It has been a distinct pleasure to meet so many Americans since I passed on some two hundred odd years now. This rather young country seems to have such an anti-intellectual and puritanical bent to it. Witness the election of such dolts as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush and his father.
It seems to me that America often jolts forward toward a more humane society and then is pulled backwards just as often by the reactionaries that fool many American voters into giving them the reins of power. Such a shame. America in my view has great unrealized potential.
Forgive my digression into politics and philosophy. It comes to me as easy as breathing. And I believe Mr. Ghandhi was telling me the other day that all our actions are political in some sense. He is quite right.
One very curious thing I have noticed about my American friends of the 20th century is their obsession with college football. Every Saturday I wander around my favorite haunts looking for my American friends--Mike Royko, Joseph Campbell and Brenda Ueland---only to find them obssessed with young men in helmets runnning in packs called the Buckeyes, Fighting Illini, Golden Bears, Thundering Herd and the Horned Frogs.
Try as I might to engage my dear American friends in just a few minutes of rich intellectual discourse on Saturdays, I always fail.
Despairing in my loneliness last Saturday I unloaded on Mike Royko, one of the funniest Americans, my disappointment in the Americans' obsession with college football. He told me it straight: "Voltaire, get over it. If we didn't have college football and pro football on weekends, we would be wreaking a lot more havoc on the world. Not a good thing for the world."
Mike always makes a lot of sense I have found. And even better he makes me laugh.
Voltaire
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
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