America's Moment - World Cup, 250th Anniversary, the Knicks and NYC

NYC is definitely having its moment and for all of us who once lived there there seems to be a shared lowkey nostalgic FOMA for all the fun they are having down there.  The World Cup crowds are in Town, the Knicks ticker-tap, beautiful weather, Mamdani…  And the 250 Anniversary of the founding of the Country, where glorious ideas of freedom and self-governance were captured out of thin air, while enslaving millions and building a powerhouse off their whipped and skinned backs.  Don’t get me wrong - the US occupies no moral low ground on how it achieved its wealth and position - there’s not a western country who didn’t do the same or worse, but still…

At least according to my TikTok feed, the local multiculturalism that defines NYC combined with the International summer crowds and the fanatical World Cup crowds and now the exuberant city-wide Knicks party is creating a brew of united optimism the world and the US needed.   And there is some irony in the fact that the only game lost Trump attended.

I see people from all over the world posting from inside of Costco, or Walmart, or an Outdoor store, amazed at the immensity and options and selections.  Giant cups of Coke, refilled on demand.  Ice galore.   Air Conditioning created arctic conditions.  Barbecue.  Wide streets.  Baseball games filled with Scots singing Sweet Caroline.   Reports of shocked foreigners who can’t understand the friendliness of strangers and waitresses.

Politics and their handmaiden, the Press, thrive on chaos, disappointment and tragedy.  And with the 24/7 news cycle, and now the ever-ready doom scrolling of social media contagion, it’s actually hard to remember, at least here in the US, people just want to have fun.

Though, as I was talking it through with a friend of mine, these Europeans who are having so much fun admiring our excess, ‘freedom’ and space, they get to go back home to free education, childcare,  medicine and a strong social safety net, whereas here people are going bankrupt everyday after they get sick, stuck in debt for decades for education of increasingly questionable value, and more and more difficulty just affording a basic day to day life.  When childcare costs $30k annually for two kids, healthcare $2k a month, college $50k a year, autos that seems to start at $40k now- you just have to wonder if we are having fun yet?

And somehow, Billions and even hundred of billions are available for any overseas military action at a moments notice, ICE funding can be quadrupled overnight, but try and solve some simple day to day issues like healthcare and education, and we spend decades getting nowhere.  To ensure every person in this country with $1000 a month premiums would cost $330 billion per year.  To give all 12 million college bound students $10,000 is $120 billion a year.  These sums are commonly available for other purposes.  All the American billionaires should get together and set up a non-government healthcare system - free of politics and run with the steady hand of capitalists.  Instead of pledging to give away most of their money in the Giving Pledge thunk up by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, they should funnel and aggregate it into a fund fixing an American need that has gone unfixed for too long by a broken political system.

Me, long-term, I’ll be living somewhere else.  I just find the whole premise of American life at this point a bit absurd.  A hamster wheel of bills and precarious financial living and insecurity of basic life things like medicine.  And at the same time, I couldn’t agree more with the celebrations. I'm a shining example of the land of opportunity and the ability to go out kill something each day and drag it home, self-propelled and self-initiated. The rarity of pulling that off for 25 years is a bit of an accomplishment.

Barn 62 is nearly finished and will be for sale soon.  It’s 1800 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, and 2.5 baths.  Sits on a pretty piece land just outside Barryville with lake rights to Timberlake.

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