If you like stories like this I highly recommend reading some hunter s or watching some of Callaghan's videos.
While thinking about “real America” most recently, I had a conversation with ChatGPT while reviewing the English Stack Exchange[1] and various etymology web sites. As a result of this research and conversation, this response emerged *:
> Dictionaries define "real" as "actually existing or happening, not imaginary, not fake or artificial." When used in the context of describing people or groups, "real" often signifies something genuine, authentic, or without pretense.
> Now to the claim: when "real" is used to describe communities or individuals, it is often in contrast to something perceived as inauthentic or disconnected from the majority's experiences. The term "grassroots," for instance, refers to the most basic level of an activity or organization, therefore, when someone talks about "real" people or "real" America, they often imply these grassroots, everyday experiences.
> Poverty, while a difficult and complex issue, is an experience that many people across the world can relate to or understand. The struggles associated with financial hardship often seem more "real" because they are visceral and undeniable.
> On the other hand, wealth, especially extreme wealth, is experienced by a smaller portion of the population. The lifestyle of the rich and entitled often includes privileges and luxuries that the majority do not have access to, which might make their experiences seem less "real" or relatable to many. The wealthy are often seen as living in a kind of "bubble" that separates them from the rest of society.
> It's worth noting, however, that "real" is a subjective term in these contexts and its usage can vary greatly depending on who is speaking and their perspective. People of all economic statuses have "real" experiences, but societal narratives and cultural biases often shape how we use and understand terms like this.
I think this writing is somewhat useful. You?
P.S. A few words of pre-defense against knee-jerk criticisms of my use of ChatGPT here. I consistently use it conscientiously and critically. I’ll grant that I might write something better if I did 10+ hours of concentrated research. In this case, I combined my experience with ~20 minutes of thinking.
* I say emerged deliberatively. The way that I use interactive AI technologies is shaped by my experience, education, and skepticism. Don’t assume that generative text is roughly in the same ballpark; the difference in quality is substantial based on how a human asks. The text is path-dependent; you would get quite different results.
I traveled extensively across the USA on Greyhound, Amtrak, car, and motorcycle, over maybe a decade. The America I saw on those trips felt so different from the America of living in SF as an engineer, or living in Houston as a student, or watching a tv show or movie set in America.
When I read Hunter S, or watch a Callaghan video, I think of those trips. Hari Kunzru said that Hunter S "makes himself ugly to expose the ugliness he sees around him," and I think that puts it well. My chief takeaway from my trips across middle America is that America is ugly. It's thousands of miles of freeway with towns dependent on the local mcdonalds and gas station stamped around it. It's trailer parks and fentanyl and painkiller addiction. It's isolation, boredom, malnutrition, anger, untreated disease. It's violently masculine. It's unhinged conspiracy and functional illiteracy.
When I watched Callaghan's Q conference video: https://youtu.be/KYKOLwt8pwo all I could think was "holy shit I met every one of those people." Not actually, it's just, so many people I met on my travels were like that.
I feel the urge to defend my country but there is a smug certainty to this take that tells me I would be wasting my time trying to change your mind. I'm literally shaking!
This doesn't also mean everywhere on earth is perfect. I don't know what to tell you other than I recommend traveling to some towns with populations of 10k or less and talk to people. It's a totally different America from the cities and major suburbs. I don't mean to come off as smug, I've just seen a great deal of the country, the beauty and the ugly, and I think the ugly is like... I dunno, this great massive hidden secret or something.
Actually, then too did I find life in the USA quite ugly. There was beauty but having traveled a lot of the world now... it doesn't balance out. You're talking to someone though that is hyper sensitive to how car-focused transit mars the beauty of anywhere, and in my travels the I've never seen anywhere give as much space to cars as I have in the USA. It's just concrete, as far as the eye can see...
The ugliness is made more apparent I think by my frustration at the possibility. America has the greatest national parks on earth, and the best mechanisms for ensuring those parks are visited and seen. 3.7 million visitors to Yosemite yearly, that's over half the yearly visits to Sistine Chapel, and the Sistine Chapel is in the middle of Rome, which is chock full of tourist goodies. Yosemite is just... out there, in the middle of nowhere, and 3.7 million people a year make the journey. So the possibility of maintaining phenomenal infrastructure and natural beauty is there, why isn't that replicated elsewhere in the USA? Why not tear up the parking lots and lay down more tracks for trams or install more busses? Why not build an inter-country train system that passes through the beautiful Rocky and Appalachian mountains?
And why are so many Americans left in the dust of industrialization? I mean where else on earth would someone say to me "please don't call an ambulance, I can't afford it" after I pull them out from their crashed car? Among a million other degredations the people out there are experiencing it. There's so much good in the usa that's completely out of reach for so many Americans. Ugh.
So no, I'm not smug, I'm frustrated. It's the richest country on earth by every economic measure by a long shot. What is happening??