Triumvirate Of New, Real Conservative Blood To Help Show the Way Forward, But First.... Culture Shock 1

DECADES AGO I WENT ON A MONTH LONG 'STUDY' TOUR TO CHINA. It was in the mid-80s and I haven't a clue what deep down prompted me to do such a thing.  China had just opened up to outsiders and I must have wanted to see its mysterious culture as well as ours from a fresh perspective.

I certainly got more than I bargained for.  The first week everyone in our group got deathly ill with intestinal troubles. We learned to drink Chinese beer for breakfast, lunch and dinner because everywhere the water was  very iffy. By the second week,  I had gotten acquainted with some of my fellow travelers and discovered several were communists who simply adored Fidel Castro and all things Cuba.  I was silently appalled.  By the third week, many of us had severe respiratory illness and bronchitis from massive air pollution and dust that was blowing in from the Gobi Desert.    I coughed so hard I busted my gut and got an inguinal hernia.  By the time we flew back to Seattle a week before Thanksgiving,  I was in such culture shock that I had closed down and almost stopped talking. I had no idea what I would say to family at Thanksgiving dinner about my trip.  Other people in our group, mostly the communists, were buying extra suitcases and tons of stuff they could take back to LA and Hells Kitchen.  Not me,  I just wanted to get back to friendly American soil with the shirt on my back and if need be, die there.  Any friendly USA tarmac would do. I hoped the sound of thousands of bicycle bells would subside in my head.

Ultimately I learned to talk again, had my hernia repaired at Vanderbilt Hospital and and burned everything I brought back that reminded me of communist China--including my favorite Strauss Waltz cassette from Tiananmen square.

I tell this story today because I felt the same culture shock and foreignness last fall after the 2020 election that I did during my month in China almost 40 years ago. What a total surprise.

I'll  continue this in the next few days and call it 'Coming Out of Culture Shock In My Own Country.'