Arizona dreaming
I'm back on the familiar side of the Atlantic after nearly a week stateside. Some totally unscientific observations.
I’m finally back in Vienna after a whirlwind trip to the place were I grew up but haven’t called home in a really long time to deal with some family stuff. I will leave the family stuff out of this, but I would like to share a few observations, from the vantage point of an American who has been living abroad for as long as she can remember and only manages to come back to the U.S. every few years.
If you asked me to summarise my impressions, I would say it feels like the gap between Europe and the U.S. in terms of lifestyle choices, priorities, healthcare systems, climate concerns, just general cultural concerns is wider than it has ever been. The U.S. felt on this trip, perhaps more than ever, like being it’s own very special bubble, with all the pros and cons a bubble brings with it. There is enormous prosperity or created wealth or whatever you want to call folks who invested in the right stuff at the right time and now reap the rewards of that, passing those nest eggs onto their next generations. There is also enormous visible poverty and even homelessness in areas where it was once unthinkable. For example, I would walk in the mornings (which anyway made me look like an alien from Mars — the walking bit) to a local grocery store frequented by wealthy retirees who spend their days golfing, yoga-ing, and hiking, and your groceries are rung up by a woman who is not young, definitely retirement age by European standards, who is missing several teeth. That is not fear of the dentist. That is lack of health insurance over much of your working life.
You see elderly people working in a LOT of jobs. That struck me as a huge contrast to Europe where you are more likely to see new immigrants or young people picking up extra shifts in service industry jobs (as it should be, frankly). I’m sure of part of the return to work is not wanting to sit home bored all day. There is no town square in most American cities, no place where neighbours can simply gather and talk about the weather. Therefore a job is a social circle, too. But more importantly, I get the impression many are having to stay up to date with technology and work past retirement age simply because they cannot afford not to work.
America is expensive. You walk into Starbucks (you are in the minority, nearly everyone else ordered via app and is in the drive-thru line in their cars outside), and even when ordering a coffee and breakfast pastry, you are asked to tip. Everything, and I mean everything, has a price. On day three I drove by huge trucks carrying equipment to hang Christmas lights on cacti and gated community street signs. That too is a business. The employees were both from south of the border (visibly, I don’t want to stereotype, but it is important to understand the deep divisions that still exist in a society that in an economic sense benefits from the labor of those with no papers and no rights) and elderly. In a local Walmart, you can cash a check for a fee and send money to countries south of the border for a fee. There is an entire micro-economy built out of sending money back home by those who cannot even go home because they are in the country illegally in the first place. I crossed the border without them even opening my passport. They literally only asked me to stare inside a camera and that was it. Not even a “welcome home”. So once you are IN America, you an disappear and work, forever, it would seem. And corporate America will even help you turn that check into cash.
No one actually uses cash except for those who have no choice.
I experienced the healthcare system up close and personal this week, and would also like to make a few very general observations which of course are specific to the situation I was dealing with. First, big picture. If you are insured in America, you will have access to surgeons and doctors who can perform feats simply not covered in countries with socialised medicine. In short, you will have the chance to have your life saved and will gain precious time on this earth as a result. There are top surgeons performing state of the art procedures. The rest is annoying, and frankly, noise. The annoying part is the healthcare bureaucracy. It is a spider web of private companies each only responsible for a sliver of the overall pie, and yet if one wedge doesn’t work, the patient’s whole care plan falls apart. There is no overall manager, there is no one in charge, there are just many very polite, very fit young people with college degrees who are each only responsible for tiny slivers of the puzzle. As a caretaker, I spent a lot of time making phone calls and waiting in call menus and on hold and speaking to people in other states to make even basic shit happen. At one point, I returned to the hospital floor post-discharge (a real no go) and refused to leave until I was given more formula for a feeding tube. They grudgingly handed it over, but not before telling me we really were now company X’s problem. The baton had been handed over via Teams or whatever.
So the logistics are sloppy. Families are left to do nearly ALL the post-critical care at home on their own. That part is super stressful. So the hospital stay and nursing care would surely be longer and more comprehensive in socialist Europe, but big picture, the surgery itself, with robotics, highly complicated, life saving — wouldn’t have happened, and the patient would have a shorter life expectancy as a result. It all comes down to the individual vs. the community, who is prioritised in a system. In America, I am permanently conscious of the feeling of both absolute freedom and total responsibility. No one is coming to save you, but the possibilities are relatively limitless, at least in theory.
The climate crisis is non-existent in the American west. The highways are six lanes in each direction. SUVs are mushrooming into bigger and bigger versions of themselves. The average pilates mom runs around with an enormous Stanley cup (I was tasked with bringing two of these ridiculous water bottles home and that was its own scavenger hunt of its own) driving a vehicle that could double for a tank. If anything is hybrid or electric it is not about saving the planet, but rather, saving on gas money.
I had the experience of picking up Oxy from a bulk store pharmacy with no more than my dad’s credit card. That too is America. They will hand the narcotics to whoever shows up to pick them up. The bulk store was packed on a weekday morning. There are elderly buzzing around in electric chair shopping carts, the smallest size bottle of vitamins is 500 pills, there is a $700 tree that would take up two floors or your house covered in lights. Americans are buying and buying. The national sport has not changed. Those who can, of course. Those who cannot buy you do not see. An upscale grocery store with prices like Harrods but an interior that hasn’t been updated since the 70s in a suburb that rises like a phoenix out of the desert, life where life should not be, is filled with super mega fit octogenarians ordering their lunches from a kitchen filled with not so fit black and brown workers. I felt like I was staring at the 1950s all over again. The American dream is not working out for the majority of the people it was promised to.
And yet everyone keeps smiling. Literally, everyone. You smile and talk back sugary sweet because the positive attitude is contagious. A Walgreens cashier told me “I decided it’s going to be a good day so it’s going to be a great afternoon!”. I laughed and agreed. After every annoying phone call with parts of the healthcare chain who were dropping their individual balls, I was wished to have a great afternoon, even though I had just explained in exasperation a problem I found to be of critical importance at that moment. You are left with the distinct impression that no one actually cares if you live or die. Most are simply doing their jobs, trying to pay their bills, and who could fault them for it. Everyone has to find their own way to survive and “make it” in a place that doesn’t hand you anything on a silver platter unless you were born into one.
I was subjected to an evening of watching network evening news. It was eye-opening. Late stage empire, late stage capitalism, the news presenters and content reflected the country that values professional sports over intellectualism, celebrity gossip over arts and culture. It was everything European evening news isn’t, and then some. In some ways, it was kind of addictive. The reality of a presidential race between two candidates in their 80s slaps you across the face like a horrible wake up call on the big screen on which there is no way to look away from the images of a very old man working beyond his expiration date. China. Israel. American drama. A heroic feel-good story. A sad, depressive the kids are not alright story. More American drama.
Ukraine is forgotten, ignored, a problem that is no longer America’s to solve. That much was frighteningly evident from one evening of the TV news. So far away, so not really a real problem right now, just a story everyone got tired of so it was dropped. I truly wish European politicians to watch one single evening of U.S. network news. To understand Europe is on its own. Europe has refugees here now. Europe has a war on its borders. Ukraine is Europe’s actual problem, as America pivots inwards, confronts China, struggles how to be Israel’s ally while at the same time images of premature babies are played on repeat from a Gaza hospital. America needed new storylines, and it has found them. The Russia-Ukraine war is old news, and no longer of interest to 99% of Americans.
Sitting inside America, you do feel safe in the sense that it is hard to imagine bombs falling from the sky. Sure, you might get shot in a local school or supermarket, but that is a statistical risk. There is a “do not bring in your gun” sign on the entrance of the local hospital. Every time a Cesna flew low above my head, I looked up, startled. But those are simply the engines of a hobby pilot making noise above you. There is a little airport for rich people to land their planes and private jets. Conveniently located next to the golf courses. Hundreds of construction workers covered head to toe in yellow neon to protect themselves and even their necks from the sun are building grandstands months in advance of a professional sporting tournament that will bring in millions of revenue over the course of a long weekend. Sports bars with screens on outside patios, bigger than my own apartment, are popping up like mushrooms in the desert. Life has been made possible, even downright comfortable, in inhumane conditions. Nature adjusts. You are warned there may be rattlesnakes on the trail path. Tourists don’t even both to put hats on their babies. They don’t respect or understand the sun here. You know better. You wait for a cloudy day to explore everything that was there before the golf courses. How much of it will survive the humans? Who knows.
I met two incredible women this week who to me were the definition of that special kind of grit and determination that defines Americans. The first was a 62 year old nurse who told us her entire life story within the first five minutes of meeting us. She had her left leg amputated at age 18, and proudly lifted up the leg of her scrubs to show us her prosthesis. Then, she overcame cancer and become a single mom in the process “my husband decided he didn’t want to be married to someone who was sick”. She then remarried and goes on to have a decades long career in nursing, and then, literally only three weeks ago, moves to Arizona with her new husband to continue working in nursing and finish her MBA. “I really see myself in business.” 62 and only getting started. Hadn’t even unpacked yet and already working. Positivity oozing out of her. Extremely proud of her only child with a successful career in the military. Grew up in rural America, waking up at 4:30am to feed farm animals. I was mesmerised by the positivity, the expertise, the passion for continuing to improve oneself and pursue new things. For not deciding life was over 60+ but only just beginning.
The second woman arrived to drive me to the airport. I warned my bag was heavy and asked to lift it myself. Before I could say another word this tiny woman had lifted my enormous suitcase into the car as if she does this multiple times a day no problem at all. She then began driving, and began, seemingly out of nowhere to tell me her life story. I would guess she is about 50, but it was hard to tell. Her face didn’t look old at all, but her stories, her wisdom, they were something from another time. She grew up on a reservation for native Americans, near the four corners, a four hour drive from Phoenix. Total population today around 7,000. A quick google tells me this is the Hopi reservation. Ironically, my Arizona elementary school bore the same name.
She explains to me that she grew up without running water or electricity. Even today, this is how many live on the reservation. My thoughts immediately run to the villages I saw out the train window in eastern Siberia. They too had outhouses and pumped water. Their home was a 10 mile dirt road drive down to meet the nearest highway. As kids, their rode their horses, essentially bareback, throwing a blanket on top, those ten miles, tied them up, and went to school. When she was 16, they offered her the opportunity to attend a boarding school in Oklahoma for native Americans. I was shocked to hear those still exist. She went, and hadn’t been prepared for what she was to experience: flying in an airplane for the first time, seeing a globe (!) for the first time. The education they received on the reservation seems to have been truly much less than one could expect to learn in an ordinary American public elementary school. As for the boarding school, she was homesick, but says her experience was better than those of her parents and grandparents. The school was focused on vocational training, preparing the teens for “jobs”. She returned to Arizona, back to the reservation, but the nearest jobs were a two hour drive away, in the Grand Canyon. She took a job, which came with a tiny apartment. Her grandparents came to stay with her. The apartment after all had running water and electricity.
Today, she lives with her husband, himself originally from Vietnam, came to America as a young child, and her kids and grandkids. They go back to the reservation for holidays and every few weeks. They invested in a “tiny house” which also does not have water or electricity. They encourage the teens to spend time on the reservation with their cousins, to experience this rural life, to do the work with the animals, joke around in the evenings around the bonfire, to experience something other than the big city American life. To not forget where they come from. There is still no internet. Normal cell phone coverage stops when you enter the reservation and you have to switch your SIM to a special provider covering the reservation. The population is sparse and spread out over a huge territory. In her community there are only a couple hundred.
We pull up to the airport and she admires my name tag on my suitcase in the shape of a puppy’s head. She tells me she and her husband have nine dogs. Eight chihuahuas and one more whose breed I cannot remember. I wished her all the best and thanked her for her stories.
This is what I love about America so much. How different we all are and yet we can listen and appreciate each other. She asked me what it is like to take such a long flight. She would like to go to Vietnam with her husband one day, but is scared of being claustrophobic in a small space for so long. I tell her they have good TV and movies and even internet these days. It’s not so bad. You can take a pill and sleep.
In other news I am back to planning a few (hopefully!) holiday events for Ukrainian kids and teens in Vienna next month. I am trying to see what we can fund with donations in kind (e.g. ice rink tickets), and what we will need to build a budget for. I will be in touch soon with specifics. I am of course also working on my waiting list for Hofer cards. 13 out today which is amazing, thank you. The grocery photos continued to roll in even while I was away, and a fellow volunteer and a few folks inside the system are working on potentially getting us an audience with real decision makers here to talk about long-term perspectives, which are at the back of every Ukrainian’s minds in Europe right now. I do so hope we may be given the opportunity to at least argue the case for long-term integration and opportunities for permanent residence for the many Ukrainian moms and kids who have sought EU temporary protection.
I read a fascinating book, War and Punishment, about Russo-Ukrainian history, both from centuries ago, and very modern. A really good play-by-plan synopsis of Ukrainian and Russian politics over the past few decades, written by a Russian independent journalist, Mikhail Zygar, who unlike many of his Russian colleagues, appears to have had excellent access within Ukraine to oligarchs and politicians over the course of many years prior. In short — I recommend this. It put a lot in perspective for me. I believe the U.S. version has a different cover but I hope the content is the same?
I would also really recommend listening to this podcast interview with New Yorker journalist Evan Osnos on China. Full transcript here.
On Ukraine, I would be a fool to say I have a good idea of what is happening right now. I do not. I see that U.S. defense secretary made a visit to Kyiv today. As one journalist noted, without taking any questions from the press. Some Ukrainians say it is a mistake that Zelensky does not want to hold elections. Some rumour General Zaluzhny would be a more popular candidate right now. I have no idea. I wish I had some perspective for how things will play out. I have none. I just thing Russia is in for the long run and the world is mighty distracted with other issues. The far right are winning more elections, in Argentina, rumoured to do well in the Netherlands in a few days. Austria next year will be more different. Does not matter which direction you look, it feels like we are all growing further apart from each other. That worries me. It is much easier to have empathy when you share similar outlooks. In closing, I would share these wise words of Ukrainian journalist Denis Trubetskoy in translation:
Things are truly, complicated. Simplistic explanations no longer suffice. There is a pundit class seemingly satisfied with providing “expert” commentary indefinitely, while real people are suffering and want to be able to return to “normal”, civilian lives. It is that contrast I spend a long of time thinking about.
I have always been far more interested in what “ordinary” people have to say.
A friend just texted me from Moscow. Snow has fallen. Minus 6C. There is snow in much of Ukraine, too. Winter is truly here. Along with it, so much uncertainty.
Oh my. A better synopsis of contemporary America in a few hundred words you will not find.
Also, based on your recommendation I got the audiobook of Zygar.
Fascinating observations. Thanks for sharing your reflections.