We just returned from a 9 day Alaska cruise. I had a bad experience on my last crusie, 15 years ago, and I haven't wanted to go again. My wife, however, wanted to see Alaska, and a cruise is the way to do it, short of a seaplane taking you to the interior to hunt and fish. I had a good time, and saw things I never imagined seeing, which I will talk about in a separate blog. This evening I want to talk about elements of the cruise experience. It was truly a modern All-American experience, and each element I saw reminded me of America.
Modern cruise ships are enormous. Ours was 20 years old, and yet carried 2000 passengers. It has a gross tonnage of 78,000. This is a non-linear measurement of interior space, and has nothing to do with displacement. Deadweight tons is a measure of carrying capacity, the weight of all cargo, fuel oil, etc on the ship. Our ship had a deadweight tonnage of only 7100 tons, a measure of how inefficient, from a cargo perspective, a crusie ship is. People want lots of space for themselves, drinking, dining, dancing, etc. It's displacement is around 43,000 tons.
In looking at the ranks of balconies and windows, I was reminded oddly of both a hotel but also an assisted living facility. A cruise ship is one step on the path from one enclosed divided space in life to another- hospital (birth), school, workplace, vacation hotels, assisated living, nursing home, death. There is a blandness to the enormous, uniform face of the ship tha is a reflection of the shape of our lives.
These huge shps are not built in the US. We long ago lost all serious shipbuilding to a combination blow of high wages, OSHA safety laws, and EPA rules. All these prevent the necessary things to make a ship- hard work, high risk, and filth. There is nothing neat or very safe about heavy industry, and between our crippling laws, union demands, and 'free trade' agreements, the US has far less of it than 65 years ago. Ours is the post-industrial economy, where we manipulate information on computers in clean offices but make nothing, running up ruinous deficits to buy them from abroad. Our ship was made in Germany and registered in the Bahamas. Most of these ships are made in Italy and Korea, and most large container freight vessels are from Iceland and the Netherlands. The US has not a single one of the 10 largest drydocks in the world. 5 are in China, 3 in Korea, but that's the price of being the leader of the free world.
The ship is not crewed by Americans. There are only 5100 merchant sailors in the entire US; our ship alone needs 900 crew. The crew serve contracts between eight months and two years. During that time they will get two weeks off in eight months, or one month in two years. They live in cramped double rooms, and the restaurant wait staff get paid about 30,000 yearly plus room, board, and tips, so it's more than it seems. Most of the ship's crew are Filipinos, others from across Asia. They send their pay home to support their families.
The staterooms and suites are fancy words for cabins. They look great- polished wood, smooth wall sections, carpet, procelain sinks, crisp linens. But if you were to take the ship apart you would see something very different. The entire ship is made of steel. Underneath those carpets, behind those plastic wall covers, there is nothing but 1/4 steel plate. Unfinished, not painted or particularly smooth.
Finally, there are the passengers. Unlike the crew, they are overwhelmingly American, a few Aussies and Brits tossed in, and a very few Black travelers. Cruising is a US, Caucasian activity. And those people epitomize the American tourist- fat, loud, and poorly dressed. Indeed, I have never seen in one place so many ill-dressed, ill-mannered people. Their posture, their sense of self, their kindness to the staff, to the ports, and to the sights they came to see are all woeful. I watched a fight break out between 6 drunken passengers during one of the stage shows. Passengers crowd in line, apparently frantic to get at teh endless supply of food.
The passengers were hideously dressed. The American 'uniform' was once jeans. It still is, sort of, but those jeans are sliding off of huge asses, extensive butt cracks showing, accompanied by old t-shirts, flip flops, and hoodies. Or we have young women wearing long t-shirts and short shorts, in Alaska, in public. Looks great in the bedroom, but not at dinner. Behavior matched. The dining rooms are elegant but people show up in shorts, t shirts, and sneakers. They have great service and normal portions, and so predictably, few people eat there.
And they are fat. Not a little fat, but Oh My God You Have to Be Kidding fat. We saw two dozen 400 pounders, at least 100 over 350, and innumerable 300-350. Those are insane numbers, outrageous. And these individuals are walking (waddling) from the 'cafe' (read all-you-can-eat buffet line) with third plates heaped with food. Heaped. 10 pieces of bacon, stacks of pancakes, 5 slices of beef. Omelets stuffed to self-destruction with cheese, ham, and sausage. Nary a vegetable or a salad in sight. I saw one woman order three desserts. I watched another woman, 350 +/-, with a plate piled with potatoes and other food and a bowl piled with macaroni and beef, getting a bowl of ice cream. And she was so frantic to eat that she was eating her potatoes in line with her fingers.And these were young people. One 400 pounder was about 20 years old who, instead of watching glaciers and icebergs spent two hours in a chair, playing on his phone. There were couples in their early 40s, massive thighs, obscene buttocks, huge paunches lopped over shorts. This is in marked contrast to the crew, who are all trim, strong, and slender.
We worry about opioid overdoses, to the point we are giving out narcan to addicts and training civilians how to use it. We are not worrying at all about food overdosing. I am no longer trim. My BMI is 32. I am obese by medical definition. But I am small compared to what I saw on that ship. We casually pay no attention to BMIs of 35-40, people who are morbidly obese. A 5-10, 350 pound man has a BMI of 50. These people are at risk for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, orthopedic injuries, and hormonal anomalies based on weight alone. We are, literally, killing ourselves by eating. If we point this out, however, we are castigated by the soft, faux 'morals' of our times as fat shaming.
And this is America- fat, gluttonous, ill-dressed, and rude. We pass from one enclosed space to another, lacking fresh air, walking, and even interaction wth our peers, heads in phones. We consume what we decline to build in an effete commitment to 'the environment' or 'labor safety and fair treatment' or 'free trade', when in fact the environment is getting more harmed by having our goods built by near-slave labor in China, or taken apart under appalling conditions in India and Pakistan. We send these jobs to the Brown and Yellow People- illegal hispanic immigrants, Filipinos, and Chinese. Except that money changes hands it seems to me simply slavery outsourced.
So that is a cruise- hugely obese American passengers on a ship built abroad, crewed by Asians, registered abroad. And that is America. Making nothing, consuming everything, big, inefficient, bland, confined, fat, loud, rude, ill-dressed, complacent.
And we put a priggish, shiny face on ourselves- world leadership, which no one but us believes, moralizing when we are amoral, preaching abortion and homosexuality politics when we ought to be trading and building.
The sights of Alaska were spectacular, and a cruise is really the only way to get to most of them. But the cruise itself is a microcosm of what ought to make America afraid and ashamed.
Ted
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