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A quarantine official is reflected on a monitor as he checks the temperatures of arriving passengers on a thermographic imaging device placed at an airport - Source: Reuters -
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When a border official at Los Angeles Airport says, "Welcome to America!" you know something is up.
Around 60 million people stream through LAX each year, and the black-uniformed (to my possibly colour-blind eyes) immigration police are so reliably, and fearsomely, rude to new arrivals that many travellers prefer San Francisco.
All through the flight from Auckland, we'd been given the Fortress America rap: Pre-apocalyptic, nervous-nellied, still in love with Obama, but not knowing whether to commit; reeling, coughing and hacking with swine flu, sorry H1N1, and afraid - as America so often is - of the outside.
"Ensure you fill out your arrival cards correctly," intoned the flight attendants, "American Immigration will send you to the back of the queue if you make mistakes."
"I need a new one," I guiltily muttered, putting my hand out into the aisle.
"Don't worry, dear," said the hostess, "You'd be surprised how often it happens."
Then in a haze of jetlag and sleeplessness: The queue, the fingerprint of the right hand, the retinal scan, and "Welcome to America".
Wow. Thanks, but like Groucho Marx, I feel a suspicion of any club that will admit me.
I'd just returned from a couple of weeks in New Zealand, with the usual melancholy of leaving home, combined with the sense of having missed out, news-wise. You hive off for one tiny little mother's 70th birthday party, and Mexico decides to stage a pandemic, Barack Obama celebrates his first hundred days in office (the jury's out on that, btw; if he saves the economy, everything's golden, if not we're all toast) oh, and the third largest car company in the US goes tits up .
Swaying through the Karangahake Gorge on the InterCity bus from Auckland to Tauranga (cost, $NZ45, or about $US20: the price of a cocktail plus tip in the kind of New York bars I can only dream of), New Zealand's flora seemed wild, weird and beautiful, like a slo-mo ending of the world: the bush reclaiming its pre-eminence. Yet the place sounded and felt more orderly than the US. I listened to National Radio in my parents' car, reflecting how much of the so-called news seemed to stem from the releasing of this or that government report.
I had an argument with a self-described business reporter from another broadcasting organisation. "This recession is the same pyramid scheme as it was 15 years ago," she said.
"I think it's more complex than that."
"I know!" she harrumphed, offering unimpeachable proof, US business cable news: "I've been watching CNBC!"
But the country - a lazy expression, I know comprising a series of fragmented, possibly contradictory impressions - felt less certain than her; maxed out, jittery about the recession, cutting back; waiting for more bad news.
When your neighbour loses his job, it's a recession; it's a depression when you lose yours.
So welcome, welcome to America, the America who wants you to fill in your immigration forms without mistakes, anal America, the America that is afraid of the outside, but also, its inside as well - this as per Richard Hofstadter in his essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics published in 1964.
In his essay Hofstadter writes, "The paranoid's interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as a consequence of someone's will."
Compared to New Zealand, the sense in New York is of a bottoming out. Bad economic news has less ability to hurt, there's been so much of it. The results of Obama's stress tests for banks will be released in four days time. Citi needs an extra $US10 billion. Value Investor Warren Buffet says the stress tests won't reveal anything. The cover of my Atlantic monthly says, "What Now? Fire your broker? Buy gold?" Another headline: "The Coup: How Bankers Seized America."
This weekend - it's still Sunday here - the Republican Party held a re-branding forum. One of their conclusions: "Learn from Obama". But learn what?
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