Traveling is perfect for really getting to know yourself, your culture, and your place in the world.
Yesterday I was in Luzern, Switzerland and found myself in a high end bookstore. The showpiece display of the store was a rack of books beginning with “The Fall of the American Empire” and ending with “The World: Post America”. Everything was in between and crowds gathered.
I picked one up and started reading, and there, the very first line said it all for me.
In summary:
The US is full of so many wonderful, amazing, energetic, motivated people – but they are not at all represented by their government. The government has a completely different agenda than to support the people that make it great.
Thinking back on the last week in Switzerland in the very touristy town of Grindelwald, I spoke to more Americans than I have spoken to all year in Europe. A random encounter with two fantastic Americans living in France for work, a couple on a train and others at dinners. All with the same sentiment, what is happening to our country? How did this “leader” preside over so much disaster. There is really nothing positive to say about the last 8 years. There is only embarassment that we come from a land that would elect this sort of person to be a leader, not once, but twice.
Living in Europe, I have the daily task of answering for my country. I have no answers, only my own criticism. Ironically, yesterday was the first day of my life where I was removed from the criminal US health care system.
Watching everything go down in the US from afar is a strange experience. For me, there is no sense of how this all feels within the US. To us, watching from a distance, we imagine revolutions forming, fury building, the last straw. Or is it? From afar it certainly looks like it should be.
