Pink Milkshake
Living far from home, I turn my lonely eyes to what no longer is. The was-ness of America more and more the news of my day.
To watch America die from overseas is to be an orphan as well as an ex-pat.
There is hope, of course. In part, because so many people do so much good. In part, because there must be hope. Hope is what we manufacture by our actions. And whether times are good or bad, we must act to make tomorrow better than today.
But two devastating criticisms always come back to me about America, the first offered during the Obama administration by a Dutch friend. “America,” he said hesitantly, “is a little . . . boring.”
Right, I thought. It is indeed. Everything about money, nothing about texture. Essential cultural centers like Manhattan and Harvard Square long since faded into outdoor malls. And that same transactional boringness creeps into Amsterdam and across the world, which augers trouble.
Trump made America less boring, of course, but only in the way watching a car crash is not boring.
The other criticism I can never get out of my head comes from Greta Thunberg.
In her diary of visiting the states some years ago she says this:
Who is the adult in the room? That question has been asked over and over again during the last year. But this question reaches a whole new level when I end up standing in front of the food court in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. Fast food chains. Hamburgers, candy and ice cream stores. Dunkin Donuts. Baskin Robbins. Here you find the most powerful policymakers in the world sitting in their suits, while drinking pink milkshake, eating junk food and candy.
It is worth listening to her speak this (starting at 5:45) as her annunciation, totally fluent but not native, adds the visitor’s disgust to an already lethal observation.
Peennk millkshakke.