Counter Programming

Blog readers, being the socially conscious, politically active, intemperate partisan wingnut hacks that we are, are probably thinking mostly about tonight's debate between Joe Biden and That Other Person, the one with the boobies.

But we already know how that's going to go, don't we? She's going to come out a-blazin' with all kinds of deeply drilled-in facts, look shockingly competent in short sound-bites in the way only beauty queen/sportscaster/governor ladies can, stick to the script (since the format is not what you'd call free-wheeling), declare victory and depart the field.

Meanwhile Joe Biden, under the immense strain not to come off like a condescending prick, in a fit of misdirected frustration, punches Gwen Ifill in the face.

I know it's cheap blogging to basically repeat the conventional wisdom, but there it is.

As a service to you, I would like to, alternately, touch on something other than the VP debate and instead warn you, dear readers, about the false allure of that geopolitical hussy, Scandinavia.

Sure, it SEEMS like the place to go. Physically, it's thousands of miles of unspoiled coastlines, spectacular harbors, vast sub-Arctic highlands teeming with majestic reindeer herds and charming-yet-modern cities glowing with an intoxicating combination of brawny, global-information-age dynamism and measured Old World permanence.

Socially, we've all heard about their world-standard socialized medical system, remarkably stable, benign coalition governments, legal tolerance bordering on enthusiasm for recreational drug use and the unparalleled non-invasive religious freedom to be absolutely any kind of Lutheran you want.

Anything you want to do, you can do in Scandinavia, so long as "what you want to do" between, say, September and June is cross-country skiing.

And still? They have Bikini Teams.

Scandinavia is so known for its freedoms, it's the recognized world leader in gender reassignment surgery. In the land around the Arctic Circle, there is so much freedom, even your paired XX or XY chromosomes aren't allowed to tell you what to do.

Just know, however, that it isn't all what it seems.

Nobody wants to talk about the dark side of Scandinavia. The physical isolation, the difficulty in integrating any outsider in such a genetically pure society... nobody wants to talk about those things. If you look just under the surface, you'll see the secrets lurking in the shadows. The cabalistic ritual gluttony of the smörgåsbord, the deep shame of a universally impenetrable accent, the epidemic rates of crippling fjord addiction, the pleasure hunting of kindergarten children for sport...

Oh, I'm sorry. Had you not heard about that last one? Turns out it's actually 100% true. They even practice it on the internet, the same way gang members in this country, as we all know, practice gang violence playing Grand Theft Auto. The Finns only took that game down AFTER someone went and actually shot up a school.

So you see, they really do have shame. In that respect at least, we can infer that they don't compare favorably to Amsterdam.

What the fetishization of school violence shows us, though, is that in the end, Scandinavia has a little bit of America in it, not that far from the surface. And we didn't even have to look that hard to find it.

Even if John McCain wins, then, it's OK to stay here. I know, you're thinking, "What about Thailand?" That's an issue for another post.