The Price for Being American
As someone who grew up in my youth in Latin America, I always knew there was a price to being an American. We were the “Ugly Americans” in the region, which I took to mean that besides being crass and perhaps too uncaring, we were also more prosperous and not ashamed to display that. When I moved to Italy during my high school days, there was a lingering taint of the ugliness among European perception as well. I tended to write it off all along as jealousy. I was proud to be an American and if that came with some stigma of superiority, I would do what I could to preclude that sense in the way I acted, but if it was inevitable, so be it. But something has changed with the passage of the past fifty years. It is harder and harder to claim that the benefits of being American are as wonderful as they once were. You used to be able to see it in things like kitchens and TVs and now I think its fair to say that the advantage has completely disappeared. Europe and much of the rest of the world is now as modern as we are in almost every aspect and perhaps even more modern in others. We have habitually suffered from early adopter syndrome like in wireless communications. Where we lumbered along with an early adopter wired telephone system that actually worked (thank you Ma Bell), and other countries lacked the depth of wired infrastructure, that all bogged us down a bit when wireless came along. Many less developed countries skipped the advanced siring stage and just went straight to wireless and used the strength of our and other country’s technology to leapfrog forward with five bars. That was somewhat understandable. What was harder to grasp was why we did things like go CDMA versus GSM, like the rest of the world. That has largely disappeared now with protocol 802.11, but still, internet adoption via broadband in places like Ireland, Norway, Saudi Arabia and the UAE far outstrip that in America.
We may originate more technological advances than any other country (Israel might even beat us at that), we really do not lead so much and thus have a hard time claiming advantage in that important aspect of lifestyle. When it comes to ambiance, we also seem to lag anecdotally compared to many quaint places in Europe and even the far-flung corners of Asia. As for perhaps the most important aspect of advantage, longevity, we have always known that certain cultures like the mountainous regions of the Urals and the islands off Japan had anomalous lifestyles that caused those people to live longer. But America was the place where infant mortality dropped dramatically compared to the rest of the world and child early nutrition made for stronger and healthier children and adults with little exception. Our American lifestyle gave us a longevity advantage that seemed understandable for people living the good life. Then we started to hear about things like the Mediterranean Diet and the idea that frequent red wine drinking and more organic food sources was extending the lifespan of many Europeans. We would take that information and somewhat scoff at it by suggesting that if we wanted to sit at the cafe all day and sip wine rather than aspiring and striving for the American Dream, that was fine for the European Socialist Elite, but it wasn’t something we agreed with or believed in. In other words, we rationalized our way out of the issue even though Europeans were gaining 4 or 5 years of added lifespan at our expense.
Then came COVID. One of the things we all learned during COVID was that the disease impacted the lower classes of our society much worse than it afflicted those of the more affluent. That made sense, even if it offended our egalitarian tendencies. I would see it at ground level out here among the day laborers who said they preferred to take their chances with COVID rather than have they and their children starve for lack of work. But a funny thing has come out of the post-COVID data. It seems that the stark fall in American longevity due mostly to COVID was far more severe for Americans than for other developed countries in the world. Furthermore, the recovery of those longevity levels, which had fallen in quite statistically relevant amounts, has just recently been released and is shown to be lagging in Americans compared to people of other nationalities. Some of that might well be the politicization of vaccinations and the unwillingness of the large MAGA contingent in trusting the deep state with their heath needs when it came to vaccines. But now, the data is showing something else altogether. It is also showing that Americans are suffering more than other cultures in other types of causes of death, most notably heart disease, diabetes, drug overdoses and, yes, gun-related deaths. Our genetics, our diets, our indulgences and our love affair with firearms has long put the country in a unique position in the world statistically speaking, but I’m not sure it was ever directly linked to a demographic trend as powerful as reduced longevity.
I would imagine that these statistics can be cut in lots of different ways and its not clear that anyone can say that a specific person within a sociological class is likely to have a shorter life if living in America versus living in a place like France. Statistically that may be correct, but there are many variables at play. I have often said that the United States has the demographic difference of higher immigration levels and people coming in who did not have the benefit of early life nutritional advantages, so lower levels of longevity in that cohort would logically bring down our overall numbers. But that is simply no longer a valid argument with most European countries have bigger immigration impacts than we have. And yet, European countries enjoy a longevity number over 80 years where we are struggling to break the 78 year level. This is a significant difference that does not speak well of the choices we are making in this country. We used to have the best nutrition, the best healthcare system. Other countries had more serious drug problems than we had, and domestic terrorism and violence was a problem that others had, not Americans. Now that it all upside down.
Our nutrition is deemed unhealthy by many standards and that is more than an impact from the supposedly healthful benefits of a few glasses of red wine sipped at a Paris cafe. We now have not only higher cost medications (thank you Big Pharma), but the overall cost of healthcare has left us with a scarcity of good care across the board. A friend of mine is moving to Australia specifically because he says he can get a doctor’s appointment there where he has to wait weeks or months here. As for the drug overdose problem, highlighted by all the fentanyl deaths of late, all I can say is that we seem to have gotten stupider as a people, valuing education less and falling into despondency in ways that drive people not just to addiction, but actually to growing suicide rates as well. And then there is the gun issue. Our country is so crazed about guns and the supposed “right” to own any damn gun they want, including military-style assault rifles, that our statistics as a country have put us off the charts on gun deaths, especially among younger Americans.
All of this seems to point to a decided cost to all of us for being able to call ourselves Americans. I suspect that I am too old to think of myself as other than American and I am unlikely to seek residency elsewhere on the vague hope that it will help me live longer, but if I were younger, I might reconsider. I believe the problems that plague us are not uniquely American and there are plenty of signs that the problems are shared by many other countries, but like with almost everything, America seems to be leading the way even though its an undesirable path. I guess I am just too unwilling to change and am thus willing to pay the price of being American even though that price keeps rising.