SWEEPING GENERALIZATIONS GO BOTH WAYS
I remember sitting in a sports bar in Brooklyn four days after Al-Qaeda attacked New York and Washington, D.C. I had been in New York to attend a screening of my film at an independent film festival and was trapped in the gloomy aftermath of September 11, unable to return home. The person with whom I was talking at this bar was a fellow filmmaker, a gentleman from Texas, who in no uncertain terms said that we should bomb the fuckers (that would be anyone in Afghanistan) off the face of the earth.

In the 17 months since 9/11, I've been spared the rantings of reactionary fuckwits who feel that the Middle East or any place that sounds like it's in the Middle East should be wiped clean of its brown-people vermin. I live in San Francisco, which is not kind to ignorant judgments of this sort. But occasionally, I am reminded that the great heartland [let the sweeping generalizations begin], basically any non-metropolitan area between the Mississippi River and the Rockies (with some notable exclusions and exceptions), is home to the profoundly retarded people who elected that asshole, George Bush.

The next time I am in conversation with someone who feels we should bomb the Middle East to smithereens, I will gladly accept their proposal, on one condition: the U.S. military, to pay for all the lives it destroys in faraway lands, must heavily bomb the midwest, the corn belt, the sun belt, and the great plains. All fat, undereducated honkies who litigate against McDonalds must go. All trashy spicks and darkies who squat in these forsaken lands must be interned without notice and made to ply steel or weave clothes or solder computer parts without pay. All the great citadels of antediluvian social policy (which is more noble a title than places like Omaha and Butte deserve) must be reft of their local, state, and federal aid. The powers of the east and west coasts must starve the almighty heartland, robbing it of critical resources to support its reliance on awful Hollywood movies, sterile supermalls, Denny's, IHOP, ass-widening internet access, K-Mart, and anything else on the inexhaustible list of subhuman vices stuck to every refrigerator from Salt Lake City to Nashville. We, the intelligent people who mourn the state of the nation, will erect great, impassable walls and block hicks, rednecks, christian conservatives, and pimply-faced, greasy-haired, Dharma-&-Greg-watching grammar-school dropouts (particularly if they are non-brown people of voting age) from using their airports, and we, the intelligent people, will fly over these forlorn twats' wasteland and be glad that we don't have to hear another fucking word out of them. After all, if we want new open fields and rolling plains, new bodies to count among our vast American plurality, we can invade Canada and Mexico -- in about a weekend -- and start all over.