ALTERNATE ORIGINS

In America, diversity-wise, things have been better all the time. Even after 9/11 there weren’t any outrages against American Muslims or neighborhood mosques. Americans hardly keep a religion any more, and few can even locate Afghanistan on the map.

We have untethered ourselves from the prejudice of Old World better than anyone else – mostly because we don’t know anything much about it.

Americans have almost always lived in the present – with the possible exception of the ossified Pilgrim elite. We live from fad to fad, from acquisition to acquisition; from scheme to scheme, and from scam to scam. Money talks; bullshit walks. If you xxIII

can pay, you can play. Come on in! The door is open! But, caveat emptor: You pays your money, you takes your chances. We don’t care who your father is unless he can pony up some greenbacks and put his money where his mouth is; and anyway, what has either you of he done for me lately?

We are and always have been unsophisticated, shallow, brash. An English friend shared his first impression of our country almost 50 years ago when he sniffed thusly: “You have a Nordic government but your people behave like Latins.”

He was fresh out of Oxford and could have had a career in the U.K.

Instead, he stayed here.