Eighteen years living in this great melting pot has given me a lot of time to form my stereotyped bias of everyone and anything around me. Stereotypes are great because they give us a preloaded template to make quickie judgment calls about complete strangers. It's essentially our mind's RAM, top of the head calculations and projections for any given person.
For example, I see someone with a NASCAR hat and I assume they drive a Silverado, beat their wife, and think I'm a queerbo for listening to From First to Last (although, even I think I'm a queerbo for that fact).
Here's another; I see a girl outside of Starbucks with auburn hair in a pea coat and scarf, her nose is pierced but it's discrete and her green eyes may or may not be hidden behind a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. She's reading a copy of Catch 22 and I immediately fall in love. My first assumption is that she is that one deep profound person I've waited all my life for. We'll watch the leaves change colors during the day and spend our evenings by a fire drinking moderately priced wine while watching Paris, je t'aime. Our dates will consist of debating Noam Chomsky, how Norman Rockwell was a fucking liar, and the hidden greatness of The Pixies while we adore our newly framed Gustav Klimt print hanging above our black leather couch. I'll endlessly compare her to Audrey Hepburn while she insists I'm her Fred Astaire and we'll be perfect together. A lifelong cuddlefest.
That last stereotype was incredibly well thought out. Let that meticulous rendition of Hallmark love not indicate that's what I look for in a relationship. I do however have a thing for glasses, pea coats, and auburn hair. Just saying.
It's particularly devastating to me when these stereotypes turn out to be completely false. When I find out that the NASCAR guy actually works for Merrill Lynch, drives a Z4, and does not actively engage in spousal abuse I'm crushed. When I get into that girl's Jetta and she's listening to T-Pain smoking Marlboro Red 100's and trying to talk to me about New Moon, I not only lose any hope that love does in fact exist, but I get the strange urge to slit Ben Gibbard's throat to see if his gurgling suffering will make any more sense than the pretentious crap he's peddled to me about love since 2003.
It's sort of like that. Complex emotions right? I lose it when those I stereotype turn out to be 100% different. It's like my powers of perception are somehow fading.
Tonight that happened with an entire country rather than a person. Instead of say...that cute girl outside of Starbucks, it's Switzerland.
Call me absolutely batshit crazy here, but did anyone expect this from Switzerland? When I think of the Swiss I don't really lean towards a nation of extreme right-winged discriminating xenophobes, rather I think of the country that brought us Swatches, those special bank accounts, and fondue. How could a country that has achieved universal health care be so ultra-conservative?
It makes no sense. My stereotypical image of the friendly alps and Michelle Hunziker playing the accordion is fading. I thought the worst you could get in Switzerland were those three guys in Celtic Frost. I don't know what a minaret is and I couldn't really give a shit, I just want my happy Swiss folk back! No more Muslim hating! Please! It's just a god damn building, let them have it! My view of the world is fragile enough as it is. Don't fuck up the Swiss for me please, I beg you.
Once again I go on the internet and once again my beautiful house of cards is blown down by it. It's now time to recuperate. Back to chain smoking and binge drinking it is for me.
What's next? Is someone going to tell me Polish people are actually smart? Like that will ever happen.
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