You’ll die from diabetes if them other nig**s wrote it.

This is my last Kendrick reference, I PROMISE…

I also promise that this line was the first thing that came to mind after taking a first sip of a Berlin restaurant’s lemonade last week (what? I know, but stay with me…). Coming highly recommended, it was among the most bitter beverages I’ve tasted, ever, and became an immediate metaphor for my experience as a U.S. citizen visiting Berlin, by way of a temporary residence in the U.K. 

In this metaphor, Berlin is Kendrick and “them other ni**as” are the U.S. and U.K.  The sugar quotient of the local lemonade represents the collective socio-economic palette of the respective regions population.  More specific than the “socio-economic” umbrella term, I am referring to the perceived social, economic, AND psychological effects of a nation’s historical record on a nation’s contemporary population.  It should also be clarified that in terms of Germany I am not necessarily speaking for the whole but rather for it’s iconic, globally significant capital: Berlin.  While visiting the city, I was reminded repeatedly that Berlin has a German identity that is all it’s own…

Berlin has arguably seen more wild-out, inhumanly sickening, politically inconceivable surrealism in the last 100 years than any “1^st world” city.  Of course, we know that economically depressed, resource plundered, locales of color worldwide see genocide, dictatorships, and ever-shifting unbearable upheaval on the reg-u-laaaar… but, I digress. The difference is that Berlin’s resident poster-boy for evil committed his horrors on other Europeans and was so unspeakably egregious with it that the love child of Carl Rove and Houdini could not have swept that shit under the rug.  Hitler’s horrendous follow up to Germany’s WWI defeat sparked and served up the nations WWII defeat, this time literally decimating it’s landscape, and positioning Berlin as the shared geographic prisoner of war at the curious intersection of western capitalism and eastern communism.  Posturing ensued, walls were build, families were divided, people got fed up, and today there is a city too ideologically weary, and too aware of it’s own capacity for terror to begin to feign sweetness in it’s identity or it’s lemonade.

Berlin sprinkles on no sugar, no perfume, and no cosmetic concealer. The streets are clean but the local government doesn’t seem to waste much time clutching it’s pearls at a smattering here or an all-out blanketing there, of endlessly clever graffiti work in public spaces.  They’re also not wasting time with power blasters or fresh coats of paint, the layers of imagery simply build on to the layers of history, including parts of the city where anarchy tags are as pervasive as traffic signals.  The train system is rapid and efficient coated with seat cover patterns of the most ghastly, unlikely government approved motifs these westernized eyes could imagine (camouflage in black, cobalt blue, and infa-red… really?).  This transit system runs on a remarkably humane honor system that will apparently first intimidate, then tax the shit out of you if caught violating.  Student groups poor in and out of the carefully maintained former Nazi error concentration camps with as much patience and respect as I’ve come to expect out of any teenage group.  During my day at Sachsenhausen I did not witness a single outburst of any emotional extreme; no inappropriate joking, no awkward laughing, and no traumatized tears. The city is calm, and collected as can be… until a train ride is smuggled or a rear view mirror is clipped by a passing cyclist, at which point an incessant tirade of deutsch syllables are slung down upon the offender with no ounce of reservation.  The Berlin of my experience deals efficiently in blunt reality, straight up, no chaser.

Does that stop this place from institutionalizing structures of racism against the influx of people of color who moved there to earn a living rebuilding the bombed out cityscape that millions of natives hoped to escape—heck no! Berlin has as much internalized racism as any other western (officially est. 1990) destination—inequitable education system stratifications, a flawed immigration system, pervasive throwback racist attitudes, and yes, there is a spiking community of contemporary Neo-Nazis… The dystopian, anarchist, post-everything fun-house mirror reflection of the ideal is in fact, NOT a utopia.  But it is a refreshingly raw gust of aerosol paint-fumed wind in contrast to the delusionally sentimental royal court, or the social-injustice amnesia that regenerates on autopilot every half of a generation back home.

England showed all of Europe how to do imperialism.  North, South, East, West and here, towards its own citizens, England has devastated, manipulated and fundamentally disrespected the world again and again. The U.S. built a global reputation of liberty on the backs of forcibly non-free people, at least 40 million+ of whom died (genocide) on the way to lay its foundations of independence. And today, it spits on the labor of the South American descendants who come to do the work U.S. born people won’t do.  Crimes against humanity have been commonplace for these world leaders but the circumstances of those crimes have not forced these governments, or the entirety of their populations to face their capacity for terror head on.  Instead, they poor 3 to 1 portions of high fructose corn syrup (and previously even a little bit of actual cocaine) in there’s and call it an American classic, or serve it up shortbread style with tea and call it a mid-day tradition. And guess what?!? Diabetes is rampant!!  The saccharin soaked experiences these nations are serving are rendering huge swaths of their respective electorates incapable of making reasonable discernments in politics or life (cite the tea-party, and the ratings for “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” and “Snog Marry Avoid“).  Meanwhile Berlin moves progressively forward…  Economically; just ask the rest of the EU.  Ecologically; Bikes. Everywhere. And creatively, from the local music scene to the graffiti writers to fine arts—dOCUMENTA may be over in Kasel, but the positive art world effects are concretely felt in Berlin’s contemporary art life. In spite of it’s JACKED up history, and (attn: U.S. and U.K.) in spite of the fact that Berlin actually acknowledges the stank of its own shit, it is, most certainly, progressing.  Perhaps this might motivate those other _____s to wake up and spell the boo-bo-oooo-oo. Maybe…