Let me preface this review by saying that I have never thrown away a book I bought in my life. Not once. Even books I didn't particularly care for, such as Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged or Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code are displayed on my shelf. Why I Left America, by John Arnone, is the first -- and hopefully last -- book I have filed in the circular cabinet. I didn't even want to sell it to a used bookstore or donate it to a library -- because trash like this belongs in the dumpster.
I found the book while I was in a bookstore in Bangkok. I'm an expatriate myself, living in Japan and teaching English. I've also grown disillusioned with America and I've chosen, at least for the immediate future, to stay away from my home country. I love Japan because I love the culture, I love the people, I love the food and I love what I do.
Unfortunately, the fact that we are both disillusioned expats living in Asia is where the similarities between myself and Arnone end.
The book can't even rightly be described as a book -- it is a hundred and seventy-five page rant about everything Arnone views as wrong in America. It was written in the late 90s but in 2007, Arnone went through and added some additional points (which are in most cases just as offensive as the original text).
Arnone, a former pornography distributor and convict who has a few failed marriages under his belt (as well as a sexual harassment charge), is best described in three words: bitter old bigot. He's Archie Bunker, but without the charm of actor Carroll O'Connor. Every one of the hundred and seventy-five pages practically drips with bigotry -- everything from racism against blacks and Arabs to misogyny to homophobia. Not to mention a healthy hatred of the youth of America and just for kicks, a taste of class warfare, reasoning in favor of segregation and he also acts as an apologist for Watergate and Iran-Contra.
Speaking of which, the book is littered with contradictions. While he says Watergate was not a big deal and Nixon was probably innocent the whole time, he then says it wasn't as bad as Clinton's affair. I suppose he doesn't think Iran-Contra was as bad as the Lewinsky scandal, either. And despite wagging the moral finger at Clinton, he also says prostitution should be legalized and gives justification for men who cheat on their wives.
He rails against immigrants who don't adapt to America, yet he himself has lived in Thailand for over a decade and in the book talks about how he and his wife had to choose a location to move to within that country where English was spoken. Over a decade of living in Thailand and you haven't bothered to learn the language? I came to Japan with zero knowledge of Japanese, yet in less than two years I've studied hard, both alone and with a tutor, and progressed quite far in my proficiency with the language. I do this while working a full-time job as well as my side career as a novelist and comic book writer/letterer. If you have time to not only write a hundred and seventy-five page rant about everything that's wrong with America, but then to come back to it several years later and add to it, then you've damn-well got time to learn a foreign language. Oh, and he's retired.
He also badmouths interracial marriage and yet is married to a Thai woman (one who is thirty years his junior, I wouldn't be surprised if the daughter he mentions from his first marriage is older than his current wife). He bemoans the women's liberation movement and talks about bar girls with such glowing praise and how they never complain about their situation. The fact that this scumbag thinks it's okay for women in Thailand to be forced into positions of prostitution because of poverty but thinks women in America shouldn't have advanced in the workplace as far as they have speaks volumes of him (he also claims he's always been respectful of women...riiiiiiight).
Arnone also admits that his wife married him for security and not out of love. He says many Thai women will marry men simply because of security as opposed to happiness and will then spend the rest of their lives serving their husbands. This can be true in many cases and it is sad that Thai women don't have the advantages to make their own way. Except Arnone doesn't think it's sad. He praises this as a virtue of Thai women and believes more American women should be like this.
In fact, other than talking about how wonderful the go-go bars are and praising the subservience of Thai women (which isn't true, I know quite a few Thai women who would not hesitate putting this misogynist in his place), Arnone has precious little to say about the country he's chosen to retire to. When I was in Thailand, I spent most of my time admiring the culture (and especially the food), visiting temples, talking with people (and avoiding the red light districts). The way Arnone talks, you would think the Thailand outside of the red light districts doesn't even exist to him.
And Mr. Arnone, for all your bitching about America, I'm sure the conflicts you have with your wife's family have a lot less to do with a lack of understanding on their part and a lot more to do with the fact that you're one of many scummy old perverts who go to Thailand and marry women old enough to be their daughters.
Arnone obviously longs for the days of the America of the 1950s. A time when white men were the unquestioned masters, when women would spend all day cleaning the house and caring for the children and all night bending to her husband's will, when children were seen but not heard, and when blacks stayed in their own neighborhoods.
I, for one, am happy that those times are a thing of the past. And I take great comfort in the fact that men like Arnone are nothing more than dinosaurs who aren't yet aware of their extinction.
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