It looks good even from the Outside. It's big. Very big. Many placed we call "America." I don't know where do you have to come from not see it. I live in Alaska, which is America too -- and Siberia doesn't seem that big anymore. All right, maybe it's because I was driving too much.
This is Pre-America, not the imaginary America, the one you have before you get here. I don't know if I can write about America, it's easier for me to talk about Pre-America and Post-America. Why? Because what you first as Pre-America is the Post-America, America-in-your-face, the most noticable, loud and flashy. America of propaganda, which here is call "advertising" -- America that selss itself. You have to get used to it. This is America of idiots and suckers. You don't have to be an American to be a sucker; as a matter of fact the whole world is a sucker for this cheap America. There is more ideology in this America than anywhere in the world or history of the world. Well, I wrote enough about it on my philosophy pages of this book. Here I want to stay extremely personal, talk about my struggle with the Pop-America, tell my love stories and my travels.
I wish I could adapt Swift' style to wright about this flat America. No, the flat one is for part II; this part is about America at the distance. The Fake America. Could I say it about Russia or France? I think I can say it even about Italy. The Fake America is something you will never have. Yes, it's all around you, you see it, you even buy it -- but you never own it, she is never yours. It's nobody's property. Why? Because it doesn't exist. It's America of TV screen, it's not there. I know it because I lived in such land before, the Soviet Union, where the communists didn't believe in communism, where Marxism was everywhere but one couldn't meet a single Marxist. Do you think a car salesman believe in what he is telling you? Do you think that the girls on the posters are smiling at you? Listen, they, the fakers simply use the icons' techniques and replaced Jesus or Mary with the members of Central Committee and models. If you do not believe in God, you should have no problems with this paradox of something which is everywhere but doesn't exist.
No, I do not say that Clinton, Gorbachev or Madonna do not exist. No, there are actual people behind the TV screen, but I know nothing about them, will never meet them -- and if I do they have nothing to do with their images. You see, the aim of the Fake America is opposite to what I try to do in this book. I write to find the essense of Anatoly, not what you want to see... In short, this Pre-America is your low desires, my friends, your lies and self-deceptions. If you really want to know America, at on the Surface, you should drop pretending...
As the most sofisticated machine of propaganda in history, America-mirrage is there every time you do not live, but pretend to be alive. Like a Devil, you don't even have to call him. Look at the chapters in Part I -- Crowds, for example. It's "mass society" -- everything is mass produced for mass consumption, mass use and mass feelings. Of course, you have them, not-yours feelings, when instead of desiring what YOU want, you want what THEY want. Top secret: not only this Pre-America doesn't exit, a lot of people do not exit most of the time...
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