Growing up, I was a Cartoon Network kid. This isn’t all that interesting because so many of us were too — well, maybe Nickelodeon or Disney if I’m going to be pedantic. But Cartoon Network was were it was at! Dexter’s Lab, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Cow and Chicken, Courage, Ed Edd and Eddy. Saturday cartoons were these weird, nihilistic, surreal pieces that definitely served to set up the millennial and older gen z for some odd relationship with philosophy. For me, Cartoon Network was the first real insight into that great big land across the Pacific. It was a constant stream of this other culture, kind of like ours but altogether different. When I got older, and looked to The Simpsons, Friends, Scrubs, and The Sopranos, there was a fascination there with America. The people, the way of life, the fact they were these little countries that weren’t actually countries but might as well have been sharing the same President, the same currency, the same brands of cars...
