Walking the Talk

American Ideals are Great on Paper, but Take a Look Around

When I still lived in Connecticut, I stopped by the Rite Aid one day and got to chatting with the cashier. She was an older woman in a hijab and her name tag read “Yara.” She said she’d emigrated to the U.S. from Syria some 15 years before and was hoping that someday she would lose her accent, which actually wasn’t bad at all. After talking a bit, I asked if she liked it here (this was before the election of 2016, when it would no longer be possible to ask a question like that). She gave me a look that I would describe as dead-eyed.

“If it lived up to its ideals…” she said, shrugging. 

Before she’d arrived, Yana made an effort. She read several  books on American history to get the lay of the land. Once in the U.S., from her dingy studio in Queens, she’d studied the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution to prepare for her citizenship exam. But she’d begun to smell a rat. No one else in the brave new world around her seemed to be familiar with the material. When she’d had a question about the Bill of Rights, she asked her landlady, who’d been out drinking beer by her inflatable pool.

“Fuck if I know,” she’d answered.

It wasn’t long before it became clear to Yara that all men in the U.S. were not created equal, much less all women. That the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness sure didn’t look unalienable sometimes. And clearly, not everyone held those truths to be self-evident. The dream died for her then, but, as she said, “I had to live in reality.” Yara decided that while the U.S. wasn’t all it could be, it was good enough, comparatively speaking. She went about her life.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Most expats and immigrants go through a similar disillusionment, as I’ve written about here. Most of the countries that you’d want to move to have long-established reputations that act like PR campaigns: Sunny Italy with its friendly folk, or beautiful France with its joie de vivre. They lure you in. But, of course, none of these countries live up to their reputations every day in every way. Once you get there, soon enough you’ll discover the soft white underbelly. Italian bureaucracy is a nightmare. The French aren’t very happy these days. Everywhere has a downside.

My sense is that America’s stock has been in decline for at least 20 years, with all the wars and fuckery abroad and the mass shootings and toxic politics at home. Still, it’s the place to be if you want to get rich. That’s why Yara came.

As we are always so painfully reminded during election years, things in the U.S. aren’t how they should be. That is true in a lot of other places, as well, including in Sweden, my adopted country of five years. But what I hold onto whenever something here drives me insane – usually bureaucracy, taxes or ice – is that Sweden, at its core, is decent. It strives to be good. It’s trying. I used to feel like that about the U.S. too, but that was a long time ago.

It was before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Trump v United States that former presidents are entitled to some degree of immunity from criminal prosecution, or struck down 40-year precedent in Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo that reduced the power of federal agencies. Before the court narrowed the statute that prosecutors have relied on in the cases of hundreds of rioters who took part in the January 6 Capitol attack for obstruction of an official proceeding. And before it ruled that cities in the American West can criminalize unhoused people for sleeping outside, even when they lack access to shelter. Or put a hold on an attempt by the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce harmful air pollution that drifts across state lines. Or struck down a federal ban on “bump stocks,” the devices that can vamp up semiautomatic firearms to discharge ammunition almost as rapidly as machine guns. And of course, it was before Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, when the court held that the Constitution of the United States does not confer a right to abortion.

This is how the country is administered and regulated.

I can’t help but see the contrast to recent rulings in Sweden. Here, new laws come into effect on January 1 and July 1. The new laws in July included one allowing parents of small children to transfer some of their paid leave to grandparents or other close relatives, so that childcare could become a family affair. Another law required schools to offer especially bright students the opportunity to learn at a faster pace and a higher level, with teaching that is “sufficiently stimulating.” A third reduced paperwork for the self-employed, allowing them to use electronic records instead of paper receipts and invoices.