American S***hole
I think I can finally say what I have tried to avoid saying for quite a while: I wish I had never moved to America. I came from the “shithole” of Oxford in 1990, a hopeful immigrant. I have had my doubts about the place over the years, both from personal experience and the political landscape. But these doubts have intensified recently and I find myself in a state of daily disgust. The simplest thing I can say is that people (not everyone!) don’t grasp the difference between right and wrong: they are morally deficient. Then there is the brutality, stupidity, and inhumanity. Maybe I will move to Haiti.
I left England in the late eighties partly in recoil from what was happening in the Thatcher years, especially to universities and the welfare state. But now I recoil from the America that now exists, which seems far removed from its traditional ideals. Both of these are painful recoils.
Maybe you should write a book about it. On a more constructive-sounding note, Steven Pinker has a new one coming out called “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress,” which sounds interesting. We can’t just surrender to Trump and his morons. Or, for that matter, to the politically correct McCarthyites on the left.
I recently read a few of the essays in “Philosophical Provocations” and enjoyed them. I’m looking forward to finishing the book.
Scribbling while the moronic inferno burns.