This is in response to Booman’s article here in which he states (in part):
I am so tired of conservatives advising us not to emulate Europe. Yeah, maybe we do some things in a smarter way, but anyone who’s traveled to Europe has been impressed…
I have to admit I have a certain reaction to this quote and it’s a lot different (the reaction) than it would’ve been some years ago. So I’m going to ramble a bit.
I’ve met a number of (American) tourists in Europe, including some good friends here on their first visit, and of course I have my own impressions. But what came to my mind first was my reaction as a longer-term resident of this so-called “Europe” upon visiting the United States last time. Sort of the inverse reaction.
Honestly? It’s turning into a Third World country. I remember when Hurricane Katrina hit. I was at the beach (in Romania) and I remember telling my friend, “Thank goodness it’s the United States. The people will be alright.” I was thinking of how flooding in Romania has been a major problem here at times. But then it was “heckuva job” Brownie and all the rest. And my reaction personally was okay it’s some kind of combination of Bush/Republican screw-ups and latent racism.
But all these years later, what? Basically nothing has changed. A major city got (virtually) wiped off the face of the map and what? Is it even 50% of what it used to be? Not the last I’ve heard.
Then you take Detroit. A few searches will pull up stories of people hunting wild game and skinning rabbits and all that. There was no hurricane – the city just fell apart. Banana Republic style politics (aka corrupt as hell), no economy, the thing is falling apart. Second major city (virtually) wiped out.
Then you’ve got the World Trade Center – still what? A hole in the ground. Supposedly a “major patriotic” deal and it’s left with nothing happening and nobody seems to have the political vigor to even do anything about it. How can this be? What kind of country would let a major patriotic cultural site rot inside of one of the largest and most important cities?
And in the cities where people still live, crime is outrageous. When you go to buy a soda the cashier is behind bulletproof glass. Every single store has video cameras and guards. A lot of restaurants have off-duty police officers in uniform. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere in the world without an active war going on that has so much violence. I seriously doubt there’s a single city in the world where the government (police) kill as many citizens as in the United States. Who wants “freedom” like that?
Even in the supposed “advanced” categories, the United States seems more like Albania than London. I still find it mind-boggling that you can be living in a city in the United States and not get reliable mobile phone coverage, that there are so many “dead spots”. I’d have to be inside of a coal mine here (in Romania) to lose a signal – and that’s regardless of which carrier I have. And “overloads” due to iPhone use and all the rest of the news stories just emphasize the fact that the networks suck.
I won’t even get into the fact that mobile data coverage, speed and affordability are WAY behind other places as well.
Mines collapsing. Bridges failing. Structural faults. In some parts of the United States, the roads are very good. In others, they’re in horrific condition. Many municipalities have virtually skeleton crews due to impending financial meltdowns. Parks going untended. School buildings neglected. Libraries closed.
On a federal level, just a huge collapse of agencies including the EPA and Department of Agriculture, FDA, all the people supposed to be checking up on food and medicines and to make sure drinking water is safe and they’re barely staffed? This is some kind of political thing or group suicide or what?
And of course what’s actually made in the United States anymore? What hard tangible product besides food is there? Ok there’s more than just bananas but what’s the definition of a Banana Republic anyway?
- Reliance on agriculture for income
- A few large corporate farms in a few hands
- An oligarchy or dictatorship
Well the United States isn’t quite there yet but jeez, who does all the farming? You don’t even have to look it up to know the answer is a few, mega-large corporate farms. It’s now something “special” and hard to find to get an egg or a piece of pork that didn’t come from a mega agribusiness.
I don’t need to spend more than a few sentences on healthcare but long story short? It’s at African dictatorship levels in the United States. A few rich people get a sweet deal as do a few “lucky” insured people. The rest are churned in and out of a system that is a freaking disgrace. It’s literally cheaper to fly home to your own country anywhere in the world and then get treated than to go through the United States system for anything more serious than an ankle sprain.
The only place where the United States “leads” is military and weapons. It’s true if you love guns and you want to carry them around and shoot them often, the United States is a perfect destination. They’re cheap, easy to get and generally reliable.
But the military? It’s a joke. I mean it’s not the funny kind of joke but it’s a joke as in a 5 year old could manage it better. No offense to all those serious, grizzled guys with grey crewcuts and lots of shiny sparkle on their uniforms but really Clausewitz and Suvarov and Napoleon’s farts could run the military better than the United States does.
The first thing – and again I’m not even trying to make this a political angle – but the waste is tremendous. Literally billions and billions of dollars go from YOUR pocket to where? Straight to someone else’s pocket. Before the first bullet gets ordered from the factory. Before the first plane loaded with vital cargo takes off. Before the first Kevlar vest gets made. The accounting system the Pentagon is literally so messed up that there is no way for anyone on the face of the earth (including the Pentagon) to track all the money. Think about that.
Then supposedly all this graft and waste goes to some “heroic” cause. Well as long as I’ve been alive, which of these heroic causes has ever actually come to fruition? We all know the answer: GRANADA. That’s it. A tiny island smaller than Manhattan and a nation of several hundred million managed to invade it and hold it. Yahoo!
The only “heroic” cause the United States can brag about in anyone‘s living memory is the Sainted World War 2, wherein the Forces of Goodness and Light defeated Satan’s Own Minion blah blah blah. Except even if that’s all true, the Russians did most of the heavy lifting, a convenient little “fact” sidestepped by most History Channel documentaries 😉 It’s like that old TV commercial where the little girl brags she “helped” make Shake n’ Bake.
Meanwhile I know MANY people who swear up and down the United States was not allies with the Soviets and did NOT work with Stalin and did NOT giving him millions of dollars. If you don’t laugh, you cry 😉
All the rest are disasters from Panama to Iraq 1, 2 and 3 (or whatever number war it is now) to Viet Nam to freaking Mogadishu. Lose, lost, and still lost. Millions of lives lost and for what? For nothing. Even the wars which are only supposed to be metaphorical never get won either – total loss on the War on Poverty, War on Drugs and War on Terror.
I won’t even get into the state of literacy and print media in the United States – the fact that you can a) read this and b) understand it already makes you ahead of the pack. If you can spell words longer than six letters, congratulations again. If you understand a tax form, pat yourself on the back because you’re in the top 1% – you’re a genius! Everywhere you go, there’s one newspaper in town and maybe if you’re lucky, two. And god forbid you ask someone to calculate percentages or do “hard math” or have to make change “in their head”.
Seriously, where else are people so lacking in fundamental education aka the basic Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmetic?
On the political side, the corruption is outrageous. I always laugh when my mother finds it shocking that parents here sometimes slip a little cash into the teacher’s hand to get some favors for their kids. Is it bribery? Yep. But it’s nothing like the political corruption in the United States. Every day you hear stories about how all the powerful lobbies X and Y buy off politicians. There was a recent Supreme Court case basically greenlighting this. Yahoo, go ahead!
Then there’s the old “revolving door” where literally one day you write a law for Corporation X and the next day go to work for them directly! Yupi!
And all the rest of the political chicanery from gerrymandering to the ridiculous and insulting Electoral College is just flabbergasting. How can a politician win the majority of the votes and still lose? Easy: he lived in the “democratic” United States. Of course it makes no sense to anyone else on the planet as “democratic” but hey, so it goes.
And on and on. So far I haven’t mentioned gang activity (absolutely pandemic in some places), the whole-scale devastation of some populations by certain drugs (namely meth and crack), the freaking armies of homeless people, many of them demonstrably mentally ill and/or unable to care for themselves, savagely unhealthy food options and untrammeled industrial pollution.
And honestly, the worst part? The mental illness levels in the United States. I mean by that the stressed out, the anxious, the panicking, the depressed, the PTSD, the post-partum depressions, all of it. This isn’t some genetic “weakness”, it’s the result of life being very hard and not very pleasant a lot of the time. Heck, I know the feeling. I’ve put in my long hours and it sucks, I know.
But whether it’s road rage, some nut on a rampage, “going postal” at a workplace, shooting sprees or just someone yelling at you, Americans come off as moody, tense, easily spooked and angry. Just look around you next time you’re in line at security in an airport and you’ll see what I mean. Or look at people stopped in traffic – same deal. People scowl a lot in the United States and you can see it when it’s something you’re no longer used to.
Cities failing, food crappy (and rarely even tastes good, which should be the recompense for the chemical-laden ingredients), military a joke, industries vanishing (at what point does it become a concern when your number one export is scrap metal?), everything costs too much and is shoddily made and falls apart, schools crumbling, basic healthcare costs more than a new car – at what point do people say enough is enough? I mean it’s like that old Bob Dylan song:
-How many citizens behind bars does it take before it’s too many?
-How many people killed by the gov’t does it take?
-How many children dying for lack of healthcare does it take?
-How many people suffering from hunger does it take?
-How many people living out of their cars will it take before it’s too many?
-How many lives taken and lost in “wars” does it take?
-How much criminal violence does it take?
-How many security checkpoints does it take before it’s too many?
-How many lobbyists does it take before it’s too many?
-How many people does it take to get shot before you realize you don’t know how to handle guns on a societal level (unlike say Canada, Switzerland or Czech Republic)?
-How many public dollars to arms makers before it’s too many?
-How many bridges have to collapse?
-How much water needs to become toxic before it’s too much?
-How many untreated drug addicts do we need before it’s too many?
-How many crappy, congested highways do you need before it’s time to think of something else to move people and cargo around?
And of course last but definitely not least:
-How “expensive” (in human and material costs) does petroleum have to get before it’s time to find other ways to do things?
I don’t know. I really don’t. But then again I don’t understand how only two political parties can be “viable” when there are more parties in Mauritius for goodness sake.
To end this on a positive note, I will tell you that most of the Europeans I know who have gone to the United States generally had a favorable impression. It is, in essence, like going to the set where they film your favorite TV show or movie – you finally get to see it “in person”! But aside from that, not so much. Everything is confusing, bureaucratic as hell (try reading an immigration form some day LOL) and insanely expensive (including “public” parks where you pay a fee to get in there – that’s “fun”).
The other positive is the people. And despite the stressed-out, overworked, harried lives I will agree Americans tend to be extremely friendly and kindly people on the whole. Which is kind of why it’s so puzzling to see so much violence and inter-factional hatred and intolerance. I guess to me it seems if you’d be kind to someone face-to-face on an individual level we’d all be willing to pitch in to make sure we drink clean water, eat healthy food and get healthcare. Or that our own cities would come first and not ones halfway around the world. Or that we’d ever get into a situation where a major chunk of the population is either policing or guarding the rest.
Anyway, my two cents. I admire you all for staying and trying to do something about it but personally, enough was enough. Many, many years ago I would’ve been the one saying “love it or leave it” but oddly enough, as it turned out I love it and I left it 😉
Good luck!