I texted, "OMG, this is the end of America!" She replied back in a zap: "America is the end of America." Period, no exclamation mark, just a dry and sharp period.
It made me think of an 80's Canadian movie called "The Decline of the American Empire." The film, directed by Dennys Arcand, follows a group of intellectual friends as they engage in an extended dialogue about their sexual affairs. In the movie, one of the characters releases a book titled "Idea of Happiness." The book's central thesis is that modern society's fixation on self-indulgence is indicative of its decline, predicting a collapse in the American Empire.
Walking on Atlantic City's boardwalk, the idea of the American self-indulgence seems distant. But it looked more like the day after hungover or the collapse of a dream.
I texted back: "brilliant!" And shoved my phone back into my pocket to focus only on what was in front of me. I was strangely intrigued and fearful at the same time. I asked a friend: "is this Trump country?" She grinned sheepishly while nodding yes with her head. I thought to myself: "watch out, buddy, you are a walking target here!"
Looking at the decaying neighborhood around the boardwalk made me think of my own journey. Caught up amid despair, fear of failure, and self-indulgence, I spent most of my life thinking I had no choice but to move forward. In our capitalist society, survival equals progress. Surviving means pushing further, working harder to buy more comfort and validation. It is a never-ending hamster wheel where anything is never enough and you end up wondering if it was all for nothing?
I looked at people's faces from the window as the car drove me away from Atlantic City. They looked heavy, bloated, and sweaty. All white, all pale, all very sad. The casinos demanding attention, dangling a glimpse of hope and glitz, but the party was over. Yet, somehow I felt connected with them on their disillusion.
Arriving in NYC, I was bombarded by a different type of demand. The city's landscape revealed itself just like in all the movies that shaped our imagination. Like Emerald City, glistening on the horizon, NYC welcomes you, promising excitement and opportunity. One can hear Jay Z and Alicia Keys whispering in your ears, "concrete jungle where dreams are made of, there's nothing you can't do." Empire State Of Mind seems to encapsulate the American dream – "One hand in the air for the big city, Street lights, big dreams, all lookin' pretty. No place in the world that could compare". But What they don't tell you in the movies and pop songs is that NYC is a tale of two cities. Two distinct, disconnected social and economic ecosystems, one "shining city on a hill" and another city, one where the glitter never shows. The second one has more similarities to Atlantic City than NYC would like it to admit. However, the glitzy affluent NYC's self-indulgence seems to reflect better Danny Arcand's pessimistic view of the upcoming decline and collapse. But if the Canadian director appears too high brown for some, just look around, and you can find more mundane clues that he might be right. Take a look at Page Six. Or tune in to Bravo or E!. American celebrities, reality tv stars, and social media influencers share daily snapshots of self-indulgent and decadent lifestyles explicitly designed to entertain lovers and haters.
This love and hate dynamics turned to into entertainment started long ago, and it’s at the core of this tension. Back in the early 20s, journalist Walter Winchell became famous for panning Broadway shows and writing about NYC's celebrities in a style precursor of the media coverage offered by TMZ, Page Six, and other tabloids.
A resentful unsuccessful ambitious vaudeville artist tuned into a celebrity himself, he found glory in creating his own journalistic style. Winchell broke all the rules of what was considered "good journalism," giving voice to regular people. But, of course, giving voice means that, from grammar to ethics, no rules were applied when entertaining the masses- does this sound familiar?
Winchell tapped in the tension between the resentment and fascination of the poor towards the rich and offered them a banquet of gossiping, scandal and decadence. Fast forward to today, if Arcand's thesis is correct, we can see that the writings on the wall were visible back then.
In his book "Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity," Neal Gabler tells about one night when a producer confronted Winchell, saying: "If people like to read the slang that you write and the junk you prepare, and publishers pay you for that stuff, what will happen to art, literature, and intelligence?" This happened in 1928.
This takes me back to my weekend visiting Trump county in Atlantic City, my friend's insightful text about America, and finally, my return to Emerald City. It all kind of made sense and, at the same time, brought shivers to me my spine. Good or not, this is the world we know and compared to many other places in the world, it is still a beacon of freedom and democracy. However, the very same narrative that makes us believe "that there's nothing we can't do" gets us simultaneously addicted and blinded by the limelight. Life imitated entertainment, and as a result, we ended believing in the stories created to distract us. As we lose grip of reality and our own humanity, Metaverse ironically seems the natural evolution of our society's dystopian destiny. Suddenly, I feared that it might be all too late already. We don't know what will come next, and what we see in the rest of the world is chilling. The possible failure of the American dream seems to indicate the end of our entire civilization. Our own western culture, our metaphorical American Empire, appears to be eating itself from within. It randomly reminded me of Bowie's "This is not America." It goes like this: "A little piece of you. The little peace in me. Will die."
Suppose my friend's sarcastic remark is correct. If America is the end of America, consequently, it's the end of the world as we know. As if we feasted too much and for too long on ourselves. While looking at NYC’s mesmerizing skyline, I reached to my phone inside of my pocket and texted my friend: "I miss you!"