When my kids were in grade school they enjoyed the adventures of a character named Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley was a simple drawing of a boy that was mailed from school to school. Kids at each school would take Flat Stanley home for a night and then write about the adventures they had with him. Flat Stanley and the stories of his exploits would then be mailed to another school and over time Flat Stanley traveled around the world and met lots and lots of young people.
Flat Stanley was so well known that apparently when some of the Canadian students he visited grew up they modernized him, creating a hitchhiking robot named HitchBOT. Standing about three feet tall, HitchBOT was solar powered and could carry on limited conversations with the strangers he encountered. His position was tracked with GPS and every 20 minutes he would snap of photo of what was going on around him.
HitchBOT would be picked up by strangers, taken on an adventure, and then left off for someone else to interact with. He traveled across Canada and through parts of Europe before coming to the United States a few months ago. Here he rode the New York City subway and attended a Boston Red Sox game. But when he was dropped off in Philadelphia – the City of Brotherly Love – his arms were torn off and his electronics smashed beyond repair.
Like those of Flat Stanley, HitchBOT’s adventures were a story about the people he met and the society they represented. So it’s caused a good deal of consternation that HitchBOT was able to safely traverse much of the Western world only to be destroyed not long after reaching America. Experts are having a field day analyzing what this says about our nation.
Sociology professor Jeff Ferrell at Texas Christian University, for example, has called HitchBOT’s demise a “parable about American violence.” Ferrall added that “culturally, there’s sort of a meanness in the American soul that isn’t present in Canada and other places, so in some ways I found it too typical.” Justice professor Richard R. Bennett of American University agreed, saying “There’s certainly a different kind of culture in parts of the United States, and violence is kind of an expression of that culture…”
What a sad commentary on our nation’s character — and it isn’t just with regard to violence that America differs from its allies. Upon returning to America after a lengthy stay in Europe, Roger Cohen recently wrote in the New York Times that he was “struck by the crumbling infrastructure, the paucity of public spaces, the conspicuous waste (of food and energy above all), the dirtiness of cities and the acuteness of their poverty.”
One can’t help but wonder how many of the ills Cohen perceives are related to our spirit of meanness. How many times has meanness been at the root of the political decisions not to address infrastructure, waste and poverty? Often this meanness is directed towards minorities and the poor, but one need only observe the amount of violence found in many poorer neighborhoods to realize that meanness is flourishing at all socio-economic levels.
Donald Trump is currently dominating the field of Republican presidential candidates with his unapologetic meanness towards immigrants, women and anyone else who captures his attention. Trump appears to be expressing the sentiments of a significant number of conservatives and along with whoever “killed” the hapless HitchBOT, is providing a disquieting window into the darker corners of America’s soul.