Armerika

arm = poor, Amerika = America
Missing newspaper and feeling uninformed, I was easily convinced when I ran into a special deal for a newspaper subscription. So while I'm still on my 2nd free issue, I now hope to subscribe to Die Zeit, a weekly newspaper known for being rather intellectual.  So it's a challenge, but a good one!


Last week the magazine featured the article "Mein armes Amerika," with the tagline: "Armerika: A year ago our author Jana Simon moved to her dream county.  She came back shaken."  Simon had spent some time in the US earlier, but wanted to spend more time there, so she moved to L.A. with her family.  Reading the article she makes many points which point towards the downspin of the US.  Partially, this might have been due to her location; she talks about how she lived near a large homeless set-up and how the alleyways were used as bathrooms.  Her neighbors were constantly moving, she witnessed lots of social stratification, and she came to see Hollywood as a complete media creation.


Here are some excerpts:
"I see a system which forces one to make debts in order to be a full member of society [in order to have credit history].  I see Mexicans in the house across from our apartment who iron and sew from 7 in the morning to 10 at night.  I see many shops with signs on the windows that say 'we also accept food stamps.'  And heavy rain causes the electricity to go out.  Much reminds me more of a third-world country than the most powerful country on earth."
"The longer I'm in the US, in LA, the more I get the feeling that a community like I know doesn't exist any longer.  The American idea is always based on the freedoms of individuals, not on equality, not on solidarity.  That works as long as the country does well.  When it goes into a crisis, like now, the freedom principle becomes perverted.  The social consciousness is externalized to private foundations..."


Simon's article is of course biased towards her main argument, so you get examples like the poor couple who have never been out of the US and yet proclaim it to be the greatest country in the world despite their own circumstances.  Since it's mostly one-sided, I felt the need at times to defend the U.S.  Maybe L.A. is an exception, and of course it and the US are not some rich, glamour world.  High fructose corn syrup is indeed bad and in much of our food, but actually, I've found it just as prevalent in German food.


Yet it's true that there are so many people in American society who are flying under the radar and not living well.  In many ways, it's easy to avoid this and deny it or simply be immune to it because that's the way things have been.  What I appreciate about the outsider perspective in Simon's article is that it reminds me about these many problems still in American society and that they are not OK.  1/6 of Americans should not be going hungry.  These issues are things I've thought about before and I've known that the U.S. has many problems that do not correlate with its image of wealth and power.  I've also wondered how much one should make note of that when you compare the U.S. to the world at large and see just how much we do have.  I think our social values certainly need to change though and this article is a good reflection, even if I don't quite know how to respond to it.  
The end of the article mentions a sign from the Occupy movement that says "capitalism doesn't work."  "The helplessness is shattering.  I have already experienced how a system has perished [East Germany], only what should the alternative be this time?"


For German speakers, here's the link to the online article:
http://www.zeit.de/2011/44/USA-Los-Angeles
The comments are also very interesting to read.