OK, perhaps I overreacted a little when I said that I was trapped inside “the most evil place on earth” a few days ago. As the comments following my post reminded me, there are places far more evil than the one I found myself in. Women were not being stoned to death for learning how to read where I was, minority ethnic groups weren’t being systematically “cleansed,” and the name of God wasn’t being invoked to stop the progress of scientific inquiry… at least as far as I know. The place where I spent last week is just evil in the sense that it’s responsible for the generating a particularly virulent strain of the commercial kudzu we’re now finding it so difficlut to hack our way out of.

If you haven’t guessed yet, I was at Walt Disney World. I was there for a conference. The conference was very good, and I’m glad that I went, but the full Disney immersion began to take it’s toll on my mind after the first few hours. I found myself getting into heated debates with strangers over the Disney “magic” which enveloped us (every few minutes, someone wishes you a “magical day”) and its role in the obfuscation of American history and our society’s growing acceptance of the fictional as real. No one seemed to share my opinion. A friend, who was at the conference with me, is a big fan of the Disney ethos. At some point, he confided in me that if he could, he would like to live 24/7 in a Disney environment, like the one launched not too long ago in Celebration, Florida.

On more than one occasion, fueled by drinks and overwhelmed by “magic”, I was forced to confront people with the simple question – “What’s the matter with authentic experiences?” Defensive, people would tell me that these experiences we were sharing were authentic. Standing on a fake boardwalk made to recall 1920 Atlantic City, as fake birds playfully twittered in the distance, I was told that what we were experiencing was, in a way, “more real than the real thing” — more real because all of the extraneous noise (like that generated by the history of race, class, and labor) had been filtered out. We were inside a pure America, one that had been distilled and cultured, like designer drug.

My friend, the one who told me that he’d like to move his family to Celebration, explained to me that what he loves most about Disney is that they’ve been able to bring small-town America back to life. In response, I contended that the Disney America, in addition to being super-sized and homogenized, strives to resurrect an America that never really existed. When I offered the fact that there were, at this very moment, real small towns across America where he and his family could move, if that’s what they wanted, I was told that it wasn’t the same.

America isn’t a country that values history. We don’t like the inherited, and often inconvenient legacies that come along with real small-town America — the kinds of things I often rant about here at MM.com, like my city’s industrial contamination, prostitution, and the culture of decay at the hands of slumlords. We want brand new old. We like our denim pre-frayed, and for our town squares to evoke the sense of history and tradition without the awkwardness that comes along with artifacts of the slave trade. We want ice cream franchises where rosy-cheeked kids in crisp white shirts say, “Hello, neighbor” like Stepford children. (Who cares that the cheap facade needs to be replaced every few years? The Mexicans will do it for a song.)

I coped by walking around with my iPod, pumping a deadly mixture of Public Enemy, NWA, the Ramones, Elliott Smith and Mississippi John Hurt directly into my brain, and bathing excessively.

So, here’s the revelation that I had on my trip. One of two things will happen in this world of ours. Either there will be the complete and utter collapse of all infrastructure as we know it, in which case we’ll revert to some kind of city-state kind of arrangement (in which case I plan to run for Ypsilanti warlord), or we’ll see the further stratification between two classes in America — one supporting as “cast members” (which is what they call them here in Disney), and the other living the lives of pampered guests. Those of us who can afford to do so, will live their lives in “imagineered” environments, completely divorced from the realities of everyday existence. The machinery of production will be hidden. There will be Disneyfied towns and cities surrounded by well-hidden shantytowns.

And, no, my daughter didn’t accompany me to Disney. I wouldn’t do that to someone I loved.