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Apologetics for America
I'm a big fan of the United States. It's a big country. It's a safe country. The people are wealthy, kind, industrious, and have done more than their fair share of upholding the Pax Americana under which the majority of the world prospers, including those who would tear it down.
I would go so far as to say that I'd be significantly happier if I had been so lucky as to have been born in a counterfactual universe where my parents had emigrated there, even keeping all my myriad flaws like ADHD and depression.
It's a country that holds multitudes, and has had such a good track record of making good on its promise of embodying:
And then achieving the minor miracle of making the vast majority of them upstanding proud Americans regardless of caste and creed.
(To such an extent that it has lost the memetic immune system needed to assimilate some of the people who meet that criteria but are resilient to anything but force)
It is gorgeous. Even after the visiting the UK, a nation that even in its sclerosed and ailing state is significantly better than India, I found myself grossly disappointed at how small and dull the place was, compared to what I've seen of the States.
I count myself lucky to still have the memories of when I visited as a toddler, some of my earliest, a period I enjoyed so much that I came back home speaking English with an American accent when I hadn't even been conversant in the language when I left.
I stare at the reels and pictures posted on Insta by my friends studying there with ill-concealed envy. It looks so huge, so clean, so vibrant, so picturesque and unspoiled. Still a land where someone with innate talent, having landed with but a penny to his name, can ennoble himself through hard work, or at the very least his descendants.
If it were not for the fact that I'm currently ineligible to give the USMLE today, for no fault of my own, I'd bid adieu to my current aspirations for practising and settling in the UK. The latter is still better than India, but do you really need me to tell you how low a bar that is to beat?
I'm about as pro-American as it gets without driving a pickup truck with the stars-and-stripes hanging off it!
The people eat great food. They live in huge houses that appear outright intimidating to the rest of us. They can afford to waste gigaliters of water on a modestly appealing perennial grass and mostly not begrudge the expense.
They can travel visa free to most of the world, and act the fool there (can, not necessarily do, the worst I can say about most American tourists I've met is that they were rather underinformed about where they'd ended up), content in the knowledge that none but utter pariah states would dare raise a hand at them out of fear of Uncle Sam.
They earn salaries that make us all look like paupers. The median wage for a doctor in the US is $250k, fresh out of residency, whereas a senior consultant in the UK might be content to make half that. Indian doctors can only weep, especially lowly ones like me. Even my father, so talented in his surgical field that he'd be nationally famous if he was more fluent in English (instead just being regionally famous), makes only $50k PA at the very peak of his career, after a life of suffering and hustling so his sons would have to suffer and hustle just a bit less.
Even that seemingly colossal sum of money does not achieve the QOL a naive purchasing power calculation would suggest. Even billionaires here must be content to have their money only buy quick trips with their windows rolled up from only upper class enclave to the next.
The world, somewhat more multipolar than it once was, still wobbles unsteadily if you try and make it rotate around an axis not centered on America.
I'd give a lot to be there. I really would.
That is why it so severely vexes me that my girlfriend, a smart, intelligent and hard working woman who makes for an enviable partner to have at my side, holds a view of it so jaundiced you don't know whether to cry or laugh.
Like many Americans, she has had her perception of the States clouded by sheer propaganda that is more interested in cherrypicking out all of America's real problems, and when even all the real ones no longer suffice, concoct ones out of half-truths and whole-cloth to terrorize a broken primate brain that only notices the bad and becomes inured to the good, such that it no longer bears a resemblance to how fucking good they have it.
She stares at me like I'm mad when I tell her I've always wanted to live there, and the few warts on the face of the nation can't hide its timeless beauty.
She believes that abortion has been banned. When I protest otherwise and say that it's only a few states putting restrictions on it, and even then, just a few, she shakes in existential terror at the idea that there's a seething crowd coming for the rights of women, eager to snatch them all away. She thinks racism is a serious concern for hardworking and talented immigrants who speak fluent English, whereas you could put me in a room with a Confederate flag and I'd find a way to end up drinking beers and shooting AR-15s before dawn.
Did I mention she's terrified of gun violence, even if she could live a dozen lives in parallel and not get shot?
She categorically refuses to follow me if I wistfully make plans to find some route to make it there, be it fighting tooth and nail with my med school and the ECFMG to give me the right to at least try my luck, so that I can show them I meet even their high standards.
I'm at the point that I am seriously debating abandoning clinical medicine as a career, to upskill myself in medical ML, so that I have an easier route to the States that isn't gated behind a professional licensing exam I'm not allowed to give. I am still young. I am allowed to dream.
She's rather be middle class in the UK, unable to afford air-conditioning, living in a tiny house, watching our salaries erode into nothingness, and then, if Sunak successfully makes doctors into a thin wrapper for GPT-5, potentially resign ourselves to a life of mediocrity, or worse, come back to India with our tails between our legs where we'd have to settle for working shit jobs with longer hours and worse pay.
She's scared of paying the medical bills, when the kind of comprehensive coverage that two professionals making 500k together buys care beyond the dreams of the NHS. Perhaps not value for money, but value.
I criticize America all the time, but only because I love it. I want to gorge myself on cheeseburgers with ridiculous portion sizes, because even if I die fat, I die happy.
I cherish what the Founding Fathers built, a shining city built on a hill of negentropy and abundance, rising out of a swamp wherein dwell the majority of us, only a generation or two removed from near-Malthusian conditions. I would die to keep the barbarians away from the gates, if only because I want to cross them myself, as an esteemed guest if nothing else, hopefully to be one of their own.
I set out to write a post somewhat glorifying (fairly) America, and to invite others to submit arguments that would let my girlfriend see reason. It would seem I've inadvertently done all the heavy lifting, if not for the fact that I've marshaled all these arguments before her and still found them wanting.
I don't want to jump to the conclusion that the two of us are moral mutants who can never reconcile our preferences. I prefer to think that she's wrong about her fears, or weighs the wrong facts too heavily and the right ones not at all.
Help me convince her. I will find it hard to live with myself if I fail.
Oh, and Happy Fourth of July to you all, ye sons and daughters living several decades in the future, hailing from the nation from whose physical and mental toil most of the good things in the world come.
Wait, is it a bit late for that? Um, I blame timezones, pernicious and insidious things that they are.
Don't think I don't see the cracks in the pristine facade, the erosion of the meritocracy that made your country glorious. I simply think that if America wakes up and patches a few holes, it can earn the right to slumber again in peace for centuries hence.
Find a new girlfriend. Someone who not an Indian feminist. Indian women for whatever reason seem to latch on to progressive political whining with glee. Often being of the most radical type. It’s hard to imagine someone like that being a good partner. This type of person is often quite mercenary and will drop you if you hit a bumpy patch. I imagine there are an abundance of traditional women available, in absolute terms if not relative.
Short of that, tell her she will be in good company in the US. There will be endless women networking events, affirmative action, protests to join, causes to agitate for, white people to complain about. All with institutional, judicial, and community support. She’ll get lots of positive attention for all her political action. She could be special. Probabaly more special than she is in India currently. I’m going to guess she’s not a BJP fan, though i don’t know much about Indian politics. If you believe the progressive party line to the extent that they have one on India, he’s the 21st century hitler. I’d imagine he’s broadly popular and you don’t get much status from bitching about him at home.
I'd rather not find a new girlfriend, thanks. I'm rather attached to this one.
She might have SocJus tendencies, but that comes from having very normie tastes in social media. She tolerates my rather heterodox views, so I can only return the favor.
I'm sure there are some conservative Indians for whom this is counts as good advice, but they are categorically not me. I wouldn't marry an Indian equivalent of a "trad wife" if you paid me money to.
And even if I were to grant you your take on liberal Indian women (partially true as it is), she'd be "one of the good ones" in my eyes.
I have no end of personal flaws, and she loves me nonetheless and is fiercely loyal to a fault.
If it was a straight up fight between my desire to go to the US (with Green Card in hand) and staying with her, it would be a painful tradeoff but I would still pick her.
I had to remind myself that you really do not know this woman.
I despise Modi myself, but he's no Hitler. I like to think my political views are more nuanced than that.
Dont listen to these ppl. Live your own life. You seem happy so cherish what you have. Try to live your dreams mate, canada or aus arent too bad anyway.
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...Something it might help to keep in mind is that you're, like, two or three standard deviations more cheerful and positive in your outlook than a lot of the regulars here, who, having spent some time marinating in the unique local atmosphere, tend to have formed a pachyderm-like outer husk of bitter, misanthropic cynicism, the better to endure the chronic disappointment inherent to chronicling humanity's failures. It can take some of us a bit of time to shake the rust off and switch gears, and a few of us are just... permanently stuck in the frowny-face setting. Sloot in particular, I think, believes that they have divined the fundamental nature of all women, and does not like what they think they've found.
Personally, I find your attitude and general approach quite refreshing, so thanks for that. You're a good egg.
That was strangely touching, thank you.
While we have our differences, I certainly respect you as a poster for being both intelligent and articulate.
Better to meet people who have very different worldviews, but well fleshed out ones, than those with the same but half baked, in my eyes (I'd love to have both, but you can see with my idiosyncrasies that's quite a big ask!)
At least unlike many others, I am mostly content to live and let live; and you seem the same. That's enough for us to all get along, as far as I can see it.
I look forward to your comments in general!
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Hah, thank you for pointing out this tendency in such flowery language. I half-thought I was going crazy with how negative all the comments here are.
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