It seems that mere moments after I left Barcelona it was engulfed in a stream of violence over its proposed vote to separate from Spain. I’d like to believe that the city was essentially mourning my departure (“Don’t cry for me, Catalonia…”) but even I admit that’s a bit of a stretch. The truth is the Bloodbath in Barcelona (what a phrase!) has been a long time coming.
While I was there, the city celebrated Catalan Day with yellow pomp and green enthusiasm. Only now, in the shadow of the recent vote, can I see why so many people were aggressive about celebrating that day. Given the way the Spanish government closed down polling booths and shot rubber bullets at people, it’s hard not to feel sympathy with the separatists. Whoever was managing the crisis in the Spanish government seemed to have been taught at the Despotic Academy of our Lady of Crazy. The idea that the Catalonia region considers itself a different entity from the rest of Spain was pervasive in every aspect of life: every exhibit, museum, attraction, leaflet, guidebook, placard and landmark I saw was careful to stress its Catalonian roots. It was an overt assertion, and reminded me not a little of the way the Quebecoise consider themselves different to the rest of Canada.
Quebec, too, went through a period of intense activity around separation and independence and it too had a referendum on whether it should leave. When I lived in Montreal, everything from the way French was spoken here to the way politics was taught served to underline how Quebec was its own fiefdom. Fair enough. Provinces with distinct and pervasive cultures do usually act like mini-countries (I’m looking at you, Punjab, you fat drama queen). But the only thing I couldn’t wrap my mind around – in Montreal and in Barcelona – was that if you were really so independent as to be your own country then you should also be OK with severing your ties with the national currency. It makes no sense to demand independence without being financially independent too. It’s weird and wrong-headed, like if a young adult who throws a tantrum and moves out of her parents’ house but keeps insisting that they continue to pay for rent/food/everything. (Come to think of it, Catalonia is acting like a lot of Pakistanis I know...) In the words of Cuba Gooding Jr: Barcelona, show me the money!
The Gun Lobby has convinced Americans without jobs or healthcare that owning a gun is the equivalent of being "free"
The week I got back to the US, several big things happened that were symbolic banner-statements about the current American way of life. The first was that Hugh Hefner, famed publisher of Playboy magazine, had finally kicked the bunny bucket at the age of 91 (no doubt to the relief of parents who name their daughters after semi precious stones). He has been lauded as a sex rights activist by half the world while the other half has called him out for being a glorified pimp who made money off women’s bodies. I’m not going to foray into this rabbit hole, but I will say that Playboy Magazine carried some of the best long-form journalism in the seventies and eightes (it’s amazing what money can buy) and so, weirdly, a lot of men were being truthful when they said they bought Playboy for the articles.
The second event is vastly more tragic, and announces itself as a distinctly American phenomenon: a public shooting massacre at a music festival in Vegas. This one is also “the worst in American history.” At least 50 people are dead and more than ten times that number are injured. But this time the outrage and impending op-eds seem to be half-hearted, mainly because this has happened so many times before and in such increasingly preventable ways that it has become painfully obvious that the Gun Lobby in America is close to untouchable. There will be a mild uptick in petitions and late-night comedy hosts bemoaning how America as an advanced developed country should be ashamed of its attitude towards guns, but this will fade within a month or so, at least until the next shooting. Now every time my white American friends bring up the state of their country I let them talk their feelings out, knowing that at the end of it they will remember Trump is president and that rather than losing steam, the Cult of Crazy is literally running their country. Trump, be reminded, is not a fluke president, a wild and inexplicable one-off thing. No, Trump is a response, a comeuppance, a deliberate consequence (or so many white Americans want us to know) of the “culture of political correctness” (that’s Republicanspeak for increased freedom). This too is a case of money. The Gun Lobby, for example, have lots of it and they use it to fund congressional campaigns and hire PR firms to convince Americans who have no jobs or healthcare that owning a gun is the equivalent of being “free.”
Hugh Heffner, recently deceased, came under fire for what was seen as objectification and demeaning use of the female body
Manhattan is thankfully fairly insulated from the rest of America, which works well for me. Everyone in New York is either mean, busy, elitist or a combination of all three, which keeps some of the madness of the rest of the country at bay. In that way, this place is like Quebec or Catalonia, a nation within a nation. Here people are confident asserting that the white gunman should be called nothing less than a terrorist. Terrorists cause Terror. The only thing I would like to add to that is that Norman, the homeless guy who has taken to peeing on the front door of my building every morning, should be added to that list. I’m happy to start a petition.
