America 51

by Corey Taylor

  So, to backtrack, I’m not sure too many people are singing our praises lately. But for all intents and purposes it does still ring true, especially to those who never set foot on our fruited plains, our homes of the brave. Coming here from somewhere like Syria, North Korea, or any of the other fascist/communist/combat zones, this country of ours is a fucking Shangri-La; the sun shines, the waters are clear, and you can run as far and as fast as you care to in America. At least that’s what all the ads say. That’s the message all the commercials beat you over the head with, anyway. I’m not here to dissuade people that this isn’t true—far from it. I hope to reinforce it. However, there’s an America no one talks about, an America that only really gets coverage on the night-and-day news channels. This is where the fine print gets the magnifying glass.

  Our word of mouth, nine times out of ten, can be a lie.

  We’re only “free” if we’re whiter than most. We’re only “richer” than our neighbors if we’re that alabaster-skinned type. We’re only “safe” if we’re in the right neighborhoods, on the right streets, with the right people—sure, the whiter people. I don’t give a shit if that stings some white people. Not all white people think that way, but it’s true. Because of this, white people have a certain idea of what this country ought to be. It ought not have so many refugees or immigrants, illegal or otherwise. It ought to have a level of control on criminals, but not our guns. It ought to know exactly what its real citizens need. This snowy-white bullshit is exactly why there is so much resentment against people of my pale complexion. No matter what I do to counterbalance it, the entitlement and privilege undoes so much good that it’s no wonder that as of this writing in 2017, we are closer to civil war than we’ve been in 150 years. It’s sickening to me how my fellow Americans are treated because of what color they are, all because white Americans can’t be bothered to retrain themselves about what this country really stands for.

  Don’t get me wrong: I love my country. I would fight and die for my country, and I still believe in my country. However, before my country can change, it needs to embrace its own chaos factor. The United States could get a lot out of an AA twelve-step program, meaning the first step toward fixing a problem is acknowledging you have a problem in the first place. Until you do so, this country will continue walking in the wind, trapped in a box with no escape. This will not be easy, I’m afraid: America is as complicated as its foreign policies. It has layers upon layers of intricate subsections that blur lines between good and bad, real and fake, screams and whispers and songs of our past. I love this country with all my heart, but there is nothing I hate worse than the way we as Americans treat each other, stepping on each other’s rights and repeating the horrible shit that others spew into the atmosphere like mustard gas on a Belgian battlefield. We’re eating each other—why? Because self-importance tastes like cotton candy in our country.

  Speaking of being white, I have a terrible habit of forgetting that I am white. Now there are several ways you can look at that. You can say, “Oh, look at the shitty hippy who doesn’t ‘see color.’ He’s so edgy because he doesn’t see himself as white.” You can also say, “Oh, check out the privilege coming off Captain Dick over here. Only a white person could get away with forgetting their color.” Both are valid, vicious, and good satirical points, to be taken seriously for the most part. I really wish it were something slightly profound like that, if not also a tad on the abrasive side. No, no, regrettably, it is far more ridiculous than those examples. It really comes down to the fact that I get very distracted in my own head with my own shit and forget what color I am. Now, granted, I will admit there are very few moments when my color comes into question, unlike my other multicolored brothers and sisters. I think this is where America has its biggest problem: no one can agree on what an American looks like. If you ask any American what a citizen looks like, they’ll describe someone who looks very much like they do. Fair enough: we all identify with people who are more like ourselves. The issue comes around when you ask them what an American does not look like. The answers will not surprise you or make you feel proud. We talked about that earlier, and it’s not a specifically American idea of lily-pale nationalism, but the volume does tend to get cranked up on it. This is, of course, the USA we’re talking about: everything we do goes to eleven.

  Yes, I forget I’m white sometimes because I don’t really give a shit, to be honest. I’ve never understood people who are proud of being white. Black Pride, Brown and Proud, Asian Love—I understand all those ideas. It’s about celebrating your heritage and history in the face of pain and adversity. It’s about never forgetting what your people have done, no matter who’s keeping score and writing it down. White people don’t need that—we’ve been the ones writing and rewriting history since we wrested the pens from the historians’ hands. So White Pride has never made sense to me. Then again, I have other interests. Most people who are obsessed with White Pride are usually not very good at anything else. Surely they’re convinced that they’re good at being white, but can that happen? Can you be good at being a color? These people seem to believe so. But from where I’m standing, it kind of looks like they’re shitty at it. White people are no better than anyone else. There are a lot of Trumpy snowflakes who will take umbrage with that statement, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Why would there be anything awesome about being white? We’ve never had to fight for attention or acceptance—ever. We usually take up civil disobedience as a hobby; other ethnicities have dedicated their lives to fighting for equality because if they don’t fight for it, nothing ever gets done. Sometimes even when it does get done, you never know when it’ll be undone in another person’s lifetime by some asshole with a pinch more power. White people? Most are part time, like Uber.

  I can see why white people try to identify being American almost exclusively as white, because the two concepts have a lot in common: being white and being American are largely linked because they can both take an idea, blow it out of proportion, and choose to play the victim or the hero. Americans love the role of drama queen, complete with Maybelline, marijuana, and martyrdom. Americans are always ready to protest or celebrate. This goes back to what we talked about earlier: when everything is offensive, nothing is offensive. When everything causes outrage, nothing will cause outrage. Americans are very good at getting whipped up into a frenzy, whether it’s warranted or not. Sure, during the Cheeto’s first ten days in office he gave us several reasons to be pissed off. Even those who voted for him were starting to get that burn in their belly. Meanwhile, Trump supporters were threatening a boycott of Starbucks—again—because the CEO had vowed to hire refugees (internationally, by the way, not just in America) in response to Trump’s immigration ban. Trumpers were outraged because it “took jobs away from Americans.” People, listen: if Starbucks was going to be a viable job choice for you, you would have applied there by now. There’s that white privilege shining through again: it’s hard to bitch about unemployment when you tend to have the benefit of being choosy.

  But you can’t talk like that about America to certain people. It’s another reason we’re in such vast fuckery right now. When you can’t have a conversation with your fellow country folk, whether conciliatory or accusatory, without a screaming match breaking out, bordering on fisticuffs, you’re standing on a cultural fault line, just waiting for the earth to crack and swallow us alive. Guess what: there’s shit about this country that fucking sucks. Sorry. Historically our track record for equality has, ironically, not been the best. Economically we seem to prefer extremes to the center that needs attention. Some would rather rape our natural resources than keep our country’s landscapes intact. We are not colorblind, even keeled, morally superior, overly exceptional, bulletproof, extraordinary, or untouchable. It’s been a while since we’ve had our ass kicked. I’m not talking about a national tragedy like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor; I would never wish that on us or anyone else. Maybe this whole Trump thing is exactly what we needed: to re
align our beliefs again and remind us that our diversity is an asset, not a deficit.

  Nietzsche said, “God is dead.” But don’t tell other Americans that.

  You have to realize that most Americans refuse to think that anything is correct outside of what they hear on Fox News or MSNBC. Most Americans just want to get on with it and kick out the jams. They love gawd, booze, man buns, muscle cars and Priuses, being rednecks and millennials, PBR, meth, strawberry meth… and tons of guns to go with it all. In other words, Americans love being perpetual dick-lickers, in any guise that particular brand of licker happens to take. Americans know how to have a good time, even in the face of a crazy global catastrophe. That’s why people go to such great lengths to have the cleverest sign at the protest. That’s why they need to have the most offensive T-shirt at the rally. We as Americans aren’t moderate about anything—hell, we even take moderation to extremes. It’s fucking ridiculous, hilarious, and secretly terrifying. It’s never enough to make a point—we always need to make a statement. It’s never enough to make sense—we need to make you agree with us at all fucking costs. If you deviate from our agreement, you’re a no-good, sniveling, commie cocksucker or you’re a bigoted, bullying Nazi. I use both choices because I just described both sides of the burning bed.

  I don’t have time for rhetoric. I only have time for reruns of Scooby-Doo.

  I was visiting a family member in the hospital not long after the election. The staff was getting her room ready for her, so I was standing in the waiting area with some others from my family. There were other families in there waiting as well, and someone had put on Fox News. Now, I am not a huge fan of watching the news outside my home—I also have a hard time with these channels being on in every airport, everywhere you look—but I was not the one to put it on, so I did my best to mind my own business. It was going well until one of the dads connected to a different family took a phone call and began to go on a diatribe over Fox News. “Yeah, I’m here! Yep, he’s going to be sworn in, then he’s going to PUT THE BITCH IN JAIL!” This last retort made me look up from my phone. He was staring into the TV with unhidden glee, smiling from ear to ear. “It’s about time somebody did something about her! She’s a goddamn criminal and she deserves to be LOCKED UP!” Now, you didn’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to figure out who he was talking about. I’d heard enough hoopla and horse shit during the election and debates to know that every zealot with a red baseball cap thought Hillary Clinton was a criminal for nothing more than some emails on a server—something, by the way, other men before had done as well, but nobody really wanted to talk about that.

  I was standing there, listening to this man go on and on to the unseen listener about the evils of HRC, when I noticed his teenage kids. They were miserable. There was a boy and a girl, and they looked like they were doing their very best to not only become one with the chair they were sitting in but also to fold themselves into tinier pieces for tucking into the cushions. I knew that look: they’d sat through this same tirade night after night, day after day, for months, maybe even a fucking year, and they were appalled it was happening again, yet this time in a public place, with other ears present for listening, which you could easily do because he was bellowing like a doomsayer on his coffee break. I looked at his kids, then back at him, and then back at his kids again, then I got up, slowly went over to the table in the middle of the room where the remote control sat, picked it up, and turned it to the USA Network. I’m not sure if it was merely the look of embedded dread on his children’s face that changed my mind or if it was the edgy look of hateful frost commingling with heady triumph on his face. But I’d simply had enough. It’d be one thing if he were in his own home—none of my business there. But he wasn’t the only one in the room, and I wasn’t going to listen to it.

  The second the channel changed, he snapped out of it angrily, like a smoker looking for his lost lighter. He looked up and over at me with an accusatory expression that said, What are you doing, and who the hell do you think you are? I didn’t care. I didn’t even say anything. I just let him watch me scan the room, let him take in the fact that there were other people around who didn’t need to listen to his bullshit. Then I let my gaze rest on his kids, who were only then coming out from under their jackets and shirts, checking to see if the air was still clean to breathe. When he took notice of his children’s reaction, he paused as if he knew he was in the wrong. Then some sort of righteous indignation caught him by the collar, and he gave me a shitty look of contempt. I didn’t even flinch: I’ve seen that look before, and it no longer bothers me. So I let him waste his energy on trying to get on my nerves. Finally he just got up and stormed out. I gave the remote to my aunt, who was sitting nearest the television. When my head came up I suddenly noticed for the first time that his children had directed their attention toward me. We all stared for a second, then they smiled briefly. I gave them a smirk and a quick shrug, then went to check on our “patient.” I never suffer fools lightly, but when I see that their families are suffering as well, I tend to get very, very aggressive.

  I’ll be honest, and you can laugh at the irony and hypocrisy later: I hate talking politics anymore. It is fucking exhausting. There’s nothing worse than getting into a real-life flame war with some twat who thinks he’s the intellectual equivalent of Salmon P. Chase, trying desperately to get you as fired up as he is. Worse yet is the “Google-ist”: someone who is just ready and waiting for you to say something that they can refute by using Google to pull a bunch of facts and figures out of their gaping, goochless assholes. “I hate to disagree with you Corey”—which is code for “I’ve been dying to disagree with you Corey”—“but putting your trust in the mainstream media is pointless when you take into account that 90 percent of the media is owned by six corporations.” Yeah, that’s great and all, but I’m not a fucking moron: I tend to do a bit of research before I believe anything I hear. I don’t take one media outlet as gospel; I check all the networks, newsfeeds, and databases before I come to my conclusions. Sure, some of the news channels are owned by the same companies, but not all of them are. So anyone who doesn’t give me the benefit of the doubt doesn’t get invited back to the Tuesday Boiled-Egg Bruncheon, which is kind of a big deal on my block, just saying…

  I’d also be shocked if anyone knew who Salmon P. Chase was, outside of Ohio, without Googling him for confirmation.

  It’s a weird world we live in. More people believe in angels than in aliens, a good percentage still do not believe that we walked on the moon yet wholeheartedly believe in the existence of Bigfoot, and almost all are pasted to their couches any time a Kardashian comes on TV because they believe that family is just the epitome of grace and style. Do you see how deluded we’ve become? The “fake news” thing that the New Nazis are using to breed distrust has done them well—a lot of people have no fucking clue what’s going on anymore, and when they do, they’re just parroting what the White House pulled from Breitbart that day. The propaganda wing of the Trump administration is We, The People—well, you, the people. I don’t believe a red cent, a white lie, or a blue fuck that comes out of that entire fucking government’s mouths. You must understand that I’m not pulling for one side or the other—I HONESTLY THINK YOU ARE ALL FUCKED IN THE FUCKING HEADS. I have a sneaking suspicion that if there were ever a time when you all thought no one was looking, you’d eat your young and go after the infirm next. I don’t have very nice things to think about any one of you. I’m pretty sure you feel the same way about me. So what’s the difference? you may ask. It’s really simple: ask me if I give a shit what you think.

  I have a very vivid memory of a moment right out of a Bruce Springsteen video—in fact, in this memory the Boss was playing on the radio. I could hear it on our neighbor’s radio in their Bronco: “My Hometown.” It was his latest single at the time, which tells you how long ago it was. Anyway, this memory is straight from the heart of the American ideal. The sun was shining down, hot and bright, onto white hous
es and green grass. There was just enough breeze to take the edge off the heat. None of the backyards had any fence; all the lawns ran together to make one long maze of lush paths and sober living. A few clotheslines swayed with the wind, and in the gravel driveways of a couple of the homes grown men were bent under the hoods of their cars, furiously toiling at the engines, oil filters, transmissions, and so on and so forth. It was quiet save for that Springsteen song, wavy and unfiltered, carrying across the static like pine needles scraping out a tune on solid vinyl. Other than the music, the scene was gravely still. This was the score to a ghost town. This was a siesta in Tombstone. All around me were the real American colors: blue, black, yellow, green, white, gray, and dabs of red and purple here and there, but Bob Ross wouldn’t have needed much blending if he’d been bent at his easel trying to capture this moment. This was simply a blip on the map. This was a space between the American heartbeats.

  I remember this moment not because of anything in particular but because of how it looked. I was probably thirteen years old, right around the time of my Semi Trip (just wait until the next chapter). In that moment I found myself hyper-aware of everything that was making that scene so vivid for me. This was the fabled American Dream. This was apple pie and freedom and eagles shooting lasers out of T-shirt cannons. This was Lincoln and Washington bare-knuckle boxing for the souls of their troops. This was the Promised Land, full of all the things anyone could ever want: peace, quiet, love, honor, chocolate, and cold Bud on tap. It was a Norman Rockwell wet dream, complete with children nursing ice cream headaches and dogs looking for a hydrant to use so the grass didn’t lose its color. Oh, it was a regular Shangri-La just off Main Street, USA.