LAND OF THE FREE

From Elizabeth Wurtzel, who is American, but the article is in the Guardian, which, last I heard, was a newspaper in England:

Hard to say precisely what it is that people – "folks", as President Obama likes to call them – are so darn exercised about, but they say things that show that their command of any words with more than two syllables is completely questionable, like: "The president is a socialist", or "healthcare reform is unconstitutional". Of course, what they want to say, and what they should say, is something to the effect that they hate this man that those people elected president and they want to kill him – but only people like me, elitists with Ivy League degrees – people who actually have read Das Kapital and who have studied constitutional law – talk trash like that.
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Look, America is a very sad place right now, which is what the Tea Party movement and the midterm elections are about. I could analyse the particulars, but then I would be no better than the whole 24-hour media machine – which, given that unemployment is at 9.6%, is lucky that no one has noticed that they don't exactly do their job. If the news outlets were actually reporting, they would tell us the honest and awful truth: the United States is a post-industrial empire in decline, like England or Belgium or worse (is there worse?). There is no next. We are at next.

And truthfully, it would not be so bad, if we could only come to terms with who we are: we are an amazing country still, but not in the way we believe. We are, in fact, kind of nerdy. We decry elitism, and yet it is precisely the high-falutin' stuff that we are good at. We still have the best research universities on the planet – every world survey puts Harvard, Berkeley and Stanford at the top – and we still have companies like Apple and Google that no one else on earth can come up with. And, of course, our creative industries – movies and music – are still our biggest import, even if piracy is deflating their value.
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Yes, the United States is still the great meritocracy it's always been; but now, if you aren't brilliant or beautiful or both, there isn't much to do, because they can do it cheaper in Shanghai or Mumbai. The Tea Party people should enjoy their rallies, because the rest of it is, indeed, quite bleak.

For the first time in American history, then, social mobility has been replaced with class struggle. Europeans have always been mystified that poor people in this country don't rise up and throw potatoes at Donald Trump – instead, they make him a reality TV star. But that's because everyone here us sure they are going to be rich like him someday, too. Maybe tomorrow.

And yes, you should read Wurtzel's piece in its entirety, despite the fact that it's published in a foreign newspaper. She's mostly right. I wonder if she could be published in a major newspaper here in the US. Her truth-telling may paint far too bleak a picture for consumers of the "news" over here. In truth, not a few of Wurtzel's fellow citizens might label her as downright un-American.

Disclosure: I say "folks", too.

Thanks to Cathy for the link.