As usual, once a leg of my journey is finished, I stop for a moment, pick up my notebook of "things to do and see before I die" and delete as appropriate: New York+Stephen King, New Jersey+Perth Amboy, BJ at the Giants Stadium. Only three?! There's a lot left. My impressions about the States? Contradictory. I saw the land of the TV stereotypes: yellow cabs, MacDonald's, splatter and gossip TV programs, skyscrapers, air conditioning at full blast, the super sizes of everything, the houses with the American flag in the patio and the backyard. I found some peculiarities, not to mention the oddities: people handcuffed on the street because they were drinking alcohol in public, the smoking ban 20 feet from the entrance of the buildings, preachers at every street corner and in the subways.
I found a diverse population, overall friendly and open, I was awarded the honorary citizenship of the Garden State (New Jersey) by one of his drivers, and I was given way almost anywhere, in the subway as well as on the plane.
But I also found a very frightened nation, whose perseverance in the assimilation now doesn't hold water anymore. The belief that foreigners should be grateful for being welcomed and therefore deny their origins and become deeply Americans has no rhyme nor reason anymore. And Americans have come to realize all that, though still the astonishment resists in those who can not explain the hatred and attacks perpetrated by inhabitants of this country, but whose origins generate today fear and suspicion. And clumsy attempts at reconciliation between cultures crop up, such as the final draft of a mosque near Ground Zero: the controversy raged, and there is no way of knowing if the politicians know what direction to take, or just run with the hare and hunt with the hounds: a monument to the Americans and a place of worship for Muslims -who are Americans as well. It 's time to cross the border to find out if the Canadian culture is different from that of their neighbors.
But all in all, God bless America ... whatever your God is.
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