The Lies They Tell

by Tuvia Tenenbom

  Next to Peggy is a Jewish lady by the name of Judy. Judy tells me that she works for peace between people and that she fights prejudice against any group whatsoever. Judy also thinks that Jews are racist. But this is not a prejudice. Why not? “I was in Israel and I saw there that all the street sweepers in Israel are Ethiopian and that Jews treat Arabs very, very badly.” The church lady is learning a lot today about Jews!

  Outside the temple I meet a nice gay guy – he tells me he is gay, not that I asked him – and he tells me that the Jews got it all wrong. “I don’t know what kind of metrics they are using, but their conclusions are not correct.” Blacks in Minnesota are doing fine.

  Not just fine; they are doing great. “The biggest Somali settlement in the world after Somalia is Minneapolis.”

  This is a piece of interesting news. After all the racism that I’ve seen so far, I now discover that it all stops at the borders of the state of Minnesota.

  Minneapolis is Saint Paul’s “twin city,” and I think that I should spend some time with the Somalis, to witness firsthand the diversity abundant there.

  I register at the Sheraton Midtown – that’s midtown Minneapolis – where I get a nice room, and then go for a walk in the neighborhood. Everywhere I look I see black ladies with hijabs, the Muslim headgear, and assume that they are the famous Somalis. Diversity at its best!

  • • •

  I walk the streets, enjoying the sight of diversity, when suddenly my eyes catch an interesting shop: Koscielski’s Guns & Ammo. To enter I ring a bell and wait for those inside to let me in, hoping that they will.

  They do.

  There are some interesting signs in this shop. For example: “Are you going to listen to me in English?” “I have to speak to you in 12-gauge?” “Keep your hands out of your pockets at all times.”

  Austria is well represented here by an impressive selection of Glock handguns. I look at them on display and the man behind the counter, a Somali, asks if I would like a Glock.

  I ask the salesperson if I can buy a weapon or two right here and now. I want to walk out of this store with some guns, I tell him.

  It depends, he tells me. If I want a handgun or an “assault” rifle, I’d need a license, but if I want a shotgun or a rifle that is not “military assault” I could get it on the spot.

  Are you telling me, I ask him, that I can walk out of this shop right now with a shotgun without anybody doing a police check on me? You know, just to make sure that I’m not a robber, a rapist or a serial killer?

  The salesperson is not really sure now and he asks a man sitting on the other side of the shop if this is indeed the case. The man, O’Neal, who’s the owner of Koscielski’s Guns & Ammo, says that if I can prove that I’m a resident of the state for at least ninety days, then yes, I could get a shotgun or a rifle of the non-assault kind right away. What’s non-assault? Guns that use no magazines.

  And then O’Neal, with his loaded handgun, walks in my direction. He asks me what I really want. This O’Neal ain’t no stupid. He smells a rotten fish and he wants to stand closer to that fish, me.

  Having no other choice, I tell him that I’m writing about America and that I am interested in people of all professions, and that’s why I’m here.

  “What are you doing in this neighborhood?” he asks. “Where you are now, this street, is a neutral territory. Right and left of this street are gang areas, and they are killing each other whenever they like.”

  Somalis are also gang members?

  “They are human, just like the rest of the people,” the Somali intervenes.

  They kill each other for what? I ask O’Neal.

  “It’s dickheads killing dickheads,” he says, speaking of blacks.

  O’Neal, for the record, is black.

  “You take care of yourself around here,” he tells me.

  What’s the problem? Somalis don’t like fat white men?

  “They see you, they know you are not part of either gang, and that you are not from here. You are like a sore thumb: immediately recognizable.”

  Blacks are killing blacks and “diversity” is a word not found in the local dictionary.

  O’Neal takes out his loaded gun and, just like the “Founding Father” Andrea did, he hands it to me. What for? In case I would like to have a picture of myself with his gun.

  O’Neal was wounded in Vietnam when a bullet entered his back and came out of his torso. He shows me the spot where the bullet came out. The scar is still there.

  As I’m about to leave his shop he gives me a gift, a stainless-steel folding knife. It’s of the heavy kind, a knife not meant to cut bread or apples. I am in midtown Minneapolis and O’Neal wants me to get out of here alive.

  His gesture touches me.

  • • •

  Armed with my heavy knife, perfect for stabbing humans, I go to my hotel. Sitting at my desk, I gather my thoughts. Why are blacks killing blacks? I ask myself. Why are they so cruel to one another?

  I think of Greg and of his Harley-Davidson. I shoot him an email, asking how many Harley people had come to his father’s funeral.

  He answers: “There were forty-six bikes for the funeral procession. I was deeply moved by the generosity.”

  If only the black community cared for one another like the Harleys. But they don’t. It’s a “dickheads killing dickheads” mentality and, as Jay from Detroit’s Red Zone put it: “Always like this with black people. They shootin’ each other.”

  I came to this state looking for culture, and so far I got a knife.

  • • •

  I want to see culture, right here in Minneapolis, come hell or high water. In the evening I go to the local theater powerhouse, the Guthrie Theater. Unlike the big theaters in New York, most of which are commercial undertakings, the Guthrie is a leading “regional” theater, a class of theaters that are supposed to be about culture and not commerce.

  The Guthrie is an impressive theater even before you enter its doors. It’s big. It’s awesome. It’s a shrine. It’s awe-inspiring. In short: it’s everything you would expect a highly cultural institution to look. Eye candy, as the Harleys would say. I feel inspired. You can even get a good cup of hot coffee here, to make sure your energy level is high for the theater you’re about to see. The show this evening is called Stage Kiss. I don’t know what it’s about, but I’ll soon see.

  I enter the theater and go to my seat, hoping for greatness. Stage Kiss, lasting for over two hours with an intermission, is masterfully acted, especially by its lead, Stacia Rice.

  What is it about? The short answer is, nothing. The long answer: you wouldn’t care. This play is more about acting than a real story line. It has a gay character, like almost any other modern American show; it doesn’t offend anybody and does not even mention the word politics. It employs many stage tricks that make you laugh quite often and offers a great dose of escapism.

  Message? Forget it. Culture? Don’t even mention such a word here. Ideas? That’s another dirty word. Art? Not here. Entertainment? Two hours of it.

  The Guthrie is not the sole American theater that chooses to be brain-dead. No. New York is full of them. But regional theaters, unlike Broadway, are not-for-profit organizations, ever soliciting tax-deductible donations from every man and woman whose contact information is known to them, in the name of culture and art. If the Guthrie has any ideological agenda, it is this: deactivate all thinking cells in the brains of every American who passes through its gates.

  I leave the theater and smoke a little cigarette outside, looking at the people coming out.

  Not a single black.

  The Guthrie, according to its PR machinery, is for all people, whatever their ethnic background. From what I see, the Guthrie is about laughs, melting pots and boiling coffees.

  I stick around for another day in Minneapolis, and I even go to the Mall of America, which has more yearly visitors than Disney World, but I buy nothing.

  While in Germany I was told that th
e second language spoken in North Dakota is German. I want to see this for myself.

  Tomorrow I’ll drive to North Dakota.

  Gate Nine

  “Climate change” means Palestinian rights

  THE NEXT DAY I REACH FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA’S CULTURAL CAPITAL. UPON arrival I read in Valley News Live:

  In North Dakota, a new electronic cigarette law prohibits minors from using, possessing, or purchasing electronic smoking devices, alternative nicotine products, or any of their component parts, and requires child-resistant packaging for liquid nicotine containers.

  Gun rights have also expanded. Concealed carry permit holders can bring a gun to liquor stores, public rest areas, and public parks.

  In short: fewer cigarettes, more guns.

  Doesn’t make much sense to me, but not much in Germany makes sense to me either. Big deal.

  Jason, one of the first people I meet in Fargo, is an environmental activist who cares a lot about climate change. He defines himself to me thusly: “I am pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-environment, pro-Palestine.”

  Sadly, he can’t say this in German.

  Moments later I meet another young man, Luke. He calls himself liberal, tells me that he is pro-gay marriage, pro-choice and pro-environment, which to him means that climate change is man-made.

  Are you also pro-Palestine?

  “Yes, I am. How did you know?”

  He doesn’t speak German either, but his set of beliefs is Germanic.

  Let me say something here. If you had asked me before my travels in America if Americans knew about issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I’d have said to you: No way.

  Well, the little I knew.

  I look for the famed German-speakers here, but they are perhaps hiding. The liberals here, if you care to know, don’t hide. The young, at least, the ones known as millennials (those born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s), love the light of the sun and would rather not hide. These millennials, I think, also love the idea of being more “liberal” than their parents and are happy to share their newfound left-love with strangers.

  In general, North Dakota is a red state, conservative (Republican), but Fargo is “bluish” (leaning Democratic), especially its younger population. This is, at least, what I’m told by the locals.

  I walk around, looking for some cultural events, but can’t find any impressive ones.

  And so I go looking for the true-blooded North Dakotans. State senator Tim Flakoll is having soup at the Würst Bier Hall in downtown Fargo, and he is getting ready to consume a nice-looking sausage on a plate next to his bowl of soup when I show up.

  Würst Bier Hall. That’s German! At least that.

  What does it mean to be a North Dakotan? I ask him, in English, just as he’s about to put a spoonful of soup into his mouth. He puts the spoon down and he thinks. A man’s gotta think before he answers such a deep question.

  After giving it some thought he says: “I think that North Dakotans are not easily described, but I think that one of the things you’d notice about North Dakotans, no matter where you come from, is that they care about the people around them, about their community, and everything else. And it’s genuine!”

  That’s nice.

  • • •

  North Dakota’s real capital is Bismarck. If I understand correctly, the city was named Bismarck almost 150 years ago in honor of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the man who unified a bunch of territories into one country that today we call Germany.

  They might not speak German here, but they are big on German roots.

  I drive to Bismarck.

  Driving is the ultimate American experience. In the American states I have visited so far, excluding New York, I noticed that public transportation is chiefly for the poor, mostly blacks and Spanish. The train system in most of the states is either nonexistent or useless, and this renders the car, the private car, the main transportation tool. With time, you can get attached to your car. I’m not totally there yet, but I suspect that my white companion Malibu feels a bit close to me.

  With these thoughts in my head I reach the capitol building in Bismarck.

  The North Dakota capitol building looks like an office building, though not a very modern office building. There’s nothing spectacular in its design, and it reminds me of a big parking garage in Brooklyn.

  It’s not nice to say, I know.

  In any case, I’m here because I want to meet Wayne Stenehjem, North Dakota’s attorney general. Wayne is Norwegian by descent and he’s damn proud of it. The ones who founded this state, he proudly tells me, were Norwegians. The Germans say that their ancestors founded this state, but oh boy: they are wrong!

  I raise no objection and we move on to talk about justice, crime and other juicy morsels.

  Aggravated assaults went down last year, he tells me, but the “areas we are very concerned about are drug arrests.” In 2009 there were 2,063 drug arrests, but last year the figure went up to four thousand.

  “The kind of offenses we are seeing now are much more complex,” he says, and the quantities of drugs offered on the street are much higher. Drug pushers come from “the drug cartels in Mexico and form the motorcycle gangs.” This increase is related to the oil boom in North Dakota, which resulted in more people having more money to spend. In addition, the boom added to the male population and now men far outnumber women, hence the state has seen an increase in prostitution.

  Basic math, I’d say.

  There’s also a rise in gang activity in North Dakota, due to an influx of gangs from other states. “We see a huge gang increase in eastern North Dakota,” he tells me.

  Wayne presents me with some interesting crime statistics: while robberies are up, aggravated assaults are down.

  I don’t get it. For both of these statistics to be correct, robbers must be kissing and hugging you while they rob you at gunpoint.

  I ask him to explain it to me. “Aggravated assault is a different offense,” he says. I guess these statistics were issued by the PR department of the State of North Dakota. Only PR people can come up with such logic.

  Tomorrow I’ll try to see the real people behind the numbers: the prisoners.

  As for the remainder of the day, I walk the streets of Bismarck until evening and pay close attention to the flags, to see if they follow the flag rules I learned on Mackinac Island, Michigan.

  They do. The flags are up and they are lit.

  Back in Chicago, the Jewish community sat in session and decided not to decide about the Iran deal. Meantime, the two senators that the CUFI people tried to meet in DC have just announced their decisions: Senator Chuck Schumer will vote against the deal and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand will vote for it.

  I go to my hotel, the Radisson. I spread on the sofa and turn on the TV.

  The first Republican presidential debate is being broadcast live on Fox News. It is an important event in this country, I can tell, as every news media discusses it in minute detail. To many of them it’s also about how Donald Trump will perform in a debate setting.

  What is more interesting, at least to me, is how the candidates eagerly mention their faith in God and in Jesus. And their support for Israel. American support for Israel, financial or otherwise, is one of the issues that these candidates agree on. This is something one will never hear in any election debate in any European country of our day.

  One of the senators, Ted Cruz, even declares that he will move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem if he’s elected. I have heard this from him before in a private setting in New York, but now he says it to the rest of America.

  According to the BBC, the number of people watching this debate is twenty-four million, “a record for a primary contest.”

  • • •

  Morning comes and I drive to the state’s penitentiary. It is a long process to get in, not to mention to get the permission to get in, but finally I’m inside.

  First, I meet a nice blond lad
y, Leann Bertsch, the director of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DOCR). She gives me some numbers. Cost per inmate per year: $39,000. Recidivism rate: 39 percent.

  She is a proud German, by the way – an American of German descent, that is.

  Shortly she will fly overseas to study how other countries deal with crime and justice. “We incarcerate more people in the United States than the Europeans do; we are much more punitive in this nation,” she says.

  Why?

  “History and culture. It’s kind of a whole history. There was some precedent, probably started in the eighties, to get tough on crime, and a lot of money was given to states to really get punitive. We are locking up a lot of people who could be safe in our community, too. In our women’s prison, I always say, you could probably release 80 percent of them and not blink an eye; you’ll feel just as safe. We are over-incarcerating people.”

  I thank her, and I start my tour of this prison, a male prison. Walking the corridors of the prison requires earplugs. There are so many doors before I reach the cells, and each iron door makes a deafening sound before an operator opens it, both when it is opening and when closing behind me.

  Over half of the prisoners, I’m told while walking, work in the prison. Scale of salaries: lowest paying job is $1.55 a day, highest is $10.00 a day.

  A dollar fifty-five a day. Who are they kidding?

  Time to meet the people. First I meet two prisoners, a white guy and a Native American. What have you done that brought you here? I ask the white guy, who is doing his three-and-a-half-year jail time here.

  “Ask me a different question,” he answers.

  I rephrase the question: What have they accused you of?

  “DUI [driving under the influence of alcohol].”

  That’s it?

  “And escape.”

  Escape from…?

  “Jail.”

  The other guy, the Native American, says he is here because of “terrorizing and escape.”

  Terrorizing who?

  “My cousin.”

  Both say that they have pleaded guilty.