The Streets of the United States Are No Longer Paved With Gold
By: Stephanie Tolk
Tags: Travel, Society, Immigration, Politics, World

The Streets of the United States Are No Longer Paved With Gold

How the mighty have fallen

At age 15, I first noticed the allure of the United States. That summer, I traveled to Greece as an exchange student where I lived with a host family in Thessaloniki, in the north of Greece, who had a summer home in a beach town nearby. My two host sisters, one my age and one a few years younger, spent summer days lounging on the sand with friends and evenings at open-air discotheques.

For a girl from Puritanical New England, the lifestyle felt dreamy and fascinating.

And to the Greeks, I was fascinating simply due to my nationality. They marveled at my Levi’s jeans. Were they real Levi’s, they wondered? Were they cheaper than in Greece, where one pair was barely affordable? How many did I own? Oh, and had I seen Patrick Swayze or Andrew McCarthy walking down the streets (this being 1990, after all)?

Such were the questions of young teenagers, inquiries about glittery American brands and celebrities.

During my second study abroad experience in the Netherlands, I was often asked if I lived near New York or California, seemingly the only two familiar states. Dutch teenagers associated the United States with traits ascribed to a young nation: scrappy, creative, risk-tolerant, self-important, hotheaded, fun, impulsive. They associated me with these traits. Friends wondered if I had tattoos, which kinds of drugs I’d tried, and if I wanted to drive to Rotterdam for a concert and return at 4 am.

Such were the questions of older teenagers, inquiries about the wild, free-spirited American culture.

As I grew up and traveled more, the questions matured along with me. In Mali, during my Peace Corps experience, people asked if I could drive, marveling at the notion that my friends and I owned our own vehicles we didn’t have to share. Why, they also wondered, was I not married at age 23? Didn’t I require a husband?

Such were the questions of adults, inquiries about the alluring freedom and individualism of America.

When I was a younger traveler, I wore these traits like a shimmering tiara. How wonderful to feel, due merely to birthplace, that I too was stylish, impulsive, risky, fun, free and empowered?

I began to feel a perceptible shift in my international friends’ perception of the United States and its residents when we elected Donald Trump as president. How, my friends in places like Australia, Germany, and Italy asked in 2016, could we elect a man laden with dozens of sexual assault allegations, failed businesses, and belligerent bravado? A man caught on tape using misogynistic language against women just weeks before the election?

Then that man we selected began to take action that confounded, stupefied, and offended further: the ban on visitors from Muslim countries, the separation of migrant children from their caregivers, our withdrawal from critical climate-saving pacts.

Here’s a fact that most Americans never consider: the impact of our actions doesn’t stop at the Chesapeake Bay in the east, El Paso in the south, Lake Superior in the north, and the Golden Gate Bridge in the west. While most Americans cannot name the Prime Ministers of Sweden, Japan, or Australia, residents of those countries certainly can name our leader: his decisions have gravity that bends the fate of people everywhere.

After all, our pollution doesn’t just hang over American airspace. And our international aid comes with strings attached for people as far as Madagascar. As the Washington Post reported, an executive order signed by Trump in 2017

“denied U.S. assistance to any foreign-based organization that performs, promotes or offers information on abortion. A similar plan, known as the Mexico City policy, was in effect under past Republican presidents. But Trump expanded it exponentially to apply not just to around $600 million in overseas family-planning funds, but to the entire $8.8 billion in annual U.S. global health aid.”

Not only can women in places like Mozambique and Malawi no longer easily access family planning support, but HIV testing and treatment has become more elusive.

American reach is vast.

Now, when I hear from friends from abroad, they ask with sympathy, “How are you?” They wonder how our government allowed COVID-19 to wreak such profound havoc when their leaders cared for their citizens with consistent, science-based messaging and guidelines. From the Black Lives Matter protests, my friends gathered that perhaps the United States wasn’t the land of opportunity for all. They offered support during our recent election, when the race was frighteningly close, and wondered with me what it says about Americans that we almost invited a bigot to a second term.

The United States is still a young nation, and now that I’m older, I recognize the flipside of a young nation’s traits: impulsivity can yield poorly constructed policy; free-spiritedness can stimulate the individualism and stubbornness of anti-maskers; self-importance can morph into America First and nationalism.

Our secrets are out. The United States, rather than being a beacon of opportunity, garners pity from people around the world. While our desperate neighbors in Mexico and Central America will still arrive at our borders seeking a bit more peace and income than they can earn at home, the inventors, engineers, and eager, young explorers who landed at our shores 100 years ago are staying away.

We can’t wait to see you, my international friends tell me, but why don’t you try to visit here? We don’t see ourselves going to the United States any time soon.