The Authenticity Crisis

 I have a family connection to the restaurant business and in my teens and twenties worked front of house in many fine dining establishments. When it comes to people I have a pessimistic disposition and tend to begin with negative expectations in the hope of being pleasantly surprised, so please don’t accuse me of blowing smoke when I say that I have always found Americans, counter to European stereotypes, to be invariably intelligent (occasionally culturally naive, but that’s not the same thing), friendly, reasonable and generous. It may be surprising to the uninitiated therefore, that Americans don’t enjoy a commensurately high reputation among waiting staff. 

One of the reasons for the somewhat low regard for our transatlantic cousins is definitely “snooty waiter syndrome”. Waiting is a low skilled job generally done by the more aesthetically presentable sector of the working class. Consequently it entails a superficial knowledge of the arbitrary and performative etiquette of a more socially valued and affluent class. Waiters begin their careers feeling slightly humiliated by their ignorance of cutlery specifics, forms of address, the correct way to serve wine, how to serve, when to clear, etc, that are simply basic elements of life for their posher clients. In an ideal world this would lead waiters to be sympathetic to customers who also lack this cultural knowledge, in fact, accustomed to their work engendering a slight feeling of inferiority, encounters with the uninitiated actually become opportunities for the humiliated to become for a change, the humiliators; an experienced waiter has internalised the snobbery he has been subjected to, enhanced by a dash of resentment to boot. In the case of Americans, things that in the UK, are manifestations of class status are of course obviously simply manifestations of cultural difference; that fact however, will never ameliorate the pleasure a waiter, who is invariably tired, bored, hungry and in an existential feud with his chef, gains from feeling superior to his employer (the customer) however bogus the grounds may be for such an evaluation. 

Putting that rather dismal state of affairs aside, there are some genuinely confusing cultural divergences in restaurant etiquette that irritate UK waiting staff. Americans love to ask question, and it becomes clear that the information itself is not the important to US customers, they will often ask about items they have zero intention of ordering. They will ask questions about the history of the business. Mistaking these questions for legitimate interest you will watch your guest’s eyes glaze over when more than a glib soundbite is offered in response. Americans love to make random changes to dishes and order wildly incompatible add ons like a mashed potato side with oysters au naturale, or potato wedges with a lobster bisque starter. The American diner loves nothing more than to ask a series of pointless questions, then order a weird combination of starters and mains transformed to his or her own whimsical fancy; for the American a menu is merely a list of ingredients from which they construct a meal, and it drives waiters and chefs crazy.

Why Do People Believe Obvious Lies From Governments And Insitutions

In 2002 UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair’s government published the infamous “September Dossier”,  a report alleging the presence of  Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. This dossier precipitated a series of wars of incalculable regional damage and loss of life. It was quickly established that this document was a pack of lies, and yet, despite the magnitude of this lie, public trust in official claims remains to this day undiminished.Tony Blair is not in jail and is universally regarded as a wise elder statesman.

Covid deceptions could fill a book and many people have indeed done so. A random few that come to mind are the acceptance of Neil Ferguson’s pandemic death toll models. Ferguson had/has a consistent track record of predictive failure and was, frankly, an obviously incompetent modeller, and yet the predictions of this hypocritical lockdown flouter, became the basis of government Covid policy. Then there was the real time transition from “masks don’t work, to masks are essential”, the “any death within 28 days of a positive pcr test is a Covid death” nonsense, and the blatantly untrue, “vaccines will provide 100% protection from infection and transmission” claim. The public continue to obediently roll up their sleeves.

Anyone remember “global warming”? Before there was “climate change” there was global warming. Global warming was a term coined by scientist Walter Broecker in 1975, although the term was used concurrently with “climate change” in scientific circles, global warming, riding the crest of a short term rise in planetary temperature, was adopted as the preferred brand option for this novel and highly contagious viral climate hypothesis, until a succession of catastrophes compromised it’s market value. In 1988 the planet inconveniently stopped warming and continued to stop warming until 2012, a resumption that purely coincidently concurred with revised data interpretations and collection protocols. Within this period of failure to cooperate with scientific predictive modelling, the UK suffered one of its most savagely snow bound winters of the past half century, sheep froze to death in the fields. As well as the innocent suffering of sheep, there was a well deserved suffering of climate “scientists”; scientists like David Viner, who in 2000 had predicted that snow was set to be a “very rare and exciting event”. An equally savage, not all that rare, but perhaps in its own peculiar way,“exiting”, brutally cold winter occurred in 2018. The fact that these laughably antithetical weather events followed on a egregious data manipulation scandal that came to be known as “Climate Gate”  astonishingly failed to sink the not so good ship, Climate Panic. Climate Gate was a scandal in which in 2009 the UK climate research department’s emails were hacked, exposing an awareness of the warming pause and an intention to respond to this by not informing the public and to instead “hide the decline”. All of these unfortunate events ultimately lead to the early retirement of “global warming” and the fielding of the conveniently ambiguous substitute, Climate Change. Public faith remarkably remains unshakeable.

But wait! If you think that’s funny, wait until I tell you about the death of a man called Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein ran a child trafficking ring that serviced a who’s who of American politics and culture. Epstein was arrested in 2019 for the federal crime of trafficking minors. A lot of extremely powerful people had a very powerful interest in Epstein not testifying, so understandably he was held in conditions of the tightest security. Epstein’s cell was covered by two cameras and two separate guards were assigned to twice hourly checks of Epstein’s cell. On August the tenth, official sources announced Epstein’s death by suicide, citing an astonishingly bizarre and unbelievable concatenation of events. On the evening of his suicide both of Epstein’s guards simultaneously fell asleep for three hour. In a massive “coincidence” both of the cameras covering his cell also malfunctioned. Completely unaware of this, Epstein chose this precise point in time to commit suicide…by hanging himself with paper from a bed frame he was taller than. People believe this; I am not making this up.

How can we explain this capacity of the general public for belief in the impregnable truth of claims built on obvious nonsense?