Except for all the others.<\/p>\n
Because I grew up in West Africa, I have a slightly different perspective than people who bemoan the terrible horrible no good very bad Western, and especially American, life. There may be many things wrong with America, but compared to much of the rest of the world, it’s a pretty good starting point.<\/p>\n
In response to the entries in a New York Times’s slogan contest, Lileks has some pithy remarks<\/a>:<\/p>\n You can picture the satisfied little grins on the authors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 faces; you can imagine the whole tableau \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the computer (which most people in the world will never touch, let alone use, let alone own) the TV in the corner connected to a network that has channels catering to every taste, the iPod stocked with music hoovered up free of charge without consequence, the fridge stocked with food \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the light comes on when you open the door, too, unless it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s burned out, and then you go to the store and get another one; they always have another one. The soft bed, the coffee machine, the well-fed pet, the vast panoply of free information and unfettered opinion flowing 24\/7 from the internet. You can drink alcohol without being sentenced to death<\/a>; you can be a girl alone in a room with a man without earning a public stoning; you can stand up in a room and argue for the candidate of your choice without being arrested; you stand in a society that allows for astonishing amounts of freedom, comfort and opportunity. But.<\/p>\n But. Someone somewhere is a practicing Baptist and someone somewhere else is eating a hamburger larger than you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d prefer, and other people are watching cars go around a track at high speed. As your skinny unhappy friend said the other night: people are just too fat and happy. He bites his nails and plays WoW six hours a night, but he has a point. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter that these fascists-in-fetal-form never quite seem to accomplish anything; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like they drove the gay Teletubbies off the air or had Tony Kushner drawn and quartered in the public square. But they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re preventing something. Something wonderful. And they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re driving large cars to Wal-Mart and putting 18-roll packs of Charmin in the back and they have three kids. Earth has withstood a lot in its four billion years, but it cannot withstand them. And even if it does, who wants to live in a world where these people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re being mocked by small, underfunded theaters in honest, gritty neighborhoods?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Read the whole thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Except for all the others. Because I grew up in West Africa, I have a slightly different perspective than people who bemoan the terrible horrible no good very bad Western, and especially American, life. There may be many things wrong with America, but compared to much of the rest of the world, it’s a pretty … Continue reading “The Worst Nation in the World”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}