Amerika the bountiful

It is not very accurate to generalize about America from just a Texas perspective, nor from any single State of the Union for that matter, but we did touch base with Oahu in Hawaii, the Bay area in California, the greater Chicago area, and the tri-city of Dallas-Ft. Worth-Denton, the urban-suburban-exurban-inner city and downtown sections of each, and add the 24/7 media coverage and we feel confident that our observation of “America the Beautiful” turning into “Amerika the Bountiful” is not too far off the mark.

A colleague here in the middle of the tri-city of D2FW between Highland village and Copper Canyon Road at Briarwood Retreat Center (Lutheran) says, “Amerika is going to the dogs.” She added that she’s learning “kennel kayre”! The pervasive self-critique that we have encountered since we breached the friendly skies of United is mixed with a sense of almost giddy humor that is often in short supply among compatriots in the Midwest plains and eastern shores.

Two daughters of our Dallas hosts (Filipino retired print shop operator and his spouse who worked as a department store customer service associate) in the public school system, with a lawyer brother engaged in adverse chemical impact litigations, a hospital medic in-law newly minted from UT med school, and a public school teacher in-law, are unanimous in their judgment that America is at a crossroad; important decisions are in the offing and their generation have to struggle with and wrestle down one in the coming months. It is their generation that has to make decisions because just electing new faces in political offices is not going to do the job, and the extreme critical nature of the situation is not going away anytime soon. This assumption of responsibility is a bright side. Would it not be nice to see this attitude among the young in the CNMI?

Now, a few downsides. We delight in coming to the U.S. since we get to look petite. We look bloated in China in XXL Zhongguo size. In bountiful Amerika, restaurant portion for one is enough to feed a Chinese family of four. Numerous “all-you-can-eat” places are sending the standard American size off the bathroom scale.

No complaint here since my younger brother’s medium and large shirt sizes that no longer fit him just suit me fine. The food table in each of my hosts was plentiful. A Hawaii nephew ballooned back to off-the-rack size when encountering pressure under duress from university education. My Bay area daughter is alarmed at the petroleum-based coloring in the food she’s been serving her two male tots for their alleged carcinogenic influence and anxiety mixes with her digestive metabolism.

One of the current eatery craze attracting American taste buds is the Gaucho Brazilian steakhouse. We went to a suburban one in the outskirt of Chicago. For a flat price, one chews all the meat one can eat as waiters bring them to one’s table in skewers—pork, beef, lamb, etc., until one can no longer burp. A college classmate took us to one three hours after a Filipino picnic already filled us up with adobo, bistek, and lechon. At the GB steakhouse, I stuck to the salad bar and feasted on asparagus and artichokes. I did not know where my friends still had room for meat.

Housing is another sector we noticed. Hawaii has many house owners limping on their second mortgages made attractive and available before the bubble burst. My daughters rent three bedroom units each, one in a townhouse on the foothills of Oakland CA, and the other, a house west off O’Hare airport in Illinois. My daughters barely make middle middle class, but the rates they pay are outrageously high, unaffordable to the general public, and unsustainable in every respect—energy consumption, transport, water, yard work, etc. The tragedy is that China is aping this unsustainable lifestyle in its 10 major cities, driving a deep wedge between the masses and the nouveau riche, much to the chagrin of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. The same situation applies on Saipan with pockets of abundance in Papago, Capital Hill, ridge and mountaintop housing, as compared to San Antonio, CK, Susupe, and Oleai squalor, but no one seems to mind.

Dallas’ highways reveal a deep dependence on oil and cars like the rest of the automobile-centered settlements in the country. The interchanges are towering mazes, and though attempts at rapid transit of rails and buses are tried, the choice and display of unnecessary motorized power and ostentatious luxury vehicles go unchecked.

In the current political milieu, a few are crying out that corporations are persons, and money spent on politics is free speech. Mover and shaker Wall Street remains hollow but paramount and Main Street bears the cost. That and the outsiders who buy U.S. Treasury bonds who “now have us by the balls.”

We jumped at Russia’s Vladimir Putin for saying that “America is living beyond its means” but lucid Americans are seeing a country on a spending binge before the advent of a financial collapse. We already are deep in debt with our credit cards, and the nation’s credit rating has just been downgraded. The world cries out for a basket of currencies rather than a singular dollar as the basis of global exchange. Meanwhile, we live in bounty; obesity stalks the South and lower income folks wallow in despair. We might be in for a radical shock when the illusion of a well of abundance suddenly shatters and actually dries up. I think it will; I wish to be proven wrong. Hardheaded numbers say, we won’t!

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[I] Vergara is a regular contributor to the [/I]Saipan Tribune’[I]s Opinion Section[/I]