Right. Let’s examine the evidence presented here, because it is genuinely magnificent.
A country where roughly four percent of people own a passport has concluded, with total confidence, that it is the greatest civilisation in human history. And the proof? A European tourist enjoyed a Waffle House at one in the morning.
That’s it. That’s the smoking gun. Not life expectancy. Not healthcare. Not the small matter of $39 trillion in debt. No. A man who has actually seen the world found a 24-hour diner with laminated menus quite jolly, and somewhere in middle America a chap nearly wept with patriotic pride.
And he’s getting this from Fox News. Which is a bit like getting your restaurant recommendations from the man trying to sell you the restaurant. The entire network exists to convince Americans that everywhere else is a freezing Soviet breadline, so that none of them ever get curious enough to buy the passport and have a look. Tiny, sad flats. Depressing grocery stores. Described in vivid detail by a man who has, at a generous estimate, never been.
And here’s a detail nobody on that side seems keen to mention. This World Cup is the third in a row handed to a country with, shall we say, a complicated relationship with democracy. Russia. Qatar. And now America. FIFA does love a host that doesn’t ask too many awkward questions.
Here’s the bit he can’t quite process. We’ve been to America. That’s the whole point. We came, we saw, we had the hash browns, we got back on the plane, and we went home to the tiny sad flat with the universal healthcare and the six weeks holiday.
You don’t envy a place you’ve never seen. You envy a place you’ve seen and can’t get back to. And nobody is pressing their face against the glass trying to get back into a f Buc-ee’s.
In 2007, the standards of living in the United States and Western Europe were similar, and most people don’t realize how much things have diverged since the US boomed after the global financial crisis and Europe didn’t.
They don’t fully understand how we’re living and we don’t fully understand how they’re living; even when we visit Europe as tourists, we don’t see their tiny, sad flats and their depressing grocery stores.
That is why Europeans visiting for the World Cup are going to, like, a Waffle House or a Taco Bell and losing their minds. Stuff we don’t even like or care about is wildly superior to everything everywhere else. We have no idea how rich we are.