Uncle Sam’s broken promise

After driving my parents insane with worry for twenty-three years with my impulsive dare-devil antics, I spent my first few months in this country roaming the streets of New york city till long after midnight ---simply because I could!

After four years of trying to understand the nuances and enjoying the benefits of this newfound personal freedom, my mind still does a little jig when the temperature is a soaring 90 degrees and I can walk out in a comfortable pair of shorts and T-shirt without being penalized for my choice of clothes or point out to my boss why he is wrong without having my paycheck delayed. Only now I take it with a pinch of salt, knowing that while the US is a land where you can, for the most part, do whatever the hell you please, it is more because the ACLU can plead your case than because a majority of Americans agree with what you do.

The ACLU and my favorite Real Time host are my two remaining hopes for America to live up to what I saw from my rose-tinted glasses through Warner Brothers and Penguin books in tenth grade and decided that this was the place to be. I think I have mentioned Bill Maher on my blog about 25 times in 2 months. But he’s the only one I can see and hear who seems to be protesting in any effective way, this country’s going to the gutters and the least I can do is “spread the gospel” (with due apologies to the heretic at my choice of words).

The thing about Maher is you end up admiring him for his views, his philosophy, his guts and yet the reason you love him is cos he makes you laugh so uproariously while putting them “out there”. The man can talk continuously for an hour and a half---without a commercial break--- make you laugh for about 99% of the time and still convey more wisdom than anyone else ever has on television.

While I was on the verge of insanity with Bill being on his awfully long hiatus, he came up with his HBO special. I am swiss, is what he called it; it’s so Bill, cos God forbid, he doesn’t belong here in this land of religiously fanatical people who spend hours lamenting about a piece of stone outside the Alabama State Judicial building, a couple words in the pledge of allegiance or voters who decide elections based on “men kissing men” as Bill himself puts it.

But thank my lucky stars he is. Thanks to him, I know at least a tiny little part of America is what I expected it to be, what I dreamed it to be, what I fantasized it to be. No offense, I love this country and I know I get more here than I could ever dream of in India or in any other country in the world; it’s just that I am only getting half of what I had bargained for. My life is unaffected; I am as yet neither gay nor in need of an abortion or suffering from a life threatening illness that would need stem cell research at its heights, but even looking at all of it from the outside makes me really, really mad.

Hearing Bill talk about all the things that bug him about this country and its policies struck a kind of familiar chord in the back of my mind. Naah, I am not trying to weasel into that league up, up above where Maher belongs, where I have as yet not been able to admit any other human being.

But I have sat at a bar, at a round table or on a couch with a half dozen Indians time and time again and tried to tell them what I think is wrong with India and its belief system and been treated to looks of absolute incredulity and open-mouthed shock. I am an out and out liberal at heart; I don’t have a problem with gay marriage, I don’t believe in religion (of any kind) and I certainly don’t believe that some kid should be brought into this world and made to suffer because you thought it was a crime to kill it when it was in the womb. I would even go as far as legislating marijuana, euthanasia and suicide if I were given a choice. I really, in the true sense of the word do not believe in a right or wrong, and I think that ANYthing in this world can be justified as long as you want it enough and it does not “physically” affect anyone else. Yeah, I don’t understand the concept of laws being made based on “emotional” damage because they can’t be measured. If you’re writing it on paper and putting it in a file folder that can be touched, make sure what goes in it is tangible as well. This emotional garbage is the root of problems like capital punishment and the fight against euthanasia. Besides, anything can cause emotional damage---from playing the music too loudly to statutory rape. What I cannot understand is that after nearly four million years of evolution, I am still in the minority. How long is it going to take the most powerful country in the world to believe that a chemical reaction that can be reproduced in a test tube is more convincing than an unknown entity building the sun, the moon, the earth and Adam and Eve in seven magical days?

While Americans still battle with the idea of gay marriage it has been happening in at least five countries without inhibition and while you can lose a job here for smoking marijuana, in the Netherlands it might well be soda. In the land of the free, presidents would not get impeached for having extramarital affairs and players would not be penalized for trying to build up their muscles.

So when Bill says emphatically “don’t legislate your tastes” or that “religion is a neurological disorder” it is tempting to speculate how different this country could have been if it were not tainted by the lofty, impractical ideals that religion imposes. Let’s face it, as wonderfully as only Maher can put it, America is being ruled by a book that says man lived up to 400 years and that you are to be put to death if you worked on a Sunday.

Since all the other ingredients are already in place, would it be too hard to put religion on a back seat and rule the country on the principles of reason rather than faith, thus putting me back on track with the “Kane and Abel” and “All the president’s men” that I idolized as a teenager?

[I HAVE to mention this ---I’m tempted to pledge allegiance to Switzerland since my two biggest living heros are now Swiss---Bill of course, and the only other human being I have mentioned more times on my weblog :)---and oh, the chocolates and cheese wouldn't hurt...]