revenge, bodies littered about, nudity, obscenity, sex scenes, syrupy
endings. Video games, unlike books, plays or board games, are
universally hypnotic precisely because they demand little literacy,
provide explosions of color and imagery, and require only a type
of eye-hand-brain synergy that is not culturally specific. Fast food
offends few since it is neither spicy nor sour, and thus calls for
no acquired taste. Instead it grows increasingly bland, ample and
cheap—and packaged in such a way that it is as easily edible in a
car as at a table.

Americans are criticized for preferring quicker, cheaper Taco

Bell to more conventional and tastier real Mexican dishes; but
then, illegal aliens too—especially young males—increasingly buy
such American take-out rather than traditionally prepared tortillas.
Their girlfriends agree, and—costs being about equal—likewise
choose to eat in the car en route to the mall, rather than stay home
in a hot kitchen rolling corn-flour dough. Mass communication
through darting images on television, pictures on computer screens
and photos in printed matter are more easily digested than written
texts.

If such schlock is sweeping the globe—and along with it

American English, American business protocols, American sports,
American advertising, American media and American casual
behavior—one can imagine the net effect of it all at its place of
birth in America, of which California remains the epicenter. At a
time when illegal immigration is at an all-time high, and formal
efforts at forging a common culture and encouraging assimilation
are at an all-time low, the habits, tastes, appetites and expressions
of everyday people have offered a rescue of sorts—perhaps del-
eterious to the long-term moral health of the United States, but
in the short term about the only tool we possess to prevent racial
separation and ethnic tribalism. Informality in dress, slang speech,
movies, videos, television—all this makes assimilation easier, even
at a time when professional racialists are calling for highbrow
separatism.

MEXIFORNIA Victor Davis Hanson

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