Moving from the United States to the United Kingdom has not administered much culture shock. The differences between my life here and my life in the US are not much bigger than the differences I found moving within the US. One complaint I have is that it is impossible to purchase a working clothes dryer. Sure, all the better for the environment that I have to use a drying rack or, now that the weather is turning pleasant, a clothes line. The main drawback is that I now have to iron every shirt and pair of pants. Pair of trousers, that is. (Pants here are underpants there.)
With this weekend's laundry finally dry tonight, I settled into ironing in front of the telly and found the British version of COPS on BBC1, whereupon I realized that my immunity to culture shock is probably less to due with the similarities between the countries than with my social insulation. I was never an extrovert, and being a father to a small child keeps me isolated from civilized society. It is fitting, then, that jilting culture shifts occur when I watch TV. If I had been ironing my pants in front of the FOX network's COPS, I would have enjoyed a virtual ride-along where police officers, sweaty from triumphant pursuit and grass-stained from pinning the perpitrator to the ground with knees and forearms, compete for breathless understatement, "He's not too happy to be in custody now, but he'll thank us tomorrow." Instead I pressed my trousers watching the BBC's show CCTV (short for closed circuit television). Here the police officers observe the streets through a myriad security cameras; a pack of young thugs beating a commuter waiting for the bus with their fists and feet are admonished through an attached loudspeaker, "You are being recorded. Police have been dispatched." Sure enough, the youths scatter and the foot police are directed by radio to the worst offender. They didn't show whether the foot police threw him to the ground as the cuffed him or whether they administered him a stern talking-to. You can guess as well as I can.
This funny difference between the implicitly sanctioned omnipotence of American police and the implicitly sanctioned omniscience of British police got me thinking about the ubiquity of video and electronic tracking. I've been growing increasingly uncomfortable with the disappearance of anonymity in daily life. I have no intention of doing something for which I might later appear in court. Nevertheless, I don't like the idea that if I use a credit card at a pub, someone will have an indelible record of how many pints I drank. Just take my money and quench my thirst! I don't want the City of London or the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey to know when and how often I've driven in or out of the city limits. Just take my toll and fix the roads! I don't want any neural networks perusing my literary purchases over the last decade with the ostensible purpose of making further recommendations. Just sell me ideas and let me think in peace!
It would be reassuring if the problem were with me: I am just aging into a cranky, paranoid geezer. However, I do not think you could park a Mini Cooper in the room between the Bush II administration and a government without any checks and balances. Do I feel better in the UK? No. Britain is hardly better. Bushy-eyebrowed Gordon Brown looks like a man who thinks he knows, better than us, what is good for us.
It's all enough to make you want to soil your pants. No, trousers. No. Pants.