Funny Birthday America!

 

America is a strange Nation, a country both despised and admired by most people on Earth! In order to understand this dichotomy, what better time than its anniversary to cast a tongue-in-cheek glance at its short but intense history in search of answers; so here we go.

America is a geo-political ( G-P )  island-nation as we covered here in this piece :

https://dlofr.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/gp-island-nations-the-uk-the-us-hum-the-vatican/

It separated itself many times and drifted back to form megacontinents but did so last from the 3/4 of a billion years old Laurasia into Laurentia by the Jurassic roughly 200 MYA ( million years ago ). Ever since the Cretaceous, it has been staunchly individualistic which explains the following facts.

America was initially populated by dinosaurs, the remains of which can be seen in various museums and the Republican Party. All other traces of this first era sadly disappeared by the end of the said Cretaceous around 65 MYA

Around 40 000 YA, the first immigrants came to America from Asia which is commonly referred to as the Great Chinese Invasion until the next one occurs. Those got into the habit of using bark and not stone as their South American cousins to keep records which coupled with frequent forest fires and a civilization based on fire itself means all documents were lost before the last immigrants got there.

Those were of many types and origins, mainly Spanish and French but never got fully acclimated. The delicious barbarians that populated the Anglo-Norman Isles however found the climate ( both meteorologic and politic ) to be such an improvement over that of the UK that they were quite happy with their new found land.

[ Not to be confused with Newfoundland the Canadian province, itself populated according to Canadian folklore by those too daft to understand the value of the main continental body and so satisfied with a cheap copy of the motherland? ]

Anyone with any qualm at the social entity that was then Britain thus moved over joyfully to the “other side of the Pond”, a nickname which indicates when one knows the expanse of water that is the Atlantic that the travelers were indeed pretty good seafarers.

Having left England for various reasons which only had in common the crowed conditions of the  Island, they immediately split into colonies according to preferences, another example of their individualistic trait that explains the 50 modern States. These colonies did find 2 causes to unite them though. One was the local aborigines which somehow took a dislike to the newcomers and the other being taxes exerted by the King, way back in Great-Britain. They flipped a coin to decide which of the 2 they would tackle first and it landed on the ugly mug of the monarch, a piece of Americana since commemorated at the opening of football games.
Funnily enough, the Indians ( itself a misnomer, due to Colombus, that forever left the average US citizens quite bad at geography and foreign languages) had shown the immigrants new food staples and the ways to use them ( which likely constitutes the original “nouvelle cuisine” that the French shamelessly appropriated ) and that served as a starting point for the rebellion. Arguing against the dreaded British cooking to hide their now legendary love of money related tax problem, the colonists threw off tea bags from an English boat into the ocean waters in anger. This made the tea too salty and too watery of course and had 3 important repercussions : 1- It got Americans in the habit of drinking coffee and beer that the rest of the World has since found akin to tepid water; 2- It also is the origin of the Tea Party political formation which has one of the most insipid and murky program ever seen and 3- It pissed the Brits off no end!

The revolution war had begun. France, under another triple incentive ( neighboring territories eyed by England; a reciprocal fondness for the then brilliant and well educated leaders of the future young nation and a profound dislike of the English of their own ) lend a helping hand and America came into being by 1776 on July 4th by the Adoption of the Constitution.

Having acquired their autonomy, the Americans turned back to the Injun problem. For decades to come, they pushed back the pesky tribes to expand. Part of their rage was motivated by the fact that Amerindians had gone both ways during the freedom fight, some with the Red Coats and some with the colonists. But since these could not differentiate which was which because “they all looked alike”  ( a problem that came back to haunt them  a few years later in another disrespect ), they just shot them all, as remembered in the saying : “a good Injun is a dead Injun”.

Off course, the Indians were not total dimwits and fled Westward. It is from this that sprang the conquest of the West, the habit of carrying arms and the Nation’s mantra : Go West, young man! a shortened version that used to end : …”cuz’ there ain’t no more redskins to kill around here!”

( Interestingly, by a classical societal transfer, once that had happened, the population took to calling the dumbest of their own Rednecks, although some argue it is a reminder of the Redcoats instead? )

The other origin of that founding myth is that it could not include Go South since pass the Rio Grande were Spanish descendants, much tougher than the Brits or Injuns. But since again they could not differentiate skin color, the Americans got spanked by those at the Alamo that indeed America remembers? They since tried to go to war and build a protective fence, the latter still not fully efficient at keeping the Spaniards at ( Monterey ) bay and the origin of the American Right’s belief that central government just can’t get shit done!

That period of eradication had two grave consequences of its own on the future of the USA. First, it left the settlers without fun preys so that they then had to import Africans for the purpose and that in turn got them a Kenyan for Prez 5 years ago? HA!, Nah, good fer ya! The other was that once all Indians had been stuffed into preserves … ooops, sorry reserv…ations … it left America with an inordinate amount of guns and gun manufactures, something that ( with the accompanying anger/bully attitude ) has since gotten them into all sorts of troubles in-house and abroad, although in all truth it also was not so despised by the Europeans around 1942-1945 except possibly where the Germans of then are concerned!

Still, out of that difficult history, the Nation wrangled achievements of importance. Yes they were helped by the coincidental Industrial Revolution but still, they gave us great technological advances, rock’n roll, the California lifestyle, Internet and the Moon’s conquest  on the one hand slightly counterbalanced by atomic weapons and their use, pop muzak, mega-porno, bad TV and über-capitalism on the other.

So that today, we should find it possible to wish America a happy birthday, a wish of the coming of age that passing time allows to those prone to auto-reflection on the way to self-realization?

They’re but a very young nation?

The road ahead is long but you’ve already come a long way, baby!

Be humble, be respectful, remember your past, don’t forget your friends that are wishing you a happy birthday, a little help from which you can get by for a while yet?

Live long and prosper, Tay.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvvxdm_american-anthem-jimi-hendrix-woodstock-1969_music