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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.
I've got good news and bad news for you, my Indian friend.
The good news: You're already an American, at least in spirit. You understand this country, and thus you've assimilated. This is a boundless country, a place with no limits. An average sperglord from nowhere can become a millionaire, and having done so, lose it all on one night at the poker table. Having done that, you can hop in your car, head out over the horizon, and start again. Here bankruptcy is no shame, everyone wants to give you a second chance, and you call your boss by his first name.
This is a place where you can be born to a high school girl and a unicycle performer, be raised by that woman and her refugee second husband, get a first job at McDonalds, and become the richest man on the planet and start your own space program.
America is an egalitarian place, with little patience for the social distinctions of your native India and your adopted England. The status hierarchies that dominated life in what Jared Diamond memorably calls "the world before yesterday" are disdained here. America doesn't care about yesterday, and America doesn't care about who you are.
Silvio Berlusconi used to say that Italians would say "He used to be nothing but a singer on a cruise ship, and now he thinks he can be Prime Minister" as a way to mock him - but Americans would say the same exact thing, only as praise. You, a gregarious, funny, open-hearted brown man who loves AR-15s and America? We will love you here, and rednecks will fawn over you like a lost puppy.
The bad news: Your girlfriend is already an American as well, at least in spirit. She understands this country, and thus she's assimilated.
The angriest Americans are not, as you might suspect, the Africans. Whenever the African American asks for redress of his grievances, he does so not as an African, but as an American. He does not care that he was taken from Africa, and his demands revolve around the fulfilment of his rights as an American.
The angriest Americans are white women of a certain middling sort, elevated enough to feel superior to the egalitarian masses, but not quite high enough to escape them. To them, America is hell.
They are angry at America for that same reason you love it. They are angry that it is a place of chaos without social distinction, a place where you could lose a life of savings on the poker table, and where the markers of social position provide less insulation against the market.
This segment of America dominates our community and communication industries, for obvious reasons, and it is this segment of America that has assimilated your girlfriend. For better or for worse, they are as American as we are.
So where should you go from here? You are an American already in spirit, and we want to see you here. I have a dream that sons of former slaves, sons of former slaveowners, and gregarious Indian bros shall all bro out together at the gun range.
Your MD will get you into this country, just not as a doctor. You seem charismatic, and your ability to write clearly is exceptional even for our little community. There are plenty of finance and biotech companies that would gladly hire you. Exceptional communication skills and an MD are a rare combination, and a little brown guy tech job nepotism can't hurt.
As to your girlfriend, you can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into. So long as she sees this as a difference between the two of you, the harder you try to convince her of your point, the more she will be convinced that this is something you disagree on.
First, I'd back off. Validate her by validating her complaints. Agree with her that there are things and places about America that are terrible. Tell her that you'd love to visit America, perhaps for an extend period, and that you want to see the parts of America that everyone loves (generally speaking, the national parks).
By validating her concerns, and having provided the social proof of "the parts of America that everyone loves", you have built a relationship around the issue. Now, take the playfully oppositional view. Every time she expresses a Basic White Chick opinion about America, tease her, and tell her she's the one that sounds like an American now. Playfully object to it from a traditional Indian point of view, with a comical bobs-and-vagene intonation. Now you've set up a dichotomy in her mind of the high status first world American vs the low status third worlder.
Now that you've validated her feelings, provided a social context, and then subtly set up your point of view as high status, bring her to western National Park America. Get out of the cities as fast as possible, as they have all the problems she complains about - violence, inequality, greed, etc. Take a road trip. While the parks themselves are surrounded by high-priced tourist traps, rural America five miles away from the park gate is full of the stereotypical gregarious and generous Americans. Interact with them as much as possible. After a month-long road trip seeing everything between the Olympics to the Grand Canyon, she'll love it.
Thank you, this is a very thoughtful comment to make.
Part of the reason I even bothered posting in places where there are plenty of Americans (well, is there much where they aren't the majority? Vk or Bilibili maybe) is that my girl has internalized the kind of self-critique that many Americans themselves succumb to. They take the good for granted, and find only some satisfaction in signal boosting the BAD. Arguments that work against them would work on her.
If you have anything to add regarding the opportunities in Finance and Biotech you mentioned, I'd be very open to hear them. I have considered applying for Pharma roles in the UK, but they're already getting heated as the locals realize that they're strictly superior to normal medicine, at least in terms of pay and WLB.
(Shame she sees everything I write these days, my opsec is utterly compromised haha)
I am intent on dragging her there on a vacation, a close friend of mine getting married in the next year or two is sufficient pretext. Hopefully I have enough money to really see the sights, but I'm shameless enough to lean on the Bank of Mom and Dad if needed to make the most of it!
And indeed, you're right that I'm born an American at heart. Now onto the far harder task of signaling that with the rest of me.
Out of curiosity - why are you ineligible to take the USMLE exams? I'm assuming you graduated from a decent medical school in India, and after having done that you could take Step 1 and 2. After that you could apply for a US residency. Unfortunately, I can't help you there, being a lowly medical student.
https://www.themotte.org/post/565/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/117227?context=8#context
My med school was below average, I was horrendously depressed and couldn't convince my parents to get me treated for ADHD when I gave the NEET exam necessary to get in. As the name suggests, if you don't have any AA to help you, you need to make yourself a NEET studying 24/7 to get in.
If I'd known that it would lead to all of this, I'd have never joined, gone to the other place I qualified for, or just dropped a year and tried again.
So I can't sit for the USMLE, but all hope is not lost since the ECFMG told me they can retroactively certify us if the college can prove that their quality of education at the time met ECFMG standards.
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