it's what made America fat
2004-10-13

Ugh, just been reading the new interview with Trey Parker and Matt Stone on Team America (you can read it too! if you sit through an ad for Powell's). I'm going to see the movie, and probably love it because hell, there's puppets in it, but the interview is all happy-clappy garbage about how great Trey Parker is and how he is the American Dream and how everyone should look towards a brighter future like the Americans do. That way, the world would be a happier place, with more sweet cars and houses and less poor people.

I hate that attitude. It's ok to be happy, but to suggest that your country-wide rosy view of the future is responsible for every great thing that ever happened to you? That's not just circular thinking, it's highly narcissistic. It's thinking at a childish level. Remember when you believed that what you thought affected the world around you? Like, "Uh-oh, Mommy is sick. This must be because I was mad at her."

Guess what? You're supposed to grow out of this sort of thinking. Things don't come to you because you're happy, they come to you because you work for them, or because you're lucky. Certainly a positive worldview helps you get off your butt (and this is probably the point Parker and Stone are trying to make), but there's a fine line between "Hey, a smile on my face keeps me going" and "Hey, why isn't everybody as goddamn happy as me, for Christ's sake SMILE goddamn it, why don't you want to be just like me because I'm so goddamn happy all the time!" The kind of delusion that makes you invade other countries and then become offended that you're not loved enough by the people you conquered. Why aren't those poor folk smiling at you? Turn that frown upside down, or I'll rearrange your face.

In case you think this is just an Americans-beating-on-furriners thing, Stone says, "Sure, it's stupid, and a lot of times it's a big smile while eating a big shit sandwich, but you just keep going, you know?" So apparently the duty of the good American is to eat shit with a smile. The more feces you can force down your throat without complaining, the better off you are? Shit-eating: it's what made America great!

This worldview does not always go down so well in other countries. Probably because they don't have as nice teeth as us, so they don't like to smile. This must be fixed.

America: If you weren't so depressed all the time, Europeans, you would have this cool SUV, like me!

Europe: I think you're retarded. Go away.

America: You know what I call that? Stinkin' thinkin.

Europe: Oh no, America is coming to shoot us with its many guns. Hide.

Britain: I have a new reality game show about ballroom dancing!

Which one of these countries ended up in Iraq with us? (And don't say Poland. They quit.)

Overheard in the gym locker room: "I have the can't-help-it's." Spoken to a Snickers bar.

Read off the closed captioning on a gym tv: "Bush is a God fathering man."

Frightening: the guy holding up a "Kerry Eats Babies" sign behind Wolf Blitzer's head post-debate. Hm, looks like Bush has won the scary Internet fucktard vote.