Media America ends behind Memphis, Tennessee. The parking lots in front of the large Elvis monument in Graceland are full. Fans of the "King" even come by bus. But then it's over. Just a moment ago, there were still cities. But further south there are only spots, lined up along the mighty Mississippi.
A long journey leads us 3.000 Miles through Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. First part of the story is here.
America is in the middle of an election campaign, the biggest and most important of all time. But there is no sign of it anywhere here. America is also in the same dilemma as Europe. Global warming is important, international treaties oblige governments to do something.
Different from Europe
But the way Americans do this is very different from the European way. While Germany is trying to eliminate the causes of future development through fundamental transformation, pragmatic Americans prefer to manage the consequences of current development.
Air conditioning systems are getting bigger, streets are getting wider, in the cities in the south there are more parking spaces than cars.
At the same time, there are no wind turbines to be seen on the 3,000 kilometers from Atlanta via Nashville, New Orleans, to the Gulf Coast and back. There are solar farms. However, they are so small that in Germany they would almost pass as balcony systems.
The Americans are concerned about other issues. The parties here talk on television in the evenings about the economy and the world situation, not about bonuses for electric cars and the demolition of all natural gas pipelines.
Better Streets than Germany
What is striking, however, is how good the condition of the roads in the otherwise poor south of the USA is compared to the roads in Germany, despite large temperature differences and fleets of giant trucks tormenting the asphalt. There are four small construction sites in the 1,000 kilometers between Nashville and New Orleans.
By comparison: anyone driving on the famous German Autobahn from the Baltic Sea in the north to Nuremberg in the south of Germany - the route is only half as long - passes at least 50 places where lanes are closed or construction vehicles are waiting to be used.
Beach with oil rigs
The American looks calmly from the beach on the Gulf Coast at half a dozen natural gas oil rigs that supply not only the USA but also Europe. Nobody in Germany would ever accept that, protest movements are already forming here when it comes to a few wind turbines on the sea..
The USA is not only the largest consumer of fossil fuels today, but since Trump's "Drill, Drill, Drill, Baby" campaign, it is also its largest producer. His successor Joe Biden has not changed anything about this, and Kamala Harris will not either. Renewables, yes, but not to the extent that the oil and gas industry has to fear for its sales.
The USA is a bit like the past and the future in one day. In the big cities, food delivery services deliver food with robots that automatically whiz along the sidewalks. Taxi fleets transport passengers at a price that in Germany is charged for getting in.
Helping hands automatically
In the supermarkets that are open day and night, helping hands automatically pack every already packaged item in a plastic bag - except in one large German chain, which is one of the very small ones here. Of course, the USA is now digitalized down to the smallest village, cash is accepted, but even the last kiosk can get by without it.
It is this American kind of normality that is the only one imaginable for Americans. Here everything goes slower, and at the same time faster. On the one hand, cities like Calhoun and Vicksburg are dominated by huge pickup trucks.
On the other, there are many more electric Teslas on the road, including the futuristic "Cybertruck", which looks more like a lunar vehicle than an ordinary car.
Energy is cheap, food is expensive
The silhouettes of the metropolises Atlanta and Nashville are dominated by towering glass palaces. After work, however, the managers often go home to wooden huts from the last century that are insulated like tents and have an energy balance that would quickly reduce German homeowners to begging due to German electricity prices. Electricity, however, costs only a third of that in the south, and a liter of gasoline costs less than 80 euro cents in Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana.
But just as Germans do not base their happiness on the fact that a piece of cheese in the supermarket does not cost 15 dollars, Americans are just as unhappy that their government gives them more leeway when it comes to private pensions than the German government does.
The green grass
Germany in particular is seen by many as a country in which many things are better, without people like Rosi, who is waiting on the side of the road in the small town of Adamsville for the big homecoming parade of school leavers, being able to say what exactly is better. "Honey, the grass is always greener on the other side," she says.
Writer Clifton would not argue about that. "We think we are the promised land," he describes, "and there are many reasons to believe that this is true." At the same time, however, there are some arguments against it: "We know less from the world because it doesn't interest us." Clifton wants to do something about that with his book about the dark side of America. He hasn't got very far yet. "But you could say I've succeeded in not writing a book that nobody wants to read."
