The two USAs

[cosmolinguist]

‎
Regularly, when people I meet here find out I'm American, they say something like "Why would you want to move here if you could live in America?!" 

You can almost see the Disney-World and living-on-the-set-of-Friends thought bubbles above their heads as they ask. 

Next time that happens, I think I'm going to reply "because I don't want to live in a country where national politicians‎ think that paid sick leave is an unattainable ideal worthy only of mockery and ridicule."

The United States isn't really a first-world country. It's at least two countries, and the very small one that has all the money and power has a great standard of living (this is also the one most often referred to as "America," by both its bigoted patriots who are proud of it, and the people I meet abroad whose eyes shine when they say it because they're thinking of holidays and celebrities). The other, much bigger, USA still languishes in a state most developed countries would call barbaric if it wasn't happening in a country with the same name as the one where the Hollywood films and the Starbucks coffee comes from. 

When people hear that I'm from America, they're usually thinking of the first America, and I'm thinking of this second one, where an illness coul‎d cost my parents their home, where they got the bill for the ambulance that took my dead brother away even before the funeral, where poor people die if they get sick, where I couldn't afford to bring my new husband which is one of the many reasons I moved away from America.

Comments

[sorrillia]

I'm rather surprised by people wondering why you'd move to Europe from America: most of my friends here wish we could manage to move to Europe. Certainly, it's pretty high on the list of things I'd like to do if I could ever manage to get a PhD so that I'd have a decent chance of getting a work visa and a job.

[cosmolinguist]

Britain particularly has an odd relationship with America, who started being powerful and important and imperial just as Britain could no longer be those things. And even now there's enough cultural influx from the U.S. that people regularly complain about the Americanization of some aspect of British culture. What people know of America here really does tend to come from either pop culture or vacations, and of course those are both glimpses of the at-least-fairly-well-off America; most people's vacations don't bear any resemblance to the life even I grew up living, and I'm just Midwestern-white-rural; there are a lot of rungs on the ladder below that one!

[davidgillon]

I think UK coverage of America tends to make it worse by emphasising an apparently more affluent society, without pointing out that comes at the expense of government services and healthcare.

[watersword]

Yep; when I was doing my A-levels in Wiltshire, my classmates, upon hearing I was from "New York" (it took me a few weeks to grok they genuinely didn't know there was a New York State as well as the city), immediately assumed my life was like "Friends". Which I have never seen. Loooooots of mutual confusion resulted.

[davidgillon]

they genuinely didn't know there was a New York State as well as the city

You get the same thing closer to home with Durham and County Durham, and I've had a bunch of people over the years assume that if I come from County Durham then I must be Irish - confusion with County Down, I think.

[watersword]

I believe it also happens with Belize and Belize City, and Mexico and Mexico City.

[silveradept]

Very much so are there two countries, one for the rich to put on display and one that is the reality behind those Potemkin villages that the ray of us are trying to make a life in. People subjected to the real America would probably want to leave in short order, once they figured out the American Dream is often a sucker's bet.

[benicek.livejournal.com]

This a highly quotable post.

[cosmolinguist]

Feel free to quote it if you'd like!

[starbrow.livejournal.com]

Yep. I always talk about the NHS whenever someone says they want to live in America within my hearing.

[cosmolinguist]

Me too. Especially because, having worked for and with it as well, I can counter some of the negative things some native British people might say about it if they've had a bad experience.

[matrixmann]

That is what I'm thinking about if people from Europe consider moving to America.