Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
plete the inversion, religious cults hire teams of chief executives, remove crosses from their
churches in case they send too negative a message, and rebrand worshippers as customers.
Scientists who hold that there is an infinity of different universes envisage a situation
in which anything that can happen, will happen. Somewhere in the so-called multiverse
of the astrophysicists, someone looking unnervingly like you, maybe even endowed with
your name, is at this moment reading these words, written by someone looking uncannily
like me. Perhaps there are an infinite number of such acts occurring right now. This, to be
sure, has some depressing implications. It means, for example, that there is an infinity of
Mel Gibsons and Paris Hiltons. There is also an unlimited number of Michael Jacksons,
not all of them dead. But it is not all bad news. Somewhere in the cosmos, someone look-
ing suspiciously like Bill O'Reilly is at this very moment wearing a Fidel Castro outfit
and arguing the necessity of soaking the rich. On earth, this infinity of worlds is known as
the United States. Among other marvels, it contains a world which looks just like ours but
where everything is bigger. This is known as Texas.
Whereas Jesus multiplied loaves and fishes, the United States multiplies options. No
restaurant in Britain would ask you how you liked your fried eggs, any more than they
would ask you what exotic national costume you would like your waiter to be dressed in.
Choice in the States is a paramount value. “I've made my choices” is a common American
phrase, meaning among other things that one is the author of one's own existence rather
than ignominiously shaped by circumstance. Life is a self-authoring narrative in which, un-
like Oedipus or Anna Karenina, you get to decide what happens to you. It is therefore all
the more surprising that there is so little political choice in the country. In fact, the United
States is a one-party state. There is the Democratic capitalist party and the Republican cap-
italist party. The diversity of political options hardly rivals the variety of candy bars.
Somewhere at this moment, some American, perhaps several of them in different places,
is trying to sell life insurance to a Vietnamese orphan while wearing a false red nose,
clown's flippers and a loud check suit. In the United States, anything that can be imagined,
however outlandish, has an excellent chance of existing. “I can think of it, therefore it ex-
ists” is the American version of Descartes's dictum. If you can think of making a new kind
of ice cream out of tea leaves soaked in squirrel's urine, you can be sure that someone in
the States is trying to patent it at this very moment. One can imagine a musical in which the
staff of a restaurant burst into song every time one of them is tipped, but in the States this
actually happens. The country represents a constant translation of the subjunctive (what
might happen) into the indicative (what is the case).
If there is no order in the world, and if all its parts are equal and interchangeable, then
you can will into existence any combination of these parts you like, and the act of will-
ing makes it acceptable. The United States is the kind of place where one expects to find
hairdressers selling sea food, or pastors doubling up as plumbers. In one sense, this is a
distinct improvement on Britain, where you might find yourself having to buy a flashlight
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