“My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.”
– Abraham Lincoln
I never get why people bash on the United States. I’m not talking about foreigners who criticize the country’s foreign policy either, I mean actual citizens. The guys who declare that fat chicks and leftoids have ruined the country and that the only safe haven left is Turkmenistan. Other than the cold weather I actually like America and think it’s a great place.
The United States is massive, each state is essentially the size of a European country. Every state has its own culture, customers, and even dialect. Someone from Maine isn’t going to behave the same way that a person from Texas will. Anyone who complains that America sucks, usually still has 49 other states to try out. I live in the infamous and dreaded “fly over,” a supposed cultural wasteland. If you drive 20 minutes north of my house you have posh Scandinavian restaurants, Korean Barbeque, French Bistros, Indian food, and a bunch of other places that I can’t even think of right now. If you drive 20 minutes west you have rodeos, monster truck rallies, and gun shows. That’s two different worlds within an hour’s distance of one another.
If I wanted to I could go out and get a tedious job that paid well. As much as I might bash on working for someone else, I would rather be overpaid and bored than grow up to work in a crowded sweatshop in Mumbai. Checking emails and taking naps in the employee break room is infinity less soul crushing than spending 12 hours a day trying to assemble iPhone parts while getting yelled at.
The last three girls I went out with were from Mexico, Germany, and California. That’s variety. Had I grown up in Turkmenistan I’d probably only be able to date girl’s from Turkmenistan. Had I grown up in Saudi Arabia or India I wouldn’t have been able to date anyone and my parents would have arranged for me to get married.
The argument that America sucks, or that there’s nothing good in the United States is stupid. In a country of 313 million people and 3.8 million square miles there’s always something to do. You don’t even have to travel cross country to find a fun activity. 45 minutes from my house there’s a place where I go wakeboarding during the summer. At the end of the day I usually go to a massive bar that’s on the waterfront and eat nachos while I watch the sun set. It’s actually one of my favorite things to do.
If I drive eight hours west I end up in the South Dakota Badlands. It’s a place that looks like the surface of a distant planet. A far cry from the woods and hills of Iowa.
If you can’t have fun in America you aren’t going to have fun in whatever third world country you flee to. Even outside the two national Meccas, Los Angeles and New York City, there’s still plenty to do and see. You can travel two hours in any direction and be inside an entirely different world.