El Paso's Greatness

El Paso’s Greatness Recognized

Today we learned that El Paso has been selected as an “All America” city! Wait a minute! Shouldn’t that be “all American city”? Has the English language changed while I was abroad? Or is this the local variety of English?

Nonetheless, continuing to speak my own dialect (after all the most frequent response I get when I open my mouth is: “you’re not from around here—are you?”….No, I do not have the local accent…)

El Paso has been awarded the label, “All American city

It’s not hard to see why.

El Paso is a mirror of all the greatness that is America:

-Mindless dogmatic Militarism:

So-called public service announcements in the buses warning young men of the punishment they will face if they do not make themselves available for the next time the ruling class decides to invade a foreign country….

And Nationalism:

Omnipresent American flags (made in China)

And Climate Criminality:

--An over-abundance of enormous trucks, and
a variety of mostly large vehicles,
with the accompanying hostility toward
pedestrians… (as someone explained
to me after I had almost been run over
by a woman carting her children somewhere in an enormous truck) ..”We don’t expect to see pedestrians….”

… and a mediocre public transit system, which has the nerve to claim it is the best in Texas….as if being the best public transport system in a region which hates public transport is some sort of achievement….
(But to be fair, the El Paso bus system did not make it up. Someone actually gave them an award. Which tells you something, namely, that nobody in their right mind should take such awards seriously…)

-a public transport system which is so inefficient and slow that it would make any sane individual immediately run out and purchase his or her own personal Self-piloted Metal and glass box, no matter what the cost.

And then there is the sheer vanity and desultory meaningless of consumerism:

We all have (or aim to have) our own personal square of dirt or cactus or grass--grass not indigenous to the area and requiring an amount of water that would make sense in Scotland…
surrounded by a fence, and guarded by one or two or more dogs…

In this way, we can contribute to the wealth of the upper class even when we are not working, by purchasing home and garden supplies on the weekends at Wal Mart.

And then there is the local cuisine:

Someone should count the number of
“convenience” food places—fast food places specializing in greasy food. I know it is greasy because whenever I walk across the parking lot of an abandoned shopping mall, whose stores are deserted, but whose outskirts are ringed by fast food stores, I can smell the horrible fatty stuff… and it is sickening…. (and I can see lines of enormous trucks waiting to pick up the food the drivers have ordered….)

And then they should count how many actual grocery stores there are… What is the ratio? Ten or twenty or more greasy food places for every one grocery store? I would really like to know…

Without actually counting, I would bet that the proportion of actual grocery stores is very low here. In my old neighborhood in the post-Socialist Bratislava, there were three fruit vendors, and three grocery stores within easy walking distance. And there were two larger grocery stores at a slightly longer walking distance. Nothing comparable exists in El Paso.
(And I won’t mention that the quality of the food here is lower than in Central Europe—the fruit and vegetables less fresh….)

In our sociological survey, we should also count
the number of churches per block. Their numbers
are certainly up there with the fast food places. We are a God-fearing nation, and, again, El Paso is representative.

Finally, there is a feature of the city that is almost invisible: the sheer amount of work done by citizens of Mexico who cross the border every day to do it. How many homes are cleaned by women coming across the border from Juarez every day? How many gardens or lawns are tended by Mexican gardeners? How well are they really paid?

In this final feature, the city of El Paso truly is American, taking advantage of a poorer country to do the work that is essential to the life of the city…so typically American in the unjustice of it all…. (I suppose the God we all worship is not a just god....)


All in all, in El Paso, Texas, we see everything that has made the USA the great country that it is.

Hence the award “All America[n] City’ is well deserved.

Congratulations El Paso! You deserve it.