in Europe, is to focus the people’s anger on migrants. American politicians are winning millions of votes now by locking migrant children in holding cells and now proposing to deport even those (former) immigrants with American citizenship if they have ever used public assistance (remember the difficulties I had here just proving I was American)! The general popular effect is a growth of ‘White Patriotism’ based on being proud of ignorance. Naturally it turns its resentment from everyone beyond the borders to everyone inside who appears different. And of course you have heard of the recent mob in Germany chasing and attacking anyone who looks foreign. Italy has seen black people on its streets for a couple of thousand years before America did, but at this time we are much more habituated to seeing them than Italians are. And the blacks here actively created more than half of American culture, so they do not count as foreign, but the police like to shoot them for target practice.

As I explained a few years back, in Italy -among other lesser nations of the European Union- because currency devaluation can no longer be used to maintain economic competitiveness, the road can only lead to more poverty unless external competitiveness is achieved by internal devaluation: looting pensions, public services, and wages. But America has no European Central Bank, so its internal devaluating is caused by supra-national capital demands made more or less for its own entertainment. In my months here I’ve observed examples all around me: Firstly, throughout the U.S. rent prices are unrealistic. Here we have massive homelessness crisis. It is now usual even for IT workers in rich Silicon Valley (and almost everywhere in the San Francisco area) to live in their cars. Worse: even entire working families (with full-time jobs) must now live in their cars (or sometimes motor-homes). Approximately 41 million Americans live below the federally measured poverty line, and more than 140 million people (more than 40% of the U.S. population) are living under the threat of becoming indigent. Visitors to every major American city are shocked to see areas that look worse than slums in Lagos or Cairo. Internally, America is already a third-world country.

Another example: You might have heard that Harley-Davidson is leaving the United States. What really happened is this: Harley accepted the enormous tax reduction Trump gifted to the richest men and corporations in his first months in office. Like every other beneficiary of the tax cut, instead of using the gains for salaries, bonuses and improvements (as advertised by the White House), Harley used the money to buy back stock and then announced that doing business in America is too expensive so they would move all manufacturing to India and Thailand. In fact they had decided that before Trump’s tax cuts, and the India/Thailand operations were already expanding.

In somma, ragazzi, between us the main difference is that Americans are incurably ahistorical -too isolated, not only geographically, but also culturally (and mentally) to understand what is happening to themselves; it seems that they do not care what the world thinks about them, but they really don’t know that there is a world outside. These people are incredibly stupid and crazy. Another disturbing difference: in the largest supermarkets here I noticed that an entire side of the store is stocked with adult pampers…Really…shelves and shelves of big boxes of them! I don’t know if that indicates their mental level or their indolence.

I am still not yet safe to leave, and I am still in the hands of many doctors here. The latest information is that they want to do another operation, this time in my sinuses, which maybe will treat all the infections, dizziness, and falling rocks in or near my brain. So I am obligated to stay some time more. As I explained before, this little hole of safety is peculiar to Oregon. The recently enacted ‘ObamaCare’ health insurance is still private insurance, and even this is being repealed by Trump. -Medical bills are the main cause of bankruptcy in America.

A major problem with being plugged in to the medical system here is that I am not allowed by law to earn any money -otherwise I will lose the health insurance. I had gathered a little, which I had hoped to send to Cesenatico when I mentioned it before, but now I must wait a little and try to re-ignite some business when the doctors clear me. Soon, I hope. I haven’t bought any clothes except what was required to keep me alive through the winter. I pray that you are able to keep my things safe until I reach a solution; It would cost me something like $5,000 to ship it to here and it makes more sense for me to move it when I decide where I will live….But it is looking like I might have to stay here until winter or early spring. And then: where to go? I am beating my brains trying to think of a country that is not falling in to proto-fascism.

Abracci

-Tristano