> That last paragraph really gets to the heart of Wang’s thesis in this book.

> “We all thought America was this shining beacon of prosperity. It is indeed very rich. But somehow it also has all of these terrible problems. The wealth and the terrible problems coexist. This is concerning and we must study it further.”

I too went through this realization. I think this is a very common phenomenon in many parts of the world.

We watch the US and its prosperity from afar. Ever since we were kids. The reach of the US is so vast, we grow up a little bit american ourselves whether we want to or not. Through the culture it exports to us, we learn american values and ideologies.

We learn to see the failings of our own societies through american lenses. Even recogizing some things as "failings" to begin with is proof that we have assimilated conflicting values of a foreign culture, american values. The US is a towering presence in the world, clearly it must be my nation's values which are wrong.

In my country there's this saying "quem não deve, não teme". The innocent have nothing to hide or fear. People repeat it every day. People say this to my face without the slightest hint of discomfort. They post it on social media and receive likes. Today, in 2024, I saw a woman post this in reply to someone else on Instagram. On a lawyer's page, no less. On a post concerning legal matters. They do not think about it, they do not question it, they are not bothered by its implications in literally any way. It's a conversation-ending quip. To this day, I was never able to convince someone that there's anything wrong with it. They look at me like I'm stupid if I try.

Maybe I disagree with my countrymen because I absorbed american values like privacy and the inviolability of the people and their integrity and that of their homes and correspondence, ideas like innocent until proven guilty in a civilized court of law. In light of these concepts, that saying is unacceptable.

These conflicts with the values of my own people led me to yet another trap: thinking that american people are morally superior and that this somehow explains their wealth and their geopolitical and military strength. Americans are who they are because of such deeply held values, and we are not prosperous like them because we hold different values. They're on top right now. What's a teenager to conclude? They're right, we're backwards.

At some point I believed americans would defend those values, their way of life, with their very lives if needed. That must be why they were so strong, they're willing to die for such things. For some reason I cannot imagine my people doing that. Americans were a different breed. They would depose their own government in armed insurrection if it betrayed those values. In fact they guaranteed themselves the god-given right of citizens to bear arms just to keep the authorities on their toes. Here the authorities are openly corrupt and they laugh at our helplessness, judges see themselves as gods and society recognizes them as such. Another saying: "doctors think they're gods, judges know".

Can you imagine my disappointment when I discovered the internet and got a healthy dose of reality? Try to imagine how confused I was when I saw americans parroting tired lines like "I have nothing to hide", americans arguing for gun control and generally undermining all of those values that supposedly made them a great and free people. The years passed by and I saw the US government eroding their rights away like the oceans erode a mountain, and yet they did nothing. Even worse: they were not ignorant, they were not forcibly stripped of their rights, it wasn't the work of some conspiracy that took over the country via underhanded means and imposed these conditions on them. No, they debated all this, very much in public, and they willingly traded those values away for security despite the literal founders of their nation warning against doing so. Their resolve to maintain principles even when the price is high was tested and did not stand. All the government had to do was conjure up some boogeymen like communists, pedophiles, terrorists and drug traffickers and the americans accepted rule by fear.

I have learned to respect my own people and culture a lot more since then. The american pedestal, forever broken. Just fallible humans, trapped in equally corrupt power structures. Just like me, like us. Much richer though, no doubt about that.