I hate three-on-ones. Especially because I’m so often “the one” side.
I was trying to explain on this most American of holidays, while American politics has a clear historical affinity with the British, American culture has a historical affinity with the Germans. Of course, I was shouted down as being an absurdist—the main argument being apparently American’s are the most anti-authoritarians in the world but the Germans are a bunch of goose-steppers.
The fact that we’ve just finished eating frankfurters and hamburgers (not to mention nearly every American major beer marque) being completly trumped by by lazy idea of putting it between two pieces of bread.
I exaggerate.
But not by much.
I got so ticked off that I began to exaggerate for realsies: “Germans are a much larger ethnic group than the English.” (When you are outnumbered you begin to form a siege mentality and start bullshitting.) This turned out to be a fact that only one of them, the only American of the three, conceded might be true.
“But.” that one said, “you’ll have to admit that most of that occured after World War 2.”
“I’ll admit no such thing.”
“What??? Most of the ethnic growth in the big cities from the East occurred later in the century…”
“Like Pittsburgh where I’m from? Not true. Cities like Pittsburgh are more German and Polish than English and they shrunk. Most of the post-war growth occurred in areas like Los Angeles. Did you know before World War 2, San Francisco was a bigger city than L.A.?”
“Yeah, that’s because of Hollywood.”
“No, because of the military and the creation of suburbs.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that. Will you at least give me that the immigration occurred after World War One?”
“No, I won’t.”
He then walks away incredulous at my stupidity to grab another beer—joining the two others who had already decided I was nuts.
Note to Wikipedia: Fix your shit!
Between 1850 and 1930, about 5 million Germans emigrated to the United States with a peak in the years between 1881 and 1885, when a million Germans left Germany and settled mostly in the Midwest.
They need to change this because apparently three serious drunks should outweigh one bullshitting sober guy.
(Trust me, since it involved numbers, I’m as shocked as you the facts fell on my side.)
