Visions of America - it's all about them!

Like many other areas, crime has a racial aspect. Many blacks and Hispanics languish in jail. The racial issues featured in the SBS program set in a US prison - with warring groups of Italians, blacks, Hispanics and yes, white Aryans or Nazis - are based largely on fact. The US has both the largest number of men in prison of any country, and the largest proportion in prison. It’s a sad waste of human life.

America has long lost the battle between public good and private greed. There seem to be few champions of the public interest against the power of the almighty dollar.

Health is dominated by the big drug companies. In Brazil, the government is mass-producing drugs to help in the battle against HIV-AIDS. That could never happen in the US, where the drug companies are king.

Gun control is another issue in which the gun lobby has too much power over Congress for the public-interest advocates to succeed. When I was in Washington I asked about having a swim. And I was told, “Sure, as long as you belong to a private club. The public pools don’t open till Memorial Day” (late May). I suppose we Australians are used to having a swim free of charge on any beach on any day of the year. But it was just another example of money buying you better quality of life and better health.

Food

American food is … not really food, most of the time. And the food is designed to make you gain 10 pounds at a sitting (remember that Americans prefer pounds to kilograms, because a man of 300 pounds couldn’t understand kilograms). There are all kinds of hideous American foods. Hamburgers that seemed closely related to sawdust. Plates loaded up with beans, and fries with everything except ice cream. Even the health fanatics I met thought this was real food.

Sweets - my God, the Americans have a sweet tooth. And they pour on the sugar in one dish after another. Even their beer tastes sweet, or rather not the bitter smack in the mouth we are used to. Loads of coffee, bacon and pancakes drowning in syrup - that’s breakfast. What a healthy start to the day!

Tips

Americans seem to use Haitian taxi-drivers, Hispanic labourers, and waiters from all over. They pay the waiters about US$4 an hour. The rest of their wages comes from you, the poor sucker who has survived eating the awful food mentioned above. How much do you tip? It’s never enough. Your cab driver got lost, drives all over the countryside, and doesn’t have change from US$50. But he still wants his tip or he will curse you loudly. In Australia we try (I said try) to pay people properly. We don’t expect them to beg.

Guns

Most Australians simply can’t understand why the US tolerates guns to such an extent that school and college shootings seem endemic. I was in Washington DC just after the shooting at Virginia Tech. People were anxious and visibly concerned about it. But everyone had a different solution: ban guns, make it harder to get a gun licence, bring in restrictions on handguns, screen schools, cut out violent TV.

And the National Rifle Association apparently said that if every child had been armed, the massacre wouldn’t have happened. Just another massacre in America. Nothing will change.

For many ordinary people, being American means supporting the military. I was lucky (?) to have a holiday in Fort Lauderdale at the time of the 60th annual McDonalds Air Show in May.

For three days the beach was dive-bombed by jets screaming across the sky. These included Stealth Bombers, costing $1.2 billion each, according to Airshow military intelligence. The beach was stormed by Marines and there were huge demonstrations of what US military hardware and personnel can do.

Three million people - they said- were on the beach watching these shenanigans, sponsored by McDonalds (main sponsor) and many others sponsors including Australian wines. It was all done to “salute America’s heroes”.