China, America and Shame

I can't remember when I started being truly disappointed with America.

Maybe it was when I first visited it in the late 80s and I saw that LA / Hollywood had poor people everywhere.

Maybe it was when I was reading the lyrics of any socially conscious rap album in the 90s, which basically spells out to anybody who cares to notice all the problems in gory detail.

Maybe it was after 9/11, when I thought that Americans were going to be more enlightened about the Middle East and Islam, and what happened were the start of the forever wars.

Maybe it was during the Great Recession, and I remember reading a book by Kevin Phillips, and they spelt out pretty clearly how things were going to go down. (Prophetic too).

And maybe it was the election of Trump. Even after the last 4 episodes, you felt there was a silver lining. The only silver lining for Trump will be gone if he wins the elections in November.

It is a familiar feeling. When you look at the USA, it makes you feel the way you used to feel about China when it was backwards and poor. So much of what happened in China until the 80s made you feel ashamed, and so much of what happened in the US made you feel ashamed.