The America We Grew Up in No Longer Exists.
Four kids, 12 or 13 years old. Four shotguns. A major city street. And a cop.
You know where this is going…
It’s a situation that can only end in shots fired… blood on the streets… national news coverage… and a political dogfight about who or what is to blame.
Only, not at all, actually.
In fact, this particular incident is a memory of what America once was. Logical and rational. A normal country.
I know this because I was one of those kids, the one with a so-called “410” shotgun slung across my shoulder.
With me were my three main neighborhood buddies: Mike, Jim, and Ian. They had 12- and 20-gauge shotguns.
We were walking along the sidewalk on College Drive, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where I grew up. This was 1978 and even back then, College Drive was busy.
A cop saw us, pulled over, and stepped out. He approached… his hand nowhere here the gun in his holster.
He wasn’t defensive or militant. He didn’t come at us presuming we were up to some criminal activity. He didn’t call for backup. He was pleasant and friendly.
“Where you boys going?” he asked.
We told him: We were headed to the old Whitter property, just behind Corporate Mall. A huge patch of wilderness, smack dab in the middle of town. Tall pines and hickory and live oaks were the playground of the squirrels we were hunting. Maybe we’d chase some snakes and snapping turtles along Wards Creek, which ran through forested land.
He sized us up for about half a second and then said, “OK. Well, y’all be safe back there.”
With that, he returned to his squad car, pulled back into traffic on College Drive, and was gone.
We resumed our trek to Whitter’s property.
Why do I tell you any of this?
Because that America is gone. Sad as that fact is.
I miss that America. That’s the America I remember—the America I love. The safe, secure, sure-of-herself America that walked tall and never had to wield a big stick because she commanded respect just because she was such a beacon of what the world aspired to be.
Today’s America… she’s much harder to love.
In the last few weeks, I’ve seen far too many stories about people who were shot (some killed) for transgressions as egregious as a basketball rolling into an angry moron’s yard, or for turning into the wrong driveway accidentally.
America, I just saw, has catalogued as many mass shootings this year as there are days that have passed in 2023 to this point.
At least eight countries have now issued travel warnings, cautioning their citizens about traveling to the United States because of the high rates of crime and gun violence. Meanwhile, the most recent index of the world’s safest countries puts the U.S. at 129th globally.
In my Twitter and TikTok feeds, I am seeing an increasingly large number of Americans who have had enough. They’re tired of feeling unsafe. They’re tired of worrying if they or their kids will be killed at school, at the mall, at church, going to a bank.
They want out. They’re looking for safe places to call home.
And here’s the thing, those places do exist.
A lot of people—too many people—think that if America is unsafe, then the rest of the world must be an insane asylum filled with gun- and knife-wielding lunatics.
Alas, not even remotely close to reality.
As I noted, America ranks 129th in the world for safety,
The Czech Republic, where I live, ranks eighth. I walk the streets here at all hours of the day and night, and I have never once felt even vaguely concerned for my safety.
The country I’m moving too—Portugal—ranks sixth.
No American should live in fear of their safety, or their family’s safety. And yet here we are—our country is statistically less safe than Nicaragua and Honduras and Guatemala… less safe than El Salvador, home to the MS-13 gang… less safe than most of Africa… and magnitudes less safe than the entirety of Western Europe.
My ultimate point here at the end is simply that living overseas, aside from being cheaper, can be a lot safer than living in Any Town, USA. It’s just another in the long list of reasons why I regularly tell anyone who will listen that the quality of life overseas is better.
I hate having to write that.
As I noted, I love my America. I think about my America all time—the places I know and where I’d love to live.
Alas, my America is not today’s America.
I decided to find my safety, my financial upgrade, and my peace-of-mind outside America.
And it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
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