Hi, friends! Over the next few years, I will be posting a series of blog posts called The Americans: Portraits of Our Unknown Neighbors. It's dawned on me recently that since the start of this divided nation, we Americans have gone abroad to find ourselves. We assume that foreigners with ideas contrary to ours only exist in Europe even though just as many strange strangers live a few miles away from out hometowns. I myself have never bothered to drive to Georgia and hang out with some jazz musicians. I long to experience Europe, but I need to seek my own country men out too. In this series, I will interview a different "American stranger" every week. Through this experiment, I hope to not define Americans as a group of people with similar ideals and practices but as a series of subgroups with a variety of customs, colloquialisms, and philosophies. By reading about my discoveries of America, readers will also experience how I find myself.The Americans #1: Dallwyn Merck
When I walked to Union Square last Friday, I planned on having dinner with a homeless man. Instead, I met "the founder of the Tea Party." People associate Union Square with New York icons such as the Empire State Building and Times Square. Lately, critics have deemed these icons as corporate magnets that "Disneyfy" formerly culturally diverse urban landscapes. I myself always wonder what it would have been like to walk off the six and see Max's Kansas City instead of Whole Food and Chipotle; however, just a few days ago, I walked into Union Square and was assaulted by an array of odd and quintessentially New York situations.
In a circle, stood sketchy DVD salesmen who hollered down film fanatics they recognized to buy a rare Song of the South DVD, college kids who expected other college kids to drop twenty bucks on hand sewn gloves, artists who sold beauties for five dollars the Met may one day pay a million dollars for, and dance groups who danced to Michael Jackson the other hustlers (or should I say Americans?) hate. In the words of one DVD salesman, "those dancers won't last here for one more day." In other words, within a circle, stood an array of Americans.
I walked throughout the square as I tried to figure out who I should feature on my blog this Sunday when suddenly I stood in the middle of a protest against the NYPD. I pounced on them. "What's going on? Who are you protesting?" I asked a man handing out fliers. "The NYPD." Immediately, I know what he's talking about. (If you haven't read the Village Voice's coverage of the NYPD homeless murders, you should.) I took the pamphlets he handed me and proceeded to ask other members of the assembly why they're protesting and what brought them to the park. Unfortunately, they just tried to hand me a sign to hold, so I jumped in front of the crowd to snap shots of the oncoming march and the grumpy NYPD members forced to watch. Before I could get a picture, a rambling old man who wore ear muffs and carried tote bags jumped in front of my lens. "Finally, I found a homeless man!" I think. Fortunately, I found a Tea Partier.
"Let's start a Tea Party! That's what we need!" He shouted, inciting my inner writer's glee. As I turned my camera toward him, he came right at me. "Who are you with?" he demanded. I explained to him that I'm not with the protest but am writing an article for a blog. He then asked me "Who are they with?" Again, I explained that I'm not sure. I'm just walking through the park. He scoffed at me, laughing as he speaks to me in an accent that's not quite New York and not quite anything else either. "They're always organized!" He took the flyer I got from a protester and then began to point his finger in my face. "See, they organized it! They're always organized!"
Me: "Um, who are you?"
Dallywyn Merck: "The founder of the Tea Party!"
Me: I mean what's your name?
Dallywyn: Dallywyn Merck.
Me: Dwight Merrick?
Dallywyn: No, no, no. Dallwyn Merck! D-a-l-l-w-y-n M-e-r-c-k, the treasury secretary of the Queens Libertarian chapter.
Me: I didn't know New York had a lot of Libertarians. It's a pretty liberal place.
Again, he laughed, mocking me.
Dallywyn: We're the second largest chapter in the whole United States! We're the main bulk of the party. We're the most active chapter... There's none in the Bronx.
Me: Why not?
Dallynwyn: They don't organize! You know, certain people want to get rid of us, like JP Morgan because we are a potential threat to Morgan Stanley.
Me: What's J.P. Morgan worried about?
Dallywyn: Well, that we're educating and organizing!
Over the next half an hour, Dallywyn educated me on a history of the world I had never heard about. Did you know Marx was a fascist and Sweedish fascist took Obama on a trip and they control him? Neither did I. He learned this on his many travels around the world. He's lived "everywhere," specifically Germany, Sweeden, and Denmark. I could sit here and dispel these obvious fallacies. After all, J.P. Morgan died in the early twentieth-century. However, I see something much more interesting, sad, and wonderful about Mr. Merck.
Throughout our conversation, he kept on telling me how the government set up public schools to brain wash "kids like" me. I would have loved to tell him how Fox News brainwashed him but what proof did I have of that? I was just making assumptions the way he made assumptions that the liberal government had taken control of me. He rambled on and on, but beneath it I saw something I see at home when I dine with my dad: anger. Sure, Mr. Merck took Ayn Rand's words a tad too literally, but he had a right to be mad at the government. Too be blunt, shit's been pretty fucked up the last few years. "What's the differance between Rhynos and Demos," he asked. His answer: "nothing." He made a valid point. A lot of Democrats corrupt our government as much as Republicans.
He might have misdirected his anger at Barack Obama, someone who wasn't a national figure ten years ago, but it's beautiful that he sees a solution to this mess, even if his solution caused these problems in the first place, and dreams of a "true republic governed by the people." Despite his old age, he believes the world could and will be a better place where corruption no longer exists. I'm eighteen and until I spoke to him thought world piece was hippie bullshit. Through all the darkness, he sees the light. He says he always lived his life this way. Apparently, he beat cancer without medicine. I don't believe or disbelieve him, but in his seventies or eighties, Mr. Dallwyn Merck, a Queens native, still believes in his dreams. What's more American that that?
