America the enigma

I used to live here. I spent 7 years in this country, studying, working (legally lol) and seeing as much as possible. 

Yet I'll never truly understand it. I don't think anyone can, from the casual tourist to the politician who stands on the stump and says they know what's right for "these United States". 

The place is too big, too complex, too dynamic, too powerful for any one human brain to conceive. One is almost tempted to cope with the size of the place by thinking that as soon as you leave somewhere you need to forget that it exists, or there won't be any room in your head for the new place.

When you leave a place here, it certainly seems to forget about you. Time and again I notice how much things have changed since I lived here, or even since the last time I visited. To come back to a place and see how it has got on perfectly well without you is very humbling. It must be like what coming back from the dead must be like. Or being a ghost. "There are all those living people getting on with the things that define them as living people. How on Earth can they do that without me?"

It's one reason to reject the idea that we come back from the dead, or that there are ghosts walking the night in torment about the life we wasted - it would be too cruel to see what everyone's been up to while you've been gone. Maybe that's why so many ghosts in ghost stories are unhappy - they see that everyone else is having such a good time without them!

Yet progress this place does, and in so many different directions. It's hard to pick one you see, with 300 million individuals each encouraged to have their own say (even guaranteed the right to have it!) and with so many saying so much to so many more, there's a lot of noise to contend with.

And yet they still try to listen. 

They still try to make sense of the guff that the leaders they have set before them. This guff differs only from that dished out by leaders in other countries in degree rather than kind - and the fact that the leaders of THIS country have control of the largest arsenal of nasty weapons in the history of the world. For the chance to wield that kind of power, there are many who would do just about anything. They come from all sides of the political spectrum, so there are no outright saints or sinners. But the know how to manipulate, or they learn it quickly. They know that the majority of the population of this country can indeed be whipped up into a frenzy to one side of the political divide or the other, and they work hard to do it. They work even harder to get the less volatile section of the population to at least care enough to get emotional as well. Anything will do. To be a liar is purely a means to the end of the greater cause - gaining power.

They are no different to other political types except, as I've said, for the extent of the power they will ultimately wield. No-one's hands are clean.

I didn't mean to end up there. I suppose the freshness of observing the latest US election from the ringside seat has brought a lot of this to mind. The emotion of victory and defeat are still vivid images in my mind - from the huge rallies to the frankly insane blog posts on the Fox News website. 

But this is an emotional, Apollonian country a lot of the time  - a wonderful combination that defies Nietzche. Hearts are not so much worn on sleeves but as accessories with matching purse or cuff links. So much is on the surface here, which serves as a rich counterpoint to the fact that so much of importance is probably hidden. But to speculate about that would be dangerous and presumptuous of me, not to mention tiresome.

For the visitor like myself, who is enjoying the hospitality and goodness of so many people, it is enough to say that this trip, like so many others I've made here, makes me realise the value of the friends I've made here over the last 20 years or so. And perhaps that is enough. After all, Alistair Cook spent a lifetime trying to unravel events in the USA and to understand its people and processes and look what happened to him! I'm not sure I'd want my spare body parts being ferried all around New Jersey without my knowledge.

No doubt the next time I come back, haunting this place like the spirit of an ancient family retainer, I'll notice the changes that have happened without me. I'll also notice the love and friendship of the people I know here and how that never seems to change. 

And yes, Virginia, that really IS enough.