Banality, lack of culture, and vulgarity
do not have the same meaning here
as they have in Europe.
Or perhaps this is merely
the crazy notion of a European,
a fascination with an unreal America.
Perhaps Americans are quite simply vulgar,
and this meta-vulgarity is merely something
I have dreamed up. Who knows?
But I am inclined to suggest,
in time honored fashion,
that you have nothing to lose if I am wrong,
and everything to gain if I am right.
The fact is that a certain banality, a certain vulgarity
which seem unacceptable to us in Europe
seem more than acceptable –
even fascinating – to us here.

Why should Los Angeles not be a parody of cities?
Why should Silicon Valley not parody technology?
Why should there not be a parody of sociability,
eroticism, and drugs,
or even the (too blue!) sea
and the (too bright!) sun.
Not to mention museums and culture.
Of course all of this is parody!
If none of these values can bear to be parodied,
it must mean they no longer have any importance.

Yes, California (and America with it) is the mirror of our decadence,
But it is not decadent at all.
It is hyperreal in its vitality,
It has all the energy of the simulacrum.
‘It is the world-center of the inauthentic.’
…That is what gives it its originality and power.

It is Disneyland that is authentic here!
The cinema and TV are America’s reality!
The freeways, the Safeways, the skylines,
speed and deserts – these are America,
not the galleries, churches, and culture….

Excerpt. America by Jean Baudrillard p. 104

I read these words yesterday seated on a bench* in front the the Kane County Courthouse.  The old courthouse,  as well as the landscaping and monument-artifacts on display are meticulously maintained.  An impressive sculpture attracts the eye of the passerby; mounted on a imposing concrete pedestal it memorializes more than a few Kane County volunteers who fought in the Civil War.  On either side of the monument are two WWI vintage naval deck guns.  These are formidable weapons designed to hurl a 4.7 inch high explosive shell to eviscerate men standing on the deck of an opposing ship.  I thought of the men, perhaps several generations, trained to rapidly slam heavy shells into the breech of these guns.

One last artifact of mention: a pile of spherical cast iron shot dredged from the Mississippi River.  These projectiles were fired during the siege of Vicksburg in 1863.  The siege of Vicksburg was a blood-fest that lasted for more than 40 days, the last big battle of the war.

Yesterday I gazed around on an absolutely

paradisiacal day asking myself why we Americans fetishize our blood-soaked episodes?  Why are our implements of slaughter on display?  Even the architectural design of the courthouse resembles a fortress….

Why the emotional attraction of outbreaks of blood lust, of convulsions of immolation, of vulgar, purblind fury….?

Why not memorialize for example, a Robert Frost poem … or a plow?

*Photos all taken around my reading bench,