1KYAE

“There is no nation here… there never was. Not in hundreds of years. Someone claimed it of course, at one time, but they’re long gone. Whether killed by force, whether killed by the transmission of disease deep into the continent, decades faster than the explorers could cut their swathes in, without each other, both blut and boden disappear into the ether. Blut died first, alcohol and smallpox polluting its veins until boden followed, leaving an empty wasteland stretching onto the horizon. By that time, it was too late for empty land. God always intended the world to have certain boundaries and now we’re left with an aberration, a habitable land untouched by a people to own it, something that should never have existed this late into our lifespan. It’s sick, a sequence break against the plans forward. I guess it’s his fault. He never intended the protestants to work over that well, Mammon to realize the power of their state-organs and economic circulations. Tradewinds carried them over, from all corners, depositing the peoples of Africa, Asia, Europe, India, anywhere on Earth, onto the empty soil of the continent that should never have been. But a nation? None of these so-called states are nations. Nations come from people, growing like trees, emerging over millennia. This is an outpost that outlived the marching army it was built for, a squatter camp for the diaspora of the O & T map. None of these are a nation.”

“The American Dollar? Of course, what a great invention! But the country itself? I wouldn’t dare. Not that I don’t know it well, I own several properties there, my grandfather was even born there! I still own his house, rented out as it is, it was quite beautiful in his day, three stories, on the California coast. Have you been? I was, once, when I was a child. It’s a beautiful land, but there’s just nothing there, y’know? I feel like I’m in a warehouse. Touring all these empty buildings, giant stores piled high with goods, sometimes overflowing, toys and games spilling out into the street off the shelves! It’s a land of plenty, that’s for sure, not that any of it’s worth anything. But still, quite a bit there. It means something for me I suppose, I bank in USD, and selling to them, it certainly means I’m never in want of that currency. Exchange rates are always fair, no matter what I transfer it into.”

“Natural beauty… don’t fuck me around. This river’s full of gasoline. These trees’ll be gone before too long, they’re replanted and cut every twenty years or thereabouts. The environmentalists make ‘em do it on cycles, so we don’t realize it. But this isn’t a forest, it’s the slowest growing plantation in history. One stop from here to the paper mill. We got animals though, don’t worry about wildlife. We got plenty of ‘em. Fish in the lake, deer in the bushes, I’ve killed thousands in my day. Sell fish by the truckload, $3.99 when I buy it back twenty steps ‘round the supply chain. Great racket I got goin’! But nah, nothing about wildlife. Don’t fuck me around on that. There’s nothin’ wild around here. Not for a long time. S’all just dirt and mud, someone’s shitty little backyard, just ‘cause it’s a thousand acres doesn’t make it any more wild than the blacktop.”