Bedbug nation? No.
In the mass media culture that modern America uses as a mirror, stories go viral most often when they fit a bigger narrative.
Right now, we’re pretty unsure about ourselves and our future. Liberal bloggers have taken to talking about the new “Third World” America in which gilded age capitalists are blithely wrecking the middle class.
And on the Right, the general sentiment is that the nation has slid into a kind of end-times slide, where our Judeo-Christian-European culture is being swamped by welfare-gobbling, disease-spreading, and vote-cheating illegal aliens.
The whole mix is spiced with a lot of very real anxiety about the recession, about the rise of new global titans — China, India, Brazil — that are challenging Brand USA.
(Did anyone notice that that most American of beers, Budweiser, was bought out by a Brazilian conglomerate?)
Crawling into the center of this narrative is the nasty, icky bedbug. What better symbolizes the idea of our great nation losing its Generation Next ultra-modern momentum than a verminous invasion?
Surely, this says something about us as a people? Surely this connects somehow with the idea that our roads are in disrepair, our data lines are outdated, and our public schools are giant slacker mills?
Actually, of course, none of those things are true. Bed bug infestations are icky, but natural events — and it happens that Paris is suffering from this one just as fiercely as New York City.
(And those new urban hotspots — Beijing and New Delhi — are hardly paragons of pest-free cleanliness.)
In reality, America isn’t a third world nation. And we’re not being hijacked by brownskinnned peoples from south of the border.
I’ve been driving around New York state and Vermont a lot lately: I find trim, well managed communities, connected by well-maintained roads. My cell phone works brilliantly in far more places than it did a couple of years ago.
Stores are busy. School playgrounds are packed with healthy-looking kids. Many of the community leaders I talk to — in education, government, private business — are doing innovative, smart things to try to build a better future.
Does that mean things are super-swell? No. We face huge challenges, from the big budget deficits at the state and Federal level to fundamental questions about the northern-NY economy.
But sometimes it strikes me that our biggest hurdle may be the fact that so many Americans buy into the bed-bug narrative. They seem to think this is the new permanent reality, an unsolvable downturn.
In a way, maybe the bed bug is a better metaphor for the tough things we have to do to solve those looming problems and put our collective house in order.
Tags: health
First, the irony of comparing Paris, a city not exactly known for it’s antiseptic qualities, to NY struck me. Isn’t it sort of obvious that the problem isn’t those darn bugs, innocent creatures after all, but rather that our lack of simple sanitary practices, a gradual build up of resistance to pesticides and the importation of less than sparkling clean commodities has brought us to this?
Secondly Brian, once again I have to point out the flaw in this paragraph- “I’ve been driving around New York state and Vermont a lot lately: I find trim, well managed communities, connected by well-maintained roads. My cell phone works brilliantly in far more places than it did a couple of years ago.” You go on to mention “healthy looking kids”. It’s looks Brian, appearance, an illusion masking the deeper problems. I know you’re trying to give us a boost, but diesel went up $.20 in 2 weeks, fuels up, food is way up, clothing is expected to climb 30% in the next 3 months, taxes are up, insurance is up and the Fed is implementing another round of Quantitative Easing which essentially devalues our currency. And yet the noon news reports, “No inflation is sight!”.
The problem isn’t just being a little down in the dumps, it’s the fact that our Gov’t is doing stupid things and there’s very little we can do except point out the obvious and hang on.
Nonetheless, the bed bug problem is real and it is growing at an exponential rate. The fact is that bed bugs are part of the natural and normal state of humans. It’s been so since our beginning. The only reason we had a 6 decade long period of relative freedom from them was the use of powerful organophosphate insecticides. Without these chemicals we are left, so to speak, naked. We have not preventive protection. Now that we’ve made the choice to move away from chemicals toward more natural ways of living we are also returning to our natural state of being infested. You can’t have it both ways folks. Welcome back to our future! http://www.pestcontrolcenter.com
My understanding is that bed bug infestations are not correlated one way or the other with being dirty or having a dirty home.
Some of the nicest upscale and clean hotels in NYC have had bedbugs. They are great travelers who go from one place to the next hiding in shoes, cuff links, luggage etc, they feed only on human blood (they don’t care about scraps etc like cock roaches etc). They hide really well and are hard to catch and are a tough problem.
So in that case maybe they are indicative of our times we have a tough job but it is solvable.
I will say though that the description of neat communities, good roads and busy stores and playgrounds is NOT the north country that I see in my travels and work. What I see is crumbling communities, very poor housing stock, drug abuse, average roads, high unemployment, obesity, places where around 30-50% of the families are on public assistance of some sort. Which is why I get so angry when I see the wealthy in our midst oppose job creating development such as roads, bridges and wind turbines.
But then again I don’t get over to Vermont and this is NOT new this has been the condition for many years in many of these communities.
But I still like it here and this place has many good points, good people, good hunting and a slow pace of life. I just don’t think being pollyanna about poverty in our midst is helpful any more than being overly negative is, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
I have read a lot about bed bug infestations in all sorts of places – from the cheapest hotels to the swankiest (as well as other public facilities). It is not so much the thought of sleeping with beds in a hotel that gets to me – it is the thought of bringing them home with me and starting an infestation in my own home.
As a result, I now plan my road trips in the non-camping season by staying in owner-occupied B&B’s (not all places advertised as B&B’s are owner-occupied) on the assumption that owners will be more careful about having bed bugs in their home. I know this will not reduce my risk of meeting up with bed bugs to zero, but i assume it will significantly reduce the probability.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this theory?
My wife travels for work she has a whole little routine she follows to avoid bed bugs. Things like never setting her luggage on the carpet or the bed, never laying your clothes directly on the bed etc.
They are pretty fascinating creatures.