Time To Put Away Childish Things

For a nation that calls itself the greatest country on earth, the United States has a lot of growing up to do. That is the trenchant opinion offered by Heather Mallick in today's Star, one that is likely to earn her more than her usual quotient of hate mail from the usual suspects.

Mallick's evidence is both telling and vastly amusing:

The U.S. is — how can I put this tactfully? — childish, with all the charm and menace that entails. American adults dress like kids in baseball caps, sneakers and comfy pants, but add a semi-automatic rifle to the outfit and it’s... troubling.

As well, their eating habits and table practices cry out for correction:

Their cuisine is childish too, with huge servings of fried food loaded with high-fructose corn syrup and trans fat. Even their implements are primitive. “Consider the plastic drinking straw. Why do we suck so much?” the Washington Post asked this week of citizens unable to drink from the rim of a glass.

The reason must lie in the “shared psyche” of Americans, but what could it be, the Post wondered. “Laziness? Clumsiness? Germaphobia?” Infantilism went unmentioned. The drinking straw is the adult equivalent of a sippy cup.

Even their fantasies are jejeune and conceal some unpleasant truths:

And why the Disney fetish? “Americans long for a closed society in which everything can be bought, where labourers are either hidden away or dressed up as non-humans so as not to be disconcerting. This place is called Disney World,” was the journalist Adam Gopnik’s explanation. But he is an adult.

According to Mallick, American travel also shares in this puerile quality:

The cruise industry offers daycare for grown-ups, crass all-you-can-eat vacations with all the adventure of a car seat. Have you ever been on an island and seen American tourists flood at you off a ship? It’s not the mercilessness of the crowd that scares you, it’s the smiling.

Consider as well the culturally imperialistic but infantile institution known as the American film industry:

U.S. movies are aimed at childish audiences. They are quite literally cartoons — such movie franchises are worth gold — or computer-animation with renderings of extraordinary violence that never seem real, part of the reason the Sandy Hook child slaughter had no effect on U.S. gun laws. American culture is literal, with a poor grasp of irony and complication. It would be taboo to show photos of the dead victims but not taboo to have let them be shot.

Mallick has much more to say on this topic, and she expresses gratitude that despite our proximity to the southern lumbering giant, we as Canadians seem to be far more adult in our daily endeavours. However, that is something none of us can take too much comfort in, given that Americans still wield more might than any other nation on earth.

Picture a toddler armed with a Kalashnikov, and I think you get the troubling picture.