INTRODUCTION


I’ve been to 47 of the 50 states, not counting the Dakotas and Wyoming, so I guess I’ve been to all 50. And I’d always be excited to visit the different states over the years after reading and seeing about them on TV.

But every time I go to different states it’s like going to a family wedding or reunion where all the distant cousins are gathered. You get that feeling that these people are nothing like you. You can’t believe you are related to them. But then you see them make a gesture or a facial expression and you go, “Oh yeah, I see how we have the same blood.” Like when two Americans that don’t know each other are in another country at the same hotel, we will look over at each other like “Do you believe they put up with this?” Because one thing about all Americans, for better or for worse, we don’t like to put up with any bureaucratic abuse or any authority dismissing us. Whether you are from New York City, like I am, or some small town, you are used to people having to deal with you as a citizen. We took the concept of “the citizen” and weaponized it. Before that you were a serf or a merchant or a soldier. And if you stood in front of any person or institution that represented the king and complained, they would either laugh you off or kill you. That’s day 1 of being American. “I know my rights! You aren’t better than me.”

But now everybody has taken it to the place where individual rights are just used by annoying people. To criticizing everything, to breaking off into factions just like James Madison was worried would happen. And the loudest and most extreme will always be heard. Because when people no longer believe in representative democracy, the next step has to be mob rule. Now we are in the factions moment in history, where everybody is broken up into cults trying to force their values and ideals onto each other, and so far, it’s not looking very promising for our future. Because everybody has known since Cain and Abel that blood relatives shouldn’t fight. That’s something the Kardashians know that nobody else seems to realize. So here is the story of America. It’s not always pretty, but it’s not always ugly. It’s got ego and pride and good deeds and sacrifice and selfishness and honor and greed. It’s a triumph and a tragedy and it’s a miraculous success and a noble failure. A toast to us! The Americans: the most self-centered, enthusiastic, discontented spiritual materialists in history. The world will never see the likes of us again. It’s like your life and my life on a bigger scale (and not boring).

So, 244 years later, here we are in 50-states couples’ counseling and we are about to file papers for divorce. But before we do that we have to ask: Is this what we really want? It’s a big decision, so we should look at what we did and how amazing it was and how impossible it was and then if we still say break up, we break up. It’s been done before.

You have to go back to the beginning. At the beginning of the sixteenth century you had the big four: England, France, Spain, and Portugal. Nobody else really had international clout. If any of the big four noticed you, you had to become their colony. And the only choice you had was who you would let be your colonial master. So South America up to Georgia and Louisiana was Spain and Portugal, France was everything west of Newark and everything north of the Berkshires (or the lyrics to the first two James Taylor albums), and England was everything from Boston Harbor through Virginia, North Carolina, and the rest of the secondhand Smoky Mountains. The American colonies eventually negotiated, maneuvered, or outfought all the big-four historical empires out of all of it, and the only reason we stopped was because we had nowhere to go except to drown in the Pacific. Along the way, as we all know, it wasn’t the most ethical or bloodless journey. But it was ours, good and bad.


NEW ENGLAND


The New England conscience doesn’t keep you from doing what you shouldn’t, it just keeps you from enjoying it.

—ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER

Plymouth Rock was all about the religious people. They had slavery, but much less of it than in other places because they didn’t need it for their economy. And by 1790 it was outlawed. On the other hand, Jamestown was all about the businesspeople. Slavery, money. Not equality. Individualism. You had a paradox already, right from the start. Nothing less than an odd couple when you think about it. People that were all about spirituality and people that were all about the material. These two types teamed up to make the thirteen colonies, because when you have a common enemy—England—that tends to bind you. And they both had immigrants whom they could send out to live their dream of the New World. The religious and the business types both sent their representatives to “claim” the land and push out the Brits, French, and Spaniards, so even though they thought differently, the two types of original colonists had the same strategy. The big difference was that the North was all about not being like England, no matter what. And the South was about being better than England by using England’s own earlier economic system—the essential feudal system of classes—to succeed and undercut them. It’s like the two sons that both hate their father, but one becomes the opposite of their father and the other becomes just like him.


CONNECTICUT

RICH MAN, POOR MAN


Connecticut and Massachusetts and Virginia are really the beginning of the country. Without them, what do you have? You would’ve started with Delaware and Rhode Island—and no offense but … Connecticut was much more important than it is now, because of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which was actually the inspiration for the U.S. Constitution. So that’s pretty impressive. I mean, it’s on their license plate, so that means they are proud of it. Not that anybody cares. Connecticut probably hopes somebody will ask: “Why does it say CONSTITUTION STATE on your license plate?” But nobody does. And they’ve got to be proud too of the famous constitutional decision known as the Connecticut Compromise. Because Roger Sherman went home for a weekend break when none of the founding fathers could decide whether we should have direct democracy and came up with the two senators per state vs. Congress vs. Electoral College arrangement. That’s the infamous part of the Constitution that got Trump elected. So, stop blaming the red states for Trump, put the responsibility where it belongs, Connecticut.

Connecticut is also the state that Tocqueville first talked about as formative for creating an American personality. He talked about how its citizens (and Americans in general) were religious but still civic-minded and materialistic. He describes how residents of Connecticut and all of New England were obsessed with local politics and how we set up these townships where everybody switched jobs to become part of the select committee or the magistrate or the council. And this was before the Constitution. People were already obsessed with free speech. That’s what people came here for: conversation. And that’s what the founding fathers delivered in the Bill of Rights. Those early days in Connecticut are why.

Connecticut is also a cushion between Massachusetts and New York. A high-end cushion but still a cushion. That’s why they have no pro football, baseball, or basketball teams, because they agreed the lower half of the state would be for the Yankees and the upper half for the Boston Red Sox. That rivalry was so intense that they had to put a state in between the residents just to keep it from starting a war. It’s like the 38th parallel for states. Connecticut’s a state that carries a lot of symbolism. It’s got the image of being the rich state. And we love that, because you always want to have somebody that looks like they are enjoying their life in a way you never could. You would rather it was you, but at least somebody’s living it up. I give the rich people in Connecticut credit. They know how to do it. I was in Old Saybrook and they don’t even have a KFC or a Papa John’s. You eat on a back porch and they have a cello and a violist and there’s a rich old lady who goes there alone every day since her husband died in 1998 and she orders the same thing every evening, probably a Waldorf salad and a whiskey sour. Connecticut’s got a lot of one-percenters—and I don’t mean the outlaw-biker kind. Isn’t it weird that somehow the outlaw biker one-percenter is now the ultrarich? There’s not really a lot of crossover since Malcolm Forbes died. But that’s Connecticut. They are very rich and very poor. They can’t make up their mind. Is it the hood or the yacht club? Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, Waterbury—I could go on—these are all serious gang cities. Then you have the topsiders. New Canaan, Darien, and Greenwich Yacht Clubs and Dockers and tennis or polo or whatever clichés you think of when you think of WASPs. Then you’ve got cities that are basically at war. Hartford was the insurance capital of the world, yet the one place that you can’t get insurance right now is Hartford. People moved because they knew it was a death trap. I spent three weeks in gun-wavin’ New Haven a few summers ago doing my show and the city is Yale kids running for their student housing once the sun goes down. When class lets out, it’s like watching a herd of wildebeests trying to make it past a pride of lions. That’s Connecticut. It’s the extremes of America all rolled into one. The haves, the have-nots, and then all the middle people. There’s a lot of blue-collar towns in Connecticut, but nobody cares about them because people like to have certain images and we all love the idea of the lock-jawed Connecticut tennis couple with the white cable-knit sweaters around their shoulders It makes you feel good to know that they can exist. And at the same time, you feel better than them in some way because they are sheltered and snobby and clueless and you are down-to-earth and cool.

So, Connecticut is a state that was important and it still matters not because of what it is but because of what it represents. Because in a country that prides itself on getting rid of the class system, we still want to know that somebody is rich. Even if you want to kill them or take them down or Bernie Sanders them financially, you still want them to exist. So, Connecticut set the tone in a lot of ways. It’s the relative that pisses you off to visit because they make you feel like you’re not doing it right, but at the same time they always have crab and shrimp platters at their parties and they have a nice lawn and they are gracious. And that’s what I think America was and is for a lot of people from other countries. It is the Connecticut of countries. A place you have that love/hate relationship with. I guarantee even ISIS talks about America as the great Satan but then one of them says, “I heard one of those filthy decadent infidel Western restaurants has unlimited breadsticks.” And then they all feel a shiver of excitement over the concept of unrestricted amounts of food.


MASSACHUSETTS

TAX THIS, KID


Massachusetts. Every house is a colonial. There are historical plaques all over the place honoring guys named Ezekiel and Zachary. To be fair, they are where it all started in Plymouth Rock, so you have to give them credit. And they were really into the political process. Town halls and councils and sit-downs and committees. Tocqueville said it. He said the average Massachusetts person’s love of discourse brought to mind ancient Athens. I’m sure he wouldn’t feel that way if he were in the bleachers in Fenway listening to a couple of cock-knockers from Everett cursing and whipping Cracker Jacks at a group of kids wearing Tufts sweatshirts. Massachusetts has gotten very cocky from the Revere/Adams era to the Belichick/Brady era. Used to be the pride of Massachusetts were all those charming colonial-era towns like Lexington and Concord and the House of Seven Gables—now it’s getting the finger on I-90 by a fat landscaper in a scally cap and a Dropkick Murphys hoodie.

Last time I was in Plymouth, we did a comedy show at The Memorial Hall, and afterward there was a huge brawl outside in the snow. And this young girl ran up to us, and I thought she was scared and I felt bad that she had to witness bloodshed and violence in this beautiful snow-covered historic town square. Until she looked at us and said, “Great fight!” and smiled like she had been asked for her hand in marriage in a Jane Austen novel. But that’s how Massachusetts does it. Even Boston Harbor. They didn’t have to throw the tea in the water. They could’ve just stolen it. But they wanted to start a fight.

These states are important. Massachusetts and Connecticut are where our system got invented. Believe me, I don’t like to admit it either. But a lot of the early ideas and “habits” that became our system started here. Puritans take a lot of abuse for being tight-asses and religious and a lot of the other qualities that are considered negatives in contemporary society. But you have to give them credit. They wanted to not be England so badly that they came up with some great ideas for “systemic change.” And freedom of religion was an important ingredient. Because as flawed as religions are, they do speak to one eternal truth: which is people are always going to have to try to corral their baser instincts. And if you don’t call it out, then it seems like it’s okay. Because humanity will always be humanity. Even though we may advance technologically, human nature stays the same. We get sidetracked by our character faults. We live the seven deadly sins every bit as much as they did in colonial times, only now they are digital:

Facebook is envy.

Twitter is wrath.

Instagram is pride, lust, gluttony, greed, and sloth.

The internet is original sin. It’s all the knowledge in the world. The tree of knowledge. And now we have it. But in Genesis humans aren’t supposed to have all that access to information, because we can’t handle it. And yet we ate the apple and got all the knowledge and the first thing we saw is each other naked. And what’s the first thing we did when the internet came out? Looked at each other naked. And what’s the name of the biggest computer company? Apple. And Steve Jobs said he named it after apple orchards because he thought it sounded cheerful. I know what he was thinking subconsciously. Plus, Steve Jobs was known to be an occasionally satanic guy. Wouldn’t it be just like the devil to get us to eat the forbidden fruit again all these years later? The point is that a little religion is a nice balance against the material world, and the early arrivals knew it. Freedom of speech was another of our early national ideals, but the problem with it, is that no one ever changes their opinion. Historically, the only time anyone changes their opinion is right after they lose a war. Standing there in rags and rubble with dead bodies surrounding you and then you start to think, “They may have a point. Next time they speak to me, I’m going to listen a little more closely.” And the problem with the Puritans was they were human, and humans are willful. They wanted people to follow the path of what they believed was the best way to think and behave. So whether your belief is God or discourse, some other members of humanity who believe the other thing will find a way to wreck it.

There are Puritan descendants embedded all over our DNA. They were the fundamentalists and then the moral majority and then the Christian Coalition and now they are the social justice warriors (SJWs). From the stopping of speakers to getting rid of books to controlling offensive and blasphemous language—these were all the province of the Christian right for many years. Starting with the Puritans. Ironically, the Puritan doctrine became the doctrine of the SJWs. That group has picked up the same techniques the Puritans used: banning, shunning, and all for the greater good.

I take it personally because I take everything personally—but also, because I’m a comedian, I see the way these new Puritan SJWs are monitoring comedy. Stand-up comedy. That dangerous mouthpiece of tyranny. That murderous apparatus of the fascists. The Nazis were well known for their flourishing stand-up comedy scene. Just the fact that people are trying to enforce standards that are “acceptable” in stand-up comedy tells me they are not coming from the place they claim to be coming from. And this worldview is under the unquestioned idea that there is punching up and punching down in comedy. I have an alternative description of comedy. It’s not punching! People don’t tend to leave comedy clubs frothing at the mouth to start committing hate crimes. Comedy isn’t punching. It’s verbal sparring. It’s play fighting!! Why is no one concerned about this movement to remove comedy unless it’s committee-approved by six people who have never smiled or laughed but sure are woke? Comedy doesn’t work best when people are standing next to you asking you to justify your language, clarify your meaning, and articulate your intentions and beliefs. That’s good to find out about someone if they’re a Supreme Court nominee. Just admit you are the new Footloose parents. But the SJWs don’t admit that; I’m sure they feel just the way the Puritans felt as they tied somebody down for a quick dunk out in Provincetown.

Either you see this country as a predatory, unfair, crooked, biased, amoral abyss. Or you see it as a pure, unsullied, generous, virtuous, blameless paradise. Why can’t it be both? Because there’s no room for incongruity and contradiction in how we see things. People like good and bad. No wavering. Belief. Conviction. Dogmatism. Staunch definitive. No doubt, and these are where factions take over. And now we have social media, where you literally can’t be interrupted as you give your opinion like it’s gospel. Like the Pilgrims. So maybe we took that civic-minded early Puritan ideal of a society and turned it into a bunch of Monday-morning quarterbacks and that’s not a Colin Kaepernick joke. Maybe some people feel we should’ve just turned around and gone back to England and Holland. But either way, America is where it ended up happening and, say what you want, we blew the world’s mind for a few hundred years. And it all started on a stupid little landing strip on Plymouth Bay with the first “settlers.”

I place “settlers” in quotations because there’s a lot of terminology that has been viewed through the lens of the people who suffered under the pilgrimage. Or expedition. Or invasion. Calling it a discovery is inaccurate: the term “New World” must’ve been chilling to hear for the people living in what they considered to be the present world. We can sit here and curse ourselves and beg forgiveness or seek penance, but it happened the way it happened and nothing is going to change that. Give up all hope of having a better past. So at this point we all know that for some people “Plymouth Rock landed on them.” And it’s also the fact that for a long time our history chose to show only the bright side and to act like none of the bad ever happened. It’s one of the positive qualities of America—our enthusiasm and the sunny-side-up attitude. But the dark side is that many people didn’t benefit, and if you’re among them, you don’t want to hear that rah-rah-rah talk. But now we’ve done a complete 180, where we actually only speak negatively of the United States and the founding fathers and the white Europeans, which is also not a full story either.


Copyright © 2020 by Colin Quinn