Dear America vs. Asia

And Dear Expat,

Why complain so much? Sure there are real issues wrong with one country or another, but instead of worrying about poverty and human rights violations and organ harvesting the biggest complaints are over being ripped off two bucks by a taxi driver. You who have a job only because of where you come from and make ten times more money than the locals; poor you who get the wrong food ordered at the restaurant and they don’t give free refills. Such a tragedy that it isn’t exactly like the country you left. How dare a nation of billions not accommodate you. Of course, we all have our own special and unique priorities.

There is something to be said of the foreigner’s objectivity. Fresh eyes can see flaws in the culture the programed masses perhaps cannot. You may make some good points when it comes to the hygiene, for example. Or then again you may just be perpetuating programming if you never admit the home country’s flaws either…

I mean, everyone in the world is crazy in one way or another. Nowhere is perfect, and for that matter some places are far more imperfect than others. But wouldn’t it be great if world-travel brought about the promise of being open-minded? If we could see the world and grow the better for it? Experience some other points of views and all come together as a human race.

Instead it often does the opposite. Retreat back into the old culture, complain, and reinforce the old stereotypes and programings all the more. Hang out with everyone who speaks your language and complain and complain and complain.

Still fun though.

If not unfortunate.

So let us be objective, if such a thing exists. Imagine if you will, being one of these expats. Perhaps, say, in China. And imagine not going back to the home country of… let’s say America and let’s say not being there for two years. What do you think?

My friends, forgive me for being so trite and pretentions and sixteen year-old melodramticy to say it, but am I tired of America? Has the opposing small-mindedness taken over me, am I over the American dream and content to never return?

When I came to LAX and my friends drove me down the 405 to Long Beach, it was as if I never left. No reverse-culture shock, not even nostalgia exactly. Just everything exactly as it was. To be sure, it was a wonderful gift of life to see my friends and family, from Long Beach to Echo Park to Hollywood to Indianapolis to Cincinnati to Berkeley to San Francisco… but the geography just doesn’t impress me anymore… the background noise is uninteresting… and I dare say I like Shenzhen better.

Over LA, over spending money, over California beaches. Sick of everyone around me having the same accent and lack of dynamic construction and clean streets. No language challenge, minimal street food, and having to drive a car to get anywhere. I will never be over my friends, but I can be over a lot of other things.

Next time, you visit me in China ok?

----------------------

Some fun facts juxtaposing China vs. America!

(and I do like the US of A, just look and see)

-What is similar about Hong Kong and the East LA Echo Park/Silverlake area:
Being in an English-speaking country and being the white minority, being able to get by but still most people around me speak another language… sometimes in the world its Spanish sometimes in the world its Cantonese…

-What I like about the states in general:
Vegetarian food! Respect of vegetarianism and no restaurant arguments over meat!

-What I like Southern California specifically:
Mexican food, the Mexican culture’s gift to the planet Earth and absolutely the greatest food in the history of the world.

-What I like about Northern California:
Pizza’s pretty good. And, it’s so easy to by entheogenic mushrooms at that Golden Gate park…

-What I don’t like about the states:
Being asked if I’m gay all the time.

-What I do like about the states:
Not having to see shitting babies everywhere.

-What is similar about Long Beach and Guangdong Province:
Ah, to live in the center of the world. Now, downtown Long Beach appears to me to be the central of Southern California. This metropolitan locale has a plethora of bus convergance like no other: Long Beach Transit, OCTA, LA Metro – busses and the LA subway system, and even Torrance.

And that’s nice, and I do indeed dig gay-bar hopping and taking public transit to all manner of Southern California delight. Thank you Long Beach, I can go from Compton to Huntington Beach.

But on the bigger macrocosmic scale, there’s Shenzhen and there’s Guangdong Province. The economic center of the biggest province of the most populated country in the world set to take over said world. All the crap in your house was probably made somewhere nearby. Shenzhen Special Economic Zone boasts convenient travel distance from ancient city Guangzhou to glorious Hong Kong, and Dong’guan where the factories that make all that crap are, and even another touristy economic zone next to a former colony ala Zhuhai and Macau.

There’s Cally surfer accent, and then there’s Cantonese dialect.

There’s Hollywood movies and there’s Hong Kong cult cinema.

I mean, sure, California is like Guangdong, and they’re both hot and they’re both great.

Each has a special place in my heart and I’m blessed to have lived in both, but I can’t live everywhere.

So, faced with opportunities galore, which one would you choose in the end…?

Ray's China, Ray's Shenzhen

Sino-American Relations, or How to break up with your Chinese girlfriend

You’ve been dating for months, and you’re a bit worried about being a cliché. You see it everywhere, at the mall, on the street: sub-par average white guy holding hands with the cute young Chinese girl. Common enough these days, but here it brings an entirely different connotation than it did back home. It’s not really cool or progressive, its more … “loser Western guy can’t get girl in home country so he comes to Asia.”

Still, you’re happy enough, but not without a certain distance that comes with such an intimate cross-cultural exchange. Oh, she speaks well enough English, and you can talk about movies and pop music and hang out at the bar. But she’s not big on conversation. She doesn’t like hanging out with your friends, and she prefers to sing those Taiwanese songs at the KTV and you’re just not good enough at Chinese to join in.

At first, the lack of introspective conversations is a relief. You never have to feel guilty for forgetting and anniversary, and that “where is our relationship going?” speech never comes. She doesn’t introduce you to her parents, even when they’re visiting. And yet somehow, there’s an anxiety. It’s not that you particularly want to go through the awkwardness of having dinner with her parents and practicing your broken Chinese as they practice their broken English. But … you’d like to asked. You’d make up an excuse not to go, of course, but you’d just like to be asked.

And there was just one fight, and all of a sudden she stops returning your calls. Not even a text message. Maybe you saw this coming for a long time, but you’re surprised at how very depressed you get. It’s not a good feeling to be disliked.

You finally confront her, and tell her she can’t ignore you like this. You go to her apartment, and you have that uncomfortable conversation. She’d rather you just leave, but you need this. Because back where you’re from, they call this closure.

And you see her from time to time, and you’re civil, and you smile, and you miss her, but you know it’s over. You hate to bitch and moan, but you’re from a therapy-ridden culture, and so your friends console you. Your hip Westernized Chinese friend tells you, “Chinese girls just want to try the foreigner guy, and when they’re finished they want to go back simple Chinese life.” Your cynical American friend who’s been through it before tells you, “Chinese girls aren’t as sentimental. They’ll just forget about you one day.”

You go to the bar, and you look at girls, maybe aim higher for a fellow foreigner girl you can get along better with, and you chalk it up to experience, and you get over it. It’s a cycle that you go through in life from time to time, but now you’ve done it in China.

You wonder if we’ll ever reconcile these subtle differences between China and the West. You wonder if we can ever truly understand each other. Will we always be destined to meet halfway, have fun, but only glaze the surface? We can get along just great, but will we ever truly connect? Well, one supposes this question can go for the whole mixed up world, but today you’re asking it in China …

the album should have been called “Chinese Bureaucracy"

Do the Chinese visa hustle. It's the latest craze. And when you live in the nightclub that is Shenzhen, you got to learn the steps quick. Lately I've become an expert in this dance . . .

First you go to Hong Kong to get a Category L permission slip, then you stand in line at the LouHu port and fill out arrival/departure cards, and it helps if you memorize your passport number.

When I first arrived here in the People's Republic I mailed my passport to the travel agency in San Francisco via my company sponsorship, and they did all the work. But thirty days later I was unfortunately informed that my time was already up. So I had to start shuffling my feet. My Canadian neighbor hooked me up with the agency she prefers, down in nearby pseudo-sovereign Hong Kong, and since then I've done it all myself. The school didn't do a thing but reimburse me the 1500 HK Dollars weeks later on payday. Such are the hazards unlicensed English teaching.

I got a six month, two entry, thirty day duration of stay. With the bureaucratic ripples of the Beijing Olympics still trickling, it's hard to stay in the country indefinitely. Though the rules change every few months, unpredictably but hopefully more lax each time. But for me and my lack of a work visa - being paid under the table without declaration to the mainland Chinese government - the overnight visas us Americans can get wasn't the best of deals. It says six months, but if I wish to stay in the mainland the entire time it's really only two, because a six-month pass only works in thirty day durations, and two entries was the maximum at the time.

I must stay overnight, take the train back, wait in customs lines, and two months later do it all over again. Cut to last week, my sixty days up: I learned the rules had been slightly changed. Americans can now get six months with multiple entries, meaning that although I have entertain the hassle of bouncing from the mainland to pseudo-abroad Hong Kong every thirty days, I can purchase just this one visa for the whole six months.

But there was another option, a new dance riff to jump to. One can also go to the local immigration office to apply for an extension on one's duration of stay. Best to stretch this out, and apply for another twenty days. And this too first requires registration at the DongXiao police station as a foreign resident before applying elsewhere. Armed with paperwork procured by a kind Chinese friend, I took off work on Monday the 29th to hitch a taxi up to my district's police station. Filled out more paperwork, mercifully the forms in English, lied about my employment, and they stamped my 2 X 2 photo. I was now officially in the system.

Step eighteen: at the government office near the iconic Di Wang Da Sha building - Shenzhen's tallest structure - I took a number and waited. And waited. And when they finally called up "F08" the English-speaking office worker told me . . . presently they will not do extensions for Americans. The rules might change in the future, but they just don't do that right now. You'll have to go to Hong Kong tomorrow and get a new visa.

At least I planned for this contingency. Pushing this to the ultimate last minute, the HK travel agency would be open on the 30th and 31st but closed on New Years day. So I called off work once again and made the old tourist trek to busy Nathan Road in touristy Kowloon. With little sleep and lots of waiting, RNB Travels took my money for the urgent one-day clearance, and all that was left was to wait for the next afternoon. I made sure to take a receipt.

New Year's Eve, the day representing the closing of the year of 2008 by way of Gregorian A.D., not the Chinese New Year yet though. And in what I hope is not prescient of next year's patterns, this day was defined by further bureaucratic fumbling. It turned out that my passport expires in five-and-one-half months. Therefore I couldn't get the six month multiple-entry. I could only get a three month two-entry.

I recall ten years back when I was sixteen, and I ordered this passport from the Post Office in the suburbs of Cincinnati. In the years since I've earned stamps from Ben Gurion, Kansai, London Gatwick, and Hong Kong International. These decorated pages will be gone soon. A more sentimental man might be nostalgic. But I have more cynical things to worry about, because just my luck, the passport had to expire while I was already living abroad.

So while I'm safely in my SZ apartment today, having arrived just in time to party at midnight last Wednesday, I know I have to get this taken care of in the next few weeks. The American consulate was closed in Hong Kong that New Year's Eve, and while there isn't one in Shenzhen the next town over of Guangzhou has an American flag raised somewhere high. The sixty day counter is ticking.

I can only hope the school will reimburse me this many times over. While other foreigners with teaching degrees get to relax comfortably, as their schools take care of the work visas - Category Fs I believe - I'll still have to do this all myself. It's not very professional. But it's all worth it to continue the experience life here in China; and the bureaucratic dance is just another part of the culture to study. Hope I can keep up the pace.

China Cultural Review: How do you say "Bah Humbug" in Chinese?

Here in this land of minimal Christian influence . . . with few white Europeans, a Christian migrant population is almost nil, a and government interference heeds religious expression in the public sphere.

And yet, in the spirit of neo-capitalist progressiveness, never is there a shortage of Santa Claus-esque marketing. Global Economic Crisis or not, the spirit of Christian Consumerism fills the shopping malls and department stores - with sales, gimmicks, and children begging for toys. Completely void of respect for Jesus’ birth, the bright red colors of the Coca Cola approved Saint Nick abounds the freeways and shop walls, with holiday muzak tunes classy restaurants, fake Christmas trees where palm trees grow, and even cardboard cut-outs of snowmen in a city that has never seen snow.

I could be speaking of Southern California in the above, but this is Christmas time in Shenzhen, China. The Spring Festival and Chinese New Year approach, but in an attempt to modernize, and, of course, get people to buy shit, here I witness some strange facsimile of a Western Christmas celebration, in the very city that all those ‘Made in China’ toys are made in.

It all seems so unnecessary. An expat American foreigner in China might have expected to be spared of this annual ritual, but that would have been naïve. It doesn’t matter if anybody goes to church, just like the States, it only matters that we buy presents. While more about souvenirs and cheap DVDs than a big turkey dinner with your family, the unnecessary caroling by primary school children rings somehow hollow. “We wis yoo a mewwy Kissmass!” in broken English accent. The missionaries here must wonder: how saved are these souls?

But its not all homesick Holiday cheer here; there are still at least two clear differences remaining between a Christmas in Los Angeles and Shen Dan in Shenzhen. One: without a politically correct media and substantial Jewish population, we are spared the required “Happy Holidays” over “Merry Christmas.” There is no knowledge of Hanukkah in this town. No Menorah next to the reindeer ads. No scrounging for Hanukkah symbols in the name of equal time. Difference Number Two: Most regrettable of all, I still have to work on Christmas day. Yet, for a Jew familiar with the old-time tradition of eating Chinese food on December 25th when everything else is closed, it’s not so bad.

Ah well, the Chinese love to buy and receive gifts, and yet another cultural export amongst the hip hop videos and Hollywood movies is as good an opportunity as any. It always comes down to globalization in Shenzhen, and this bootlegged holiday is only one of many Western infiltrations into ancient Middle Kingdom culture. As long as it doesn’t detract too much from the domestic flavor of local flair, there are worse fates than Cathay. So off I go, to search the malls of Mixx City, bargain for knockoff namebrands in Dongman, dig for electronics in HuaQiangBei, and haggle down the yuan for that scarf on sale at the streetcorner on Buxin Road, and if anyone asks what Santa Claus has to do with Jesus, well, you should’ve known better than to not have expected that question. It’s not just that secular American holiday anymore, it’s a global shop day. Mewwy Kissmass.

China Cultural Review: the Cathays, Pornography, and Bootleg DVDs

China, like any land worth being written about, is a land of contradiction. Simultaneously utterly conservative and yet rushing into modernization, the dinosauric Communist authority waddles far behind the rapid economic development. Somewhere in-between lies the social evolution of the average Middle Kingdom citizen.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the "Special Economic Zone" that began this headlong rush into neo-capitalist moderndom: Hong Kong's experimental sister-city Shenzhen. Founded by the great reformer Deng Xiaoping less than thirty years ago, the Southernmost city boasts a highest per-capita income than Beijing. A city where everyone is from somewhere else, here to make money, and quite a younger demographic. And they like to get off.

As any media analyst of the internet will tell you, as good a benchmark as any of a culture's shifts in attitudes is pornography.

How is media-sexuality represented in Shenzhen? Unlike nearby Hong Kong, with its still British western attitude and laws, there are no Penthouses for sale in the liquor stores of Shenzhen. There are few sex shops, admittedly, but they require immense digging to uncover. No "classy" Hustler Store. No hipster porn scene to shop at with your girlfriend. No erotica section of the bookstore, no backroom of the family video store.

Still, the oldest profession is barely obfuscated beneath the shadiest of massage parlors. Though most of them quite legitimate - the Chinese do like their spas - there is an obvious subtext to the ones with skimpy outfitted girls in shoddy neighborhoods. But prostitution and hand-jobs are not the subject of this writing.

A culture is as defined by its media as it is by its call girls. Yet China has some ways to go before they have a homegrown media of their own to be proud of. Hong Kong cinema aside, and the occasional internationally renowned mainland film by Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige, the bloody history of this post-Communist nation has stilted the growth of an adequate film/tv/pornography industry.

Hence bootleg DVDs' immense popularity. On every street corner you will find openly sold in flat paper cases: Hollywood blockbusters still in theaters, American B-movies never released in the States, every season of your favorite show, Hong Kong action stars on display, and Japanese anime for the kids; all burnt at home, the studios not making a dime in residuals, and purchase at your own risk because it might not even play when you get home. But this is no problem when several movies over costs ten to thirty yuan, amounting to only a handful of dollars.

This neo-Capitalist attitude of movies on demand, legality be damned, certainly extends to porno as well as the mainstream. Purely for research purposes, this writer felt it necessary to purchase these street-corner illicets. The stack of boxes might innocent at first, but give the seller a second look and he may show you the secret stash underneath.

A random set of discs was purchased, the title in unreadable Chinese. Cute cartoon girls on the cover. Upon going home and inserting into the laptop, it was discovered that for only ten yuan - one dollar something - two discs were in possession a total of eight hours of hardcore animated pornography. Each film with completely random language selections; some with homemade Chinese subtitles, some even English dubbed and bootlegged from the American exports, and most only in untranslated Japanese. This other Asian culture, homegrown and unique, is known for their strange fetishes, and violent sexual images of school girls and dungeons and fantasy and tentacles and animated penises were all presented before the modest 14 inch laptop. Suffice to say, while perhaps not turned on, one can be very morbidly fascinated by these things.

And here in Shenzhen it is against the law to sell such. But, in the spirit of capitalism and modernism, the Chinese do not care. Powered by the dynamic spirit of human freedom, and the still-evolving media technologies of cheap DVD burning, the modern Chinese youth have broken free of past conditionings by society and state, and have joined the global culture. The globalist dream, extending to America's famous export of Hollywood, and Japanese porn as well.

God and HK

God really wants me to hate Hong Kong.

God doesn't care if I like mainland China or not. There have been no direct affairs into my life. Sometimes I have minor good luck, sometimes bad, but little happens that is interesting.

As the mainstream Christian/Western theology of Augustine states, God created this world and then let us alone. He doesn't care. He lets it be.

And this is why I don't care to write about Shenzhen. There is no divinity, good or bad. It just is.

Occasionally though, forces in the universe intervene, and you fall in love or have a rotten day or win money or get your shit stolen. Good or bad, you sense the supernatural.

That's why I like to travel. That's when I sense something. At home, wherever I happen to call "home" at the time" nothing ever happens.

So: fuck Shenzhen. Damn my life of walking to work and entertaining small children and minor drama. Oh, I could write about the mainland. I could write and write. About the slightly interesting people around me, the white and Asian alike. The Chinese work ethic than I can't live up to (the teachers here work far more hours for far less money and I don't know how they do it). The babies peeing in the streets like dogs. The beautiful smog. The lack of ADD diagnosis - a good thing - as all these loud brats here would be surely hooked on ritalin back in the dreary States. The vagueness of my curriculum. The mustering of energy.

And the evolution of the world, as predicted by Neal Stephenson (but sadly without the romantic flairs of an anarchic post-governmental structure, most likely) - our future as "Hi-Tech Third World." You know that's how it will be in America, and I assure its closer than ever here.

To those in the know: I swear I live in a bloody burbclave!

And yet there's a freedom here in not carrying my ID, my papers, never ever been carded by bars or by authorities; as opposed to communist America.

The lack of free media. The lack of porn. (As thoroughly documented and proven by the internet, all subsequent information technologies from Gutenberg up are to come with an exponential increase in pornographics. Yet the statist government blocks this natural progression) No porn here, and yet still those seedy massage parlors...

I need to get my own computer already, and do that proxy server thing I've heard about.

Anyways

God really wants me to hate Hong Kong.

But, I flatly refuse.

I came off the train way too early in the morning, after waiting in line at customs and buying expensive train ticket-cards. Hong Kong is basically its own country you see, with money to exchange and declaration lines to wade through. Its pricey there, in Hong Kong dollars.

So then I stepped out into the East Tsim Sha Tsui station, armed with tourist map and printed directions to the underground visa shop where I was to pay the Indian guy and get to stay in the country longer, and it was raining so bad.

Terrible downpour. The worst I'd experienced in years. This is tsunami land, and I'll probably experience worse yet soon, but dammit I was spoiled by California weather all those years.

I was drenched immediately. Rain like this is worse than being submerged fully clothed. Its sticky. It won't end. I'm fragile, I don't like.

So I had to buy an umbrella. Then I went to the Chungking Mansions and went to the travel company where you get to buy visas. There's something strange about it, but that's how it works if you live in Cathay and you're not from there.

Its Hong Kong, such diverse and international flair, and I waited in line behind the Africans and Hindis and Canadians. I like international towns. Again, Hong Kong is so different than the mainland.

And then it turned out that I didn't bring enough money. I was several hundred Hong Kong dollars short. And this was after exchanging every cent (yuan) I own. Apparently American passports are the priciest of all. I don't think being born in Israel helps either. And though its a six month visa, its only two months entry and I have to leave at least once a month, and that means every two months I have to do this all over again.

I had to go to a payphone, in the rain, and call my "boss" person. I didn't even know how to call long distance, I had to figure this all out asking random people. People speak English there though. So different. And, armed with no working cell phone here, I had to call a friend of a friend to borrow five hundred HK dollars from. Meet at a trainstop at 5:00 - hours and hours later - with no phone and hope it works out.

To do this visa thing you have to stay overnight. You pay extra just to get in processed in one day. I mean, I couldn't even go back and forth if I wanted to but I had to get in by the next day. Thankfully, Indian dude was nice and let me pay partial. They say because of the Beijing Olympics it was even worse a few months ago, but I hope they make the rules easier soon. What's the harm in just letting me stay in your damn country?

Soaking wet and stressed from the bureaucracy, I now had six hours to kill. Fun times. I know no one in this city. I'm almost totally broke. Ah yes, and I mean that with no sarcasm, its a good feeling and it was the time to explore.

Fed by cheap Indian food, with the rain mercifully having let up, I wandered. I took out my tourist map and train cartograph and scribbled places of recommended spots. I epically window shopped at Nathan Road. I looked outside the museums, and found a public library (a public library! They don't have those in the communist mainland), and I peed and read magazines and checked my email.

I found Avenue of the Stars. Its a bootleg Hollywood starwalk, but actually nice. With a statue glorious of Bruce Lee; and starprints of such Hong Kong cinema stars as Wong Kar-Wai, Jet Li, and Jackie Chan. I think I may have recognized more names than the outdated 1940s stars on the LA Boulevard.

Kowloon park where the junkies bug you and the birds are beautiful. Harbor City mall where everything is far too expensive for me to have a chance of buying anything. Took the train to the other side, Central HK island, found North Point. And many other places that I can neither pronounce nor recall how to spell.

I love Asian cities. They're so ridiculously huge. While the biggest thing in America is probably Times Square, compact crowds to drive you mad, a proper Asian city seems to have dozens of Times Squares. I can only speak for Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Osaka, but none of those are even the biggest cities of their respective countries. Everywhere is a downtown, multistory, gleaming lights, rotting future. I like this cyberpunk science fiction landscape.

Hong Kong is an amazing country. As said, its basically its own country. Sorta China, not Britain anymore, its own thing with its own money and travel rules. Ethnically diverse, helpful to English speakers, but still weird and Asian. I can eat food. I'm not stared at as the only white guy (or at least, less so). And a diversity of landscapes: mountains and beaches and inlands.

I say this everytime I visit a new city, and I always mean it, but I really want to move here. Its so expensive though. But how did all these other people make it? Like, how does that guy from New Jersey working at the fast food place afford rent and travel? I need sponsorship, or something. I need an in.

And so at 5:00 I went to the last stop of that line at Chai Wan or somesuch, and met this lady and borrowed money. I get paid on Monday and have much to de-lend. Then I went all the way north to Tai Po market to meet at the couchsurfing.com pad I was to stay at. I played some video games up there, searched the new area, met some Austrian chicks that were also staying, ate junk food and so on.

Next day was shorter. I had a good couchsurf, wrote a review, and parted ways with the other travellers, and made my way back to East Tsim Sha Tsui. I paid and I made it. Another near miss for Ray. But it always works out. Who knows how close to deportation I was. It would have sucked, because all my stuff is back at the apartment. Ahhh... these minor adventures... like that time waiting in line in Israel to make sure I wouldn't be drafted just for being there, and when I forgot my passport but they still let me out of Mexico, and when that British guy yelled at me at Heathrow for having a ripped up passport and said he didn't have to let me in (I still have that same passport, but I've glued it since then).

The bureaucracy isn't over yet. I didn't get a receipt. I am a special kind of idiot, although this, unlike the weather and the economy, can only be blamed on me and not God. So I've emailed and called back and forth to get a scanned jpg version of receipt, and I might get reimbursed, but I still have much stuff to work out.

And then I caught a cold. No doubt from the rain I wasn't used to. Last night I had the worst sleep ever. I couldn't breathe. All night in a cold sweat half-awake with interrupted fever dreams. I felt like that scene in Trainspotting. Should be a fun weekend now.

Oh yes. And the voting. I must say there is a part of me that's glad I'm not in America and not forced to be a news junkie. Doesn't seem real. Well, good for Obama. There's not much I feel inclined to say. He's a lesser evil but he's no Messiah. I'm not comfortable with it. But whatever, much has been written already.

I wish my land the best, but I just hope America can stay cynical. Its our greatest cultural strength.

I mean, if we can't hate the President, than just what's the point?

So... America and all that... but I'm not there...