Goodbye, America

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March 20, 1985 was a typically cloudy San Francisco day. It was also the day I arrived into America, hoping at age 35 to rebuild my life. I was there illegally.

Apart from $300, I was broken financially. I was also emotionally running on empty. I’d left an Ireland that was on its knees economically and politically. A paralyzing absence of hope had the island chained in desperation. Ireland’s biggest export, its people, was doing a thriving business. I was one among many leaving to an uncertain future.

People tell me I’d been brave. That’s nonsense. An insightful line of Kris Kristofferson is “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

If so, I was free as an eagle, floating effortlessly into the unknown. On that March day, I looked up and down Market Street in San Francisco, wondering where I’d sleep that night. Subsequent nights didn’t factor into my thinking.

I immediately loved every aspect of life in America. The ethnic diversity, the variety of accents, the exotic women, the music, coffee shops, Haight Asbury combined to touch sentiments within me I’d never known existed. The raw energy that permeated the atmosphere excited me.

Despite my situation, I believed I could prosper, provided I worked hard and wisely. What else could I ask from America? I subsequently asked for little, but was given much in return.

The United States of America, its people and institutions proved to be astonishingly generous to me. No doubt, being white and Irish helped.

When all I had left was $50, my first job was given to me by a Filipino manager at the Marriott-Host Bar at San Francisco International airport. I never looked back.

I attended college at night, while driving airport shuttle buses during the day. After graduating with my BA, I applied for a California graduate fellowship that would hopefully fund law school. Despite my pre-Law grade point average being excellent from University College Galway, I was only in the top 20 percent when completing my BA in Humanities. My hope of receiving any scholarship funding was realistically minimal.

In Ireland, I’d been third out of 170 students studying pre-Law. Only the top 10 would be allowed study for a law degree. But because of the absence of jobs, no government funding, no loans, and no scholarships, I had to drop out.

In stark contrast, America wanted to help motivated individuals to become upwardly mobile. They awarded me, a non-American citizen, with less than spectacular grades, all the support I would ever need to complete law school. I swore to never forget that.

In later years when I became successful in business, I created two substantial scholarships for students who were financially- but not academically-challenged. One is now a senior analyst with NASA. The other is a professor teaching in a prestigious university in Taiwan.

I settled into life in America, and graduated within three years. I’d been selling health insurance while in law school, and had built up meaningful monthly renewal commissions. I continued to build my insurance business while doing pro bono work for the Homeless Advocacy Project in San Francisco.

I became successful as defined by any traditional measurements. Like many before me, mainly because of substantial encouragement and support from America, I achieved the American dream.

Life in the years 2000 to 2010 seemed to move along with occasional, but not serious, bumps in the political and social lives of the people. But moving beyond 2010, I began to sense an uneasiness, followed by palpable anger among people from across the political and social divide.

Today, the middle class has significantly diminished. A small number of individuals and families own almost all of the material wealth. That has created opportunities for extremist politicians to cater to an angry, ignored electorate.

Surprisingly, substantial support for the Republican Party now comes from financially- and educationally- poor white voters who harbor the irrational illusion of “Making America Great Again”. Do they even know what that statement means? (It’s irrelevant because it will never happen.)

Here’s significant data from four years ago. It’s probable the situation has become worse today rather than better.

America is 7th in the world in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, and 49th in life expectancy.

It only rates highest in the number of people incarcerated per capita of the population, the amount spent on Defense/Offense, and the number of people who believe angels are real.

Does anything else need to be said? Make America Great Again? America being great ended a long time ago. The country is now in sharp decline. The empire is dissolving. This century belongs to China, the rapidly-emerging communist, capitalist giant who’s flexing its economic and military might, as we in the Philippines know only too well.

In 2015, significant changes in American society became more obvious. Initially, it was subtle but over time, it first became dark, then ugly.

I sensed the country, the people who had been so generous to me developed extreme views that resulted in confrontational political philosophies that prohibited negotiation or compromise.

I recognized this easily because of my early adulthood experiences in Ireland. No middle ground was acceptable. You were either with us politically, socially, or against us.

Today in America, it’s Left versus Right. Right versus Left. Both are convinced of the righteousness of their respective positions. Both are undoubtedly correct. Both are undoubtedly wrong.

In 2018, before returning home to Valencia after fulfilling a lifetime goal of sailing across the Atlantic from Europe to South America, I flew north from Uruguay to visit friends in California. The anger of people was unsettling.

On several occasions, I was cursed at by people even though they had been the ones driving recklessly. I wisely stopped smiling, and giving cheerful hellos to people, after first getting sour looks, then being told to go and bleep myself. Clearly, this was not Dumaguete!

I’d planned to spend 12 days in California. Instead, I bought a new ticket, and after only three days, left this once- benevolent country. I’ll never return.

In 2016, Americans voted in a President who could most charitably be described as unbalanced. After losing his 2020 re-election attempt, he first sulked like a pampered baby deprived of his milk bottle, then encouraged an insurrection while attempting to deny the legitimate transfer of power to the newly-elected President. Undeterred, and still strongly-supported, he’s now readying himself for a bid to return to the White House in 2024.

Instead of Mr. Trump, America in 2020 elected for President a life-long politician from the Democratic party. He could most charitably be described as incompetent. His public misstatements are an embarrassment. Will he run again in 2024? Hopefully not, but if not, the unfocused Democrats have no obvious candidate to replace him.

There are extremes in both parties. The Left are a bunch of whining, ineffective losers. The Right has its traditionally- conservative constituency but has been bolstered by a significant number of mainly- ignorant, poorly-educated, Trump supporters who are blinder than bats flying in daylight.

Paul Simon asks in a song “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” But Joe’s long gone. There are no more heroes in America.

This time, the cavalry won’t be riding to the rescue. Darkness is replacing light in what had once been a noble experiment. A country no foreign force could defeat is now systematically destroying itself from within.

Meanwhile, neither side recognizes the collective harm they are inflicting on a society they both claim to love.

A country that has brought the world so much good leadership in the past is now incapable of providing principled leaders of value, of true moral character, with the intelligence to weather our increasingly-complex world.

Now in my sixth year writing at the MetroPost, this article has been the most painful to write. The America I once loved, the society that had given much to me, is dying from self-inflicted wounds. Americans are afraid. And they have good reason to feel that way. Goodbye, America.

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Author’s email: [email protected]


 

 

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