Word: laxer
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What might have saved this volume from its horrible insipidness would be the ability not just to gawk, but to explain, not to report, but to interpret, and interpret wisely. Laxer does not explain to the non-American world what logic goes into these depraved activities—and not because things like love of guns, desire for blood and a hankering for Big Macs are wholly irrational...
Whereas Alexis de Tocqueville, the founder of the genre of American political travelogues, revealed peculiarities both of the American nation and of the democratic system and ideals, Laxer does nothing more than rehash its overworked idiosyncrasies. Foreign literary types, humorists, and historians have worked their way across America before and have produced clever books, such as Andrei Codrescu’s Road Scholar. The wit, however, emanated from those authors’ ability to penetrate into the truly odd, to show how it was also truly American, and finally explain how the bizarre might make sense in a proper American...
...early chapters, Laxer shows every sign of breaking through this ignorance: He takes a firearm safety class in Massachusetts. Rates of private gun ownership in Canada are low enough that even this act might be viewed as radical. He listens patiently to the instructor, and he offers the obligatory commentary on the loopy bunch that signs up for these classes. Anyone who has handled a gun before, or who has seen the thrilled glint in the eye of a liberal appreciating for the first time the heft and power of a loaded nine-millimeter, is now waiting for the description...
...course Laxer is right to observe that executions are savage, that some militia members are paranoid menaces and that many burger-munchers are metamorphosing into disgusting human gastropods. But pointing out these follies is a bit like hunting cows with an assault rifle. No one, including most educated Americans, thinks serious gun-nuts are more than a negligible fringe and in 2001, it’s an awful waste of breath to treat them as if the sanity of their position were an open question. Isn’t this just stating the obvious? Yanks tend to be very...
What might have saved this volume from its horrible insipidness would be the ability not just to gawk, but to explain, not to report, but to interpret, and interpret wisely. Laxer does not explain to the non-American world what logic goes into these depraved activities—and not because things like love of guns, desire for blood and a hankering for Big Macs are wholly irrational...