Second Class Citizens

For most of its history, I think, the United States was something of a second-rate backwater. You had to go to Europe to find good art, fine cuisine, and, in lots of places, indoor plumbing.

It was only, I guess, after World War I, but then, I would say, not really until the great engine of American industry really kicked it into gear for the Second World War that the good old US of A became a major player on the world’s economic and cultural stage. So, the country had about 50 really good years, from the late 1940s to the late 1990s, but now, especially post 9/11, it seems like we’ve reverted to the mean somewhat and are no longer really where it’s at—which might not be such a bad thing.

Maybe it’s time to reconceive America as more of the way it was in the 19th century, when we were mostly a nation of cranky individualists who knew more about how to fix a plow than the best way to dabble in international geopolitics. Maybe we are better suited to being hicks than cosmopolitans.

Now, I’m not advocating protectionism nor isolationism here; I’m just wondering out loud whether our country’s aspirations for greater power and influence globally haven’t been a source of many of our economic and social problems over the past few years. Maybe if we weren’t always trying so hard to be number one, we wouldn’t end up looking (and smelling) like number two.

It’s like when I lived in Los Angeles back in the early 1980s and was hanging around with Carl Reiner’s son Luke and some of his friends; I spent way more money than I had and made a much bigger fool of myself than I usually do just trying to play at their level. When I finally gave up and started hanging around with my old friends again, I was way happier.

Less cool, for sure, but way happier.