What It Means To Be An American

An eye-opening antidote from an objective observation:

"Americans live in a state of ignorant, prelapsarian bliss. Because of that, it can be very relaxing to go to America and watch them. If you go to America and look at Americans in their natural habitat: the theme park, the shopping mall, the race riot, the high school massacre, and you watch them walking around looking at colours and shapes. And lights and words. Sometimes imagining what the words might mean... It's very relaxing. It's like watching carp in a pond in a stately home. Their mouths opening and closing. It's charming. But you mustn't hate the Americans. They're not naturally curious. Most Americans do not own passports. They're not naturally curious. If you were to lock an American for years in an empty underground bunker, which contained nothing except a woolly tea cosy, the American would not even be curious enough to be tempted to see if the tea cosy would make a serviceable hat. They're far more likely to arrest the tea cosy, intern it illegally in Guantanamo Bay, and then repeatedly anally rape it until it admits that it was actually a member of an al-Qaeda training cell. Even though at the time of the offence, the tea cosy was working as a shop assistant in a branch of Currys in Wolverhampton." - Stewart Lee

pre·lap·sar·i·an

/ˌprēlapˈse(ə)rēən/

adjective

THEOLOGYliterary

1. 1.

   characteristic of the time before the Fall of Man; innocent and unspoiled.

   "a prelapsarian Eden of astonishing plenitude"

Melting Press

--Joe