The Lies They Tell

by Tuvia Tenenbom

  Americans elected a half black to be their president, one who talks and walks like whites. Will Americans elect a real black leader, who talks like the blacks do?

  “Do I see America electing a black president in my lifetime? No.”

  Is “diversity” just a smokescreen?

  “Absolutely. America is deeply racist.”

  If you were to define “America” in one sentence, what would it be?

  “Chris Rock described America, from a black perspective, the best I’ve ever heard it: ‘America is like the uncle who put you through college but he molested you.’ That’s how we access America. This is the best country in the world, but it molested us. It broke families apart. They sold our mothers on blocks. They raped our daughters. And we are the result of this.”

  That’s history. How would you define America now?

  “It’s not history; it’s still there. I can still be pulled over by the police, choked to death on camera, and no one would go to jail. Today. Today I can be shot to death in my church by a young white kid who sees me as a threat to his women. Today! This is America. America has not progressed.”

  I progress, driving-wise. Where to? I’m not sure, and so I drive east. Evening comes and I cross into Kansas. It’s damn cold here, and the strong winds blow at my face mercilessly. That’s a climate change.

  Gate Eighteen

  Ten thousand people come together to scream at the same time

  IT IS FOGGY THIS MORNING IN GOODLAND, KANSAS. TIME IS EIGHT IN THE morning, but my iPhone says it’s nine, because it thinks that Goodland is in a different time zone; iPhone is wrong, sorry.

  What’s new today? Today I read the Salina Journal. Nothing is new, except that “Kansas’s rate of adult obesity in 2014 was 31.3 percent.” Obviously, I’m in the right place.

  In lieu of exciting news, I read the letters to the Journal. Let me see what people in Kansas are thinking about these days. Here goes, a letter from a lady named Carolyn Underwood:

  In regard to trying to get to heaven, one can never try hard enough. Jesus made it so simple: Simply believe that Jesus is the son of God, that he died for your sins and rose again. Ask him for forgiveness and give him your life. It’s called grace.

  Let’s see if the New York Times has anything better to say. Here goes: “Scientists reported on Monday definitive signs of liquid water on the surface of present-day Mars, a finding that will fuel speculation that life, if it ever arose there, could persist to now.”

  This sounds quite interesting and it raises the questions: Does climate change affect Mars as well, and are no-smoking regulations also in effect there? Even more intriguing will be to find out if the creatures of Mars are red or blue, black or white, pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, and if they have a Jesus or Buddha of their own. Do they have Indian reservations there?

  As for me, I’d like to get in touch with the ladies of Mars. I hope that political correctness has not reached Mars yet and that I can at least look at them. I go to sleep dreaming of Martian ladies.

  • • •

  The next morning, I reach Colby. I like driving around in this state of Kansas, which is located almost exactly at the center of the United States. The landscape is very different, not the one I got used to in some other states. There are no mountains around, not a trace of them. This kind of landscape is called “prairie.”

  And Colby has a prairie museum. The very idea that there is an actual museum that calls itself Prairie Museum intrigues me, and I stop by.

  By the way, I never knew that there were so many museums in the United States. Every little town has a museum. I don’t know why. Maybe the “diverse” people are dying to find their roots.

  There are three visitors in the museum when I arrive. That’s it. Here, I guess, I will get personal attention. I approach the two ladies at the reception area. Before they start telling me all they know about prairies, I ask them a simpler question: Could you tell me, please, what are the distinguishing qualities of a Kansan?

  “A Kansan is a person who is tough, stubborn, generous, friendly and has a stick-to-it-iveness attitude,” one of the ladies says.

  Stick-to-it-iveness. I like it! Are these stick-to-it-iveness people red or blue?

  “Everybody here is Republican, except for me. My parents are Republican, my husband is a Republican, but I’m a Democrat.”

  Why?

  “Because Democrats care for the people and Republicans don’t!”

  At this, the other lady interferes: “Does the president care for the people?”

  “It’s not his fault that the government doesn’t care for people. There are too many people in government, and he can’t control them.”

  Let me understand you: if a Republican president gets nothing done it’s his fault, but if a Democratic president gets nothing done it’s somebody else’s fault. Is that so?

  “Yes.”

  Is this logic part of the Kansan stick-to-it-iveness attitude?

  “Yes!”

  Do you have children?

  “Yes.”

  Are they red or blue?

  “I don’t know.”

  Her son, twenty-nine years of age, lives nearby. I ask her: May I ask him?

  “No.”

  Isn’t it time you know what your son thinks?

  “No!”

  On to the museum.

  • • •

  This museum offers some interesting stories about the people who first lived or passed by here. Here’s one story about the Blue Brothers, who passed by here on their way to Denver, seeking gold:

  The Blue Brothers and a few others made the mistake of leaving the Platte River road for a shortcut into Denver. When Daniel and his two brothers ran out of food and water, they survived only by cannibalism. An Arapaho found Daniel, the sole survivor, and took him into his tipi to nurse the lost, starving gold seeker back to physical and mental health.

  It’s a short story that tells of a huge history – the history of America and of the early Americans. It took blood, sweat, disease, starvation, determination, imagination and an immense drive for gold to create this huge country. It wasn’t easy.

  Outside the museum’s main building stand homes from the period. For example: “The Sod House” and “The Eeller House.” You can go into these houses, which are exact replicas of the original ones, to experience them for yourself. No guide or guard walks with you, and nobody tells you what this or that object is. You have to figure it out all on your own. Which I try to do.

  I feel like I am walking back in time, a hundred or two hundred years in the past, and I discover America in a way I never thought I would: Europe. Almost everything in these houses smells, looks and feels like Old Europe.

  Yes, the people who founded this country were not from Mars. They were European. Full-blooded Europeans. I did know this before, but I had never felt it. Today I do.

  It’s time to read more. “Most immigrants,” one of the signs in the other part of the museum reads, “were American born of European descent with German heritage predominating.”

  Naturally I want to have a better “prairie” experience, and so I take my car for a drive along the dirt roads. I hope that the rental company will never find out what roads I’ve driven with this Versa.

  How does it feel to drive on these roads? Heaven! I drive in and out of fields, rarely encountering another car, but often I’m blocked by cows. I feel like a pioneer and hope that nobody will eat me.

  After an hour or two of driving aimlessly into the past I get to Castle Rock. This is a wonder of nature; in the midst of the flat surface known as Kansas is a tall rock “mountain.” By itself. A lonely rock. How did it get here? I am not sure, but I guess that this rock is a true Kansan with a stick-to-it-iveness attitude. It is here, for whatever reason, and it ain’t moving.

  The Washington Post reports that “the US has six executions scheduled over the next nine days.” Why is America still practicing this cruel punishment? Perhaps because of so
me stick-to-itiveness mentality.

  • • •

  Kansas’s largest city is Wichita, and Ms.Versa takes me there. The Foo Fighters will perform later this evening at the local Intrust Bank Arena, and I’m in the mood for a concert. What a name for an arena: Intrust Bank. Like the Cadillac theater.

  I’m not the only one looking for tunes; over ten thousand people have shown up seeking the same.

  At the appointed hour, Gary Clark Jr. and band open the concert. They are loud – and that’s all they have to offer: noise. The lyrics are indecipherable, except for a select few.

  Next time American troops invade somewhere they should bring this Gary with them. The enemies would run in fear.

  Luckily, this opening ends its loud nothingness before eight o’clock. At about eight, lights go up in the house. Nothing is happening. But the Wichita young are happy. They walk in and out with yet another Budweiser or Miller, and they are happy. How can they drink this stuff? These beers are horrible. Lights go down at 8:39 p.m.

  The Foo Fighters appear on stage and the real performance finally starts. The audience roars. The Foos are loud, louder than Gary. And they project blinding strobes into the eyes of those in the audience. The people of We the People love it. The Foos scream and their loudspeakers shake the house. If a tank passed by shooting all of us, no one would hear it.

  Occasionally this band gets inspired and it comes up with a tune or two that shows some promise – but anything good quickly fades into another scream. The words, the so-called lyrics, don’t have any particular meaning. At least not as far as my ears perceive them. The lead singer, Dave Grohl, loves to use the word fuck and gets a high screaming motherfuckers at the top of his lungs. The audience love it and they scream the word as ear-splitting as ear-splitting can be.

  This back-and-forth screaming between stage and audience soon develops into a shouting match: Who will be louder?

  Cost of tickets: thirty-five to seventy-five dollars, before buying anything to eat, drink or remember the event by. Is it worth it? To the people here, it is.

  I think I should come back to this arena when the Wichita Thunder hockey team plays here. The Intrust Bank Arena is their home base.

  Thunder. Another humble name for a sport team.

  The arena is not the only address in Wichita for concerts. Another one, quite smaller, is the Orpheum, where a Christian group, Third Day, appears on the very next night.

  I go to see them. I need music and I won’t give up.

  Third Day is not Foo Fighters. For one thing, they prefer God and Jesus to fuck and motherfucker. Additionally, each of their songs has a tune, the words are audible and there is a message. The lyrics flash above the stage, big and clear:

  “Now I’m glad. / You died upon the cross / You are my Jesus who loves me.” And glad they indeed are.

  What’s happening here is not a church service, even if it might look like one. This is a concert. Seats cost money. Average price: thirty-four dollars. The people in the audience, about twelve hundred of them, raise their hands to the Holy Spirit as they sing, and they love every moment of it. They are so happy that Jesus died on a cross! He did it for them, because he loves them. And they love to be loved. “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back,” they sing.

  In a way, what I see here is the essence of American Christianity: fun and super-narcissism. In old Christianity, of the European model, the story of Jesus is a tragic tale of God’s death on a cross – like any good old European opera. But not to these Americans; to them the story of Jesus is a story with a happy ending. He died for me! He loves me! Life’s good.

  • • •

  The Wichita Eagle reports that “a gunman opened fire inside a classroom at a rural Oregon community college Thursday, killing at least nine people before dying in a shootout with police, authorities said. One survivor said he demanded his victims state their religion before he started shooting.”

  The religion he was targeting, according to various news reports, was Christianity. He asked the students for their religion and to those who told him they were Christian, he said: “Good, because you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in just about one second,” and then shot them in the head.

  Nine people, the same number that Dylann Roof killed in the black church in Charleston, but in two days nobody will remember this shooting. Why? Because the dead here are not blacks, and no white is afraid that blacks will go rioting in the streets.

  • • •

  I get into my white Japanese and drive, mostly on scenic roads. When I spot a lone house in the prairie, in an otherwise never-ending empty landscape, I drive in. I’m curious to see how they live. But no human being shows any sign of life, only dogs. They bark, they jump around my car, dreaming of some fresh meat, and I realize that I must get out of there.

  I back up slowly, making sure I don’t drive over the dogs, when suddenly I hear a scratching sound; I must have bumped into an unseen object in the back. I continue to carefully drive out, and when I am a safe distance from the dogs I get out of the car to check if any damage has been done to the Japanese.

  Yes.

  In the olden days cars used to have steel bumpers, but those days are long gone. This Versa has no bumper, and the damage done to it will probably require replacing two major parts of the car’s exterior. Something like a hip replacement. What is this Japanese made out of? Paper? Thank heaven I have insurance.

  I drive to a nearby branch of my rental company, Enterprise, and they suggest I replace the car. They don’t have any cars available at the moment, but they say that Tulsa, Oklahoma, still has plenty of cars available. I drive there and the Tulsa people show me around their lot and say that I can take any car I want, any size, for no additional cost. They want to make me happy.

  That’s called service, an American concept. Really. This I know from my years in New York. The customer is a king.

  I scan the cars and I spot an American mini SUV, a Chevrolet Captiva, and we immediately connect. Love at first sight. Don’t ask me to explain this. There’s gay marriage, and there’s car marriage. Mine is car marriage.

  Gate Nineteen

  You can have a blast beating up Iraqis with frozen fish

  TULSA, OKLAHOMA. I AM, LO AND BEHOLD, IN THE HEART OF THE BIBLE BELT. But first things first: I need a hotel and I need food. Hopefully, downtown Tulsa has got them both.

  I’m nice to Siri – I don’t use the f word – and she directs me well. I get a hotel downtown, Courtyard by Marriot, and next to it there’s an Italian restaurant.

  The diners here strike me as well-to-do folks. If I’m not mistaken they have just come from, or are going to, a Wagner opera; I don’t know what time it is. I am directed to my table and I order coffee. Got to wake up!

  And here I want to make one point very clear: I don’t drink American coffee for pleasure. American coffee tastes like water mixed with asphalt. But, fortunately, it contains caffeine – which is why I drink it. You would think that after invading various Arab countries, Americans would have learned a little bit about coffee, but no.

  I can’t blame them for their lack of taste buds, honestly. This country started with the English, creatures known for great manners and dull palettes.

  About five minutes after I start sipping my black medicine, an older white couple walk in. Dressed in the style of the educated and the moneyed, they march to their table. They are planning to have a quiet and romantic evening at the city’s center and, understandably, they couldn’t have imagined that a man like me would change their plans.

  I do. The coffee really stinks, and I am really bored. To make a long story short, instead of eating they are talking to me. I’m a noodge. I was born that way.

  Tell me about Oklahoma, I ask them. By the expression on their faces I can tell that they are not sure if I’m a human being or a UFO. But the lady opens her mouth. Oklahoma, the lady tells me, has a very high rate of death by suicide and the highest number of women in pri
son. This sounds very reasonable to me: if a state puts its females in jail, the men are bound to be quite depressed.

  I love listening to stories like this, as they enrich the imagination cells in my brain.

  Really.

  And then both the lady and the gentleman, Nancy and Bruce, talk to me about America in general. They tell me, for example, that “we” treated the Indians very, very badly and that we are very, very sorry for it.

  Now, this gets me going. The story with the Indians, whatever it was, took place a couple of centuries ago, long before either Nancy or Bruce were conceived. How did they get the “we” into this story?

  I pose this question to them, but they see nothing wrong with the phrase. “We” means Americans.

  And you are “sorry” about it?

  Definitely, they both say.

  To illustrate to them the absurdity of it, at least from my perspective, I tell them that I am a German and that I really, really, really don’t feel bad about what “we” did to the Jews because I was not even born at that time. And, in addition, I’m very proud to be German because “we” are the only ones who treat Syrians so very nicely.

  I wish some of my German detractors – I have a number of them – had heard me say this. It would have been so much fun to watch the expressions on their faces! I look at the couple next to me and I give them a smile, one of my stupid smiles, just for the fun of it.

  They are not smiling. And to get the smile off my face, the lovely lady challenges me: “Can blacks in Germany vote in the general election? They can vote here, but can they do it in Germany?”