After listening to Mitt Romney’s victory speech last night, Paul Waldman channels one of my pet peeves:
Can we just put aside the “only in America” schtick?….Let’s be honest about this. America does indeed offer enormous opportunities for all kinds of people, despite our huge and growing inequality. The attraction it has always held for immigrants made this country what it is. For a long time, the kinds of opportunities available here were a rarity among nations, when in so many places class lines were much more rigid. But that’s not true anymore. There are lots of places where somebody can come from modest circumstances and achieve wealth and/or power.
This whole routine usually just makes me laugh. To listen to America’s politicians, you’d think that we live in the only country in the world where you can listen to whatever music you want, work in whatever job you want, eat whatever food you want, go to a hospital whenever you get sick, root for any sports team you want to, and elect the nitwit of your choice to high office. What really gets me, though, is how often this isn’t just a mindless trope, but based instead on the apparent belief that Western Europe is some kind of impoverished, dystopian hellhole filled with sallow-faced drones who live lives of misery and angst.
Like most pet peeves, this one is basically innocuous, just a lazy way of demonstrating that you think America is great. No harm done, really. But it does grate now and then.
