"Everything is dirty. Nothing works. But everything’s also more expensive. And oh, by the way, you don’t have privacy anymore..."
Authored by Daniel Nuccio: 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.
