George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 123

George W. Bush’s Great America – Episode 122 (123/377)

< 122 >

Above a bar nestled beside an American highway, a neon sign reading ‘Prohibition’ flickered intermittently.

Most travelers would typically opt for a rest stop rather than a dive bar like this. Therefore, stepping into this bar as a patron paradoxically suggested you were anything but ordinary.

A heavy glass mug slammed onto the wooden table with a thud. The impact caused the beer’s carbonation to surge, creating a foamy overflow that spilled onto the table.

“That’s right! The spirit of pioneering!”

The man gestured wildly, arms raised as if performing in a musical. No one dared to comment, however. He was a towering figure, easily six and a half feet tall [approximately 2 meters], with a physique of solid muscle. The kind of guy you’d call a tough guy.

Dressed in a black motorcycle jacket and jeans, with the key to his prized Harley Davidson—a gift from ‘a certain someone’—hanging from his belt loop, he looked every bit the biker, though he was no longer affiliated with any gang. Or rather, ‘severed ties’ was a more accurate description. The stitch marks on his jacket, where a patch had once been sewn, served as evidence.

Regardless of his shady past, his appearance screamed macho. City folks might call him a ‘redneck,’ while in the countryside, he was simply known as ‘Dan.’

“We have to show the power of America!”

Of course, this hulking man couldn’t possibly be drunk from just beer, but he was definitely intoxicated—intoxicated by the nationalistic fervor he had conjured within himself.

The TV mounted on the wall showcased America’s unbroken string of successes. While these weren’t military victories, they highlighted economic and cultural achievements.

For instance, it presented statistics illustrating what would happen ‘without America’ in Afghanistan, where democracy had supposedly been successfully implemented, alongside feel-good interviews with Afghans and footage of war-torn areas being rebuilt. This instilled a sense of pride and self-esteem in viewers for being American. Unsurprisingly, enlistment in the U.S. military, which had been declining, was on the upswing again.

No nation that had experienced countless rises and falls throughout history could ever truly replicate the current United States for all time.

Anyway, Dan’s voice was as booming as his size. The bartender should have warned him for making such a racket, but there was a simple reason why he didn’t: the bartender and owner of the bar was Dan’s brother. Aside from his taste in alcohol, Dan’s ideologies and hobbies were similar, so he overlooked his brother’s boisterous, masculine behavior.

Besides, most of the regulars knew Dan, whether they liked it or not. Moreover, just looking at his size gave them a good estimate of how many weeks they’d spend in the hospital if they crossed him, so they didn’t dare to confront him.

Of course, things might be different if they had a gun powerful enough for a toddler to defeat Xiang Yu [a famous Chinese general known for his immense strength], but knowing the legend of how Dan had taken three .357 Magnum rounds and still managed to knock out all the teeth of the opposing gang and gift them with full-body compound fractures using only his fists, the gun at their waist would seem like nothing more than scrap metal.

“Bartender! Another one!”

As if anticipating the order, his brother was already preparing another beer. In fact, the glass wasn’t just any glass; it held a whopping 3000cc [approximately 101 fluid ounces]. It wasn’t a pitcher, but a genuine beer glass—one that his brother had specially prepared for Dan.

The incredibly large and heavy beer glass was delivered by the newly hired young bartender.

“Here you are.”

Dan carefully scrutinized the handle of the beer glass brought by the young bartender. More precisely, he examined the bartender’s hand holding the handle.

“You don’t have any fingers. Am I finally drunk?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. They were just cut off.”

He said it casually, with a somewhat unnatural accent. He was definitely a foreigner or someone who hadn’t been born in America. If not, he had lived abroad for a long time and then returned. In any case, Dan didn’t particularly care for foreigners.

“Your name is…”

In a normal establishment, employees would wear name tags, but this place wasn’t exactly conventional. Therefore, the bartender standing before Dan didn’t have a name tag. The reason Dan didn’t know the bartender’s name, despite coming here every day, was simply because he knew a new one had started, but he hadn’t bothered to ask.

“Rashid.”

Do you remember Rashid, who had his fingers cut off for defying the Taliban? One half of the Rashid and Abdullah duo who were assessing America’s reign.

“Rashid? Are you Middle Eastern?”

“Yes, I am from Afghanistan.”

“Ah! Afghanistan!”

It was true that he disliked foreigners, but Afghanistan was a different story. The Middle East was exotic because it was on the other side of the world, yet also familiar because he often saw it on TV.

The name Crossroads of Civilization, which Afghanistan had been called since ancient times, was by no means an exaggeration, as it yielded all sorts of artifacts from the East and West that had been buried beneath its narrow and barren land. The Afghan government was now reinterpreting its culture in a modern way, as if it were happening now, and wielding it across the globe with a sophisticated pen, ensuring foreigners wouldn’t feel repulsed.

Of course, even with these efforts, some people still didn’t care where Afghanistan was, but the results were as good as the budget they allocated. As a result, in the United States, instead of vaguely hating the Middle East, they were able to focus their anger on terrorists such as the Taliban and Al Qaeda, using culture as an anchor.

“But why come to America?”

“I came to find the American Dream.”

In reality, Abdullah, who was obsessed with video games, had forcibly dragged Rashid by the scruff of the neck, obtained a work visa to the United States, and come to America, but that wasn’t something he could tell a guest, the owner’s brother, and a macho man. This was because video games in the United States were seen as a culture enjoyed by nerds. Not that nerds were bad, but macho men held them in low regard. Rashid had no desire to have his teeth knocked out by those iron fists.

“Hahaha! You came to the right place! Now is the perfect time to make money!”

Dan laughed off Rashid’s outdated notion of the American Dream. Americans’ view of immigrants is never favorable. It’s ironic that these words come from a country built on multiculturalism, but it’s because they see immigrants as leeches feeding off the achievements of the United States, even though they weren’t born American.

Of course, not everyone feels that way, which is why the United States is also the most open country to immigration compared to others.

In other words, if Rashid wasn’t from Afghanistan but from another country, Dan would have looked at him with disapproval. Perhaps a minor incident would have occurred in Rashid’s life. Of course, it wouldn’t be a minor incident from Rashid’s perspective, but at least he wouldn’t be able to work at this bar again.

Anyway, despite Dan’s empty words, now was indeed a good time to chase the American Dream. The United States was an economic powerhouse, but polarization was severe, and to address the issue, the President was creating jobs and investing in underdeveloped infrastructure—even though he was a Republican, not a Democrat. Consequently, the Democratic Party was keeping a low profile, no matter how much Bush acted up and ran around like a loose cannon.

Didn’t someone say that money solves everything in a capitalist society? The massive budget that the United States had never seen since its founding silenced even the Democratic Party, which was tasked with diligently overseeing the Republican Party.

“America can solve all problems with money.”

From simply buying daily necessities to orchestrating assassinations and even influencing trials. This was both an advantage of the United States and an inherent limitation of capitalism and plutocracy. However, it was true that corruption within public institutions had noticeably decreased recently, as George W. Bush personally wielded a baseball bat, cracked down on state police, and strengthened inspections of federal police.

“That’s right. That’s why America is beautiful.”

However, Dan didn’t grasp the hidden meaning in Rashid’s words. He was simply drunk and felt good no matter what he heard.

“Fuck you!”

“Ah! Fuck you? We don’t sell that at our place?”

Very coincidentally, someone was in a bad mood. Dan’s brother and a drunk were grabbing each other by the collar and raising their voices. It was none other than the collar of his only remaining family member being grabbed!

“What does it matter if I drink some alcohol! Why don’t you sell it to me!”

“A bastard who’s drunk and harassing the bartender is asking me to sell him alcohol? Get out!”

Dan’s brother was as muscular as Dan, but the drunk’s muscles were also impressive. The expression ‘muscles that are about to burst’ is often used, but the forearms of these two looked like their muscles would actually tear through their skin and pop out.

The size of muscles isn’t a direct measure of strength, so it’s not entirely accurate, but if I had to estimate, he definitely had a body capable of hitting 500 in the three major lifts [squat, bench press, and deadlift].

“Hey friend! Why don’t you take a look at my face for a second?”

The only problem was that Dan was a monster who went around punching people like him.

“What are you…! Uh, uh?”

The drunk, whose wrist was being bent, couldn’t control his body. What’s so special about a vise? If you prevent an object from moving with compressive force, that’s a vise. However, in this case, it was a biological vise that used grip strength rather than compressive force. Dan’s grip strength was naturally immense.

The drunk, who was trying to rely on strength, was taken aback. No matter how much alcohol is a potion of courage that exists in reality, it only fills you with hot air and doesn’t increase your strength, so the drunk was easily subdued in a moment of surprise and was neatly hoisted onto Dan’s back.

The other guests were drinking as if they expected this to happen, treating it as entertainment. The drunk, realizing he had become a spectacle, turned even redder and struggled to break free from Dan’s grip, using his huge body to the fullest, but the drunk’s muscles, built up through exercise, weren’t enough to overcome Dan’s grip.

“Listen carefully, friend. As is the case anywhere in America, the bartender is the law in this ‘Prohibition.’ My brother is a bartender, but at the same time, he’s the boss here, got it?”

“Let go! I said let go!”

As the drunk demanded, Dan threw him to the ground, and he landed with a loud thud.

“You son of a bitch!”

The drunk, as angry as he could be, unfortunately punched Dan.

“Ah, so you want to try it?”

“Come on! You coward!”

And Dan was not a man who ever avoided a challenge.

“For freedom, equality, and justice!”

I don’t know where freedom, equality, and justice are. At least, in the context of Prohibition, freedom was the right to drink alcohol in a good mood, equality was the right for everyone to drink alcohol, and justice was the act of privately sanctioning a drunk who was causing a disturbance.

That day, in front of the Prohibition, the sound of making sticky rice cakes [a metaphor for the sound of repeated punches] never stopped.