The country is falling apart but the government thinks it can run the world. From Daniel Nuccio at brownstone.org:
Everything is dirty. Nothing works. But everything’s also more expensive. And oh, by the way, you don’t have privacy anymore.
That is how I described life in the US to a friend who had been living abroad for a bit more than a decade when we met up earlier this year during his brief return to the states.
We’re not a first world country anymore, I told him. Hopefully our decline stops somewhere around second world, I half-joked. That’s probably the best we can hope for.
Earlier that evening over dinner at what was once our regular spot, he told me of his life as a physician in Poland. I told him about my PhD work on the health effects of social isolation. He told me about the influx of young American soldiers into his current country of residence.
I described to him the dismal state of education back here at home. The lack of standards. The fetishization of boutique ideologies. The compulsory commitments to further favored political causes.
Now, after a mediocre movie intended for teenagers (or perhaps adults longing to be teenagers again) we meandered in the vacant parking lot of the Barnes & Noble we frequented when he’d return home from college, as well as in the years immediately following our undergraduate work when we were living at home, navigating our first few grownup jobs.
Standing under the sterile glow of aesthetically jarring LED lights, subtle symbols of our country’s progress, I told him about the drive through my hometown earlier that afternoon. The place where I’d grown up. The town where we both had attended high school.
