If I ever meet a Trump supporter in a sane, uncharged environment, it's something I'd like to ask. Specifically: When exactly was America great, and what did that greatness consist of? My expectation is that the answer will be unforgivably racist (not to mention anti-feminist), either willfully or in its total disregard for those aspects, but still. I'd like to ask.
Because I have a hard time, you see, with the idea of American greatness. There are flashes of brilliance, sure: brownies, peanut butter, macaroni and cheese, Thanksgiving, Halloween, comic books... (In fact, myth-making generally. It is something we as a people are very good at, for better or worse. We build these stories about ourselves, about who we are and what that means... It is beautiful, and it is also part of the problem.) But wholesale greatness is elusive.
The more I leave America and see for myself what the rest of the world looks like, and talk to the people who inhabit it, the more I see we're not, at all, what we're cracked up to be. Here, a summary of two recent conversations:
1. R and I just got back from Mexico City, a place that people the likes of Ann Coulter regard with unmitigated horror, and you know what? The subways were cheap (around 30¢), extensive, and arrived approximately every three minutes. Public bathrooms abounded, again around 30¢ a pop, reasonably clean, with an attendant to hand you toilet paper. And yes, smog existed, but at street level it was far cleaner than NY (which, come on, is as good as America gets). It is, in short, a large, modern, well-run city that puts us -- or really should, if we take the time to examine it -- to shame. Add in the endless delicious street food options, and you really start to wonder.
2. As a non-union city employee, as of last(!) year I am entitled to six weeks of paid maternity leave. (You're shit out of luck if you're in the union, or work for any number of other companies.) So yay. Plus I have health insurance that will cover most of the associated costs of having a baby. I am definitely one of the lucky ones. In America. Do you know what I'd be entitled to as a citizen of Sweden? It's almost too depressing to contemplate. Per NPR:
Parents are allocated a total of 480 days per child, which they can take any time until the child is 8 years old. They can share these days, although 60 are allocated specifically to the father. And they are entitled to receive 80 percent of their wages, although this is capped at a certain level.In fact, "the U.S. is the only industrialized nation that doesn't mandate that parents of newborns get paid leave." Industrialized we may be, but first-world? Maybe if a nuke headcount is the only measure. We don't even get cardboard boxes.
Forget about other health care. Forget about mass shootings and our cultural acceptance of guns generally. Forget about a nation built around the primacy of the automobile. Even so. Greatness is a long way away. If I move to another country in the coming years, it will not be a knee-jerk, fuck-this-orange-turd-of-a-president reaction. It will be because this is not a place to live, to raise a family, to be a part of the narrative.
Do better, America.
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