It’s true that California is more diverse than Spain. Absolutely. I found upper middle class San Diego too churchy for me. I don’t like the assumption some people make that you have to be a believer. I was in military circles, admittedly. So you’re right there, too. I shouldn’t have tarred California’s reputation with that accusation. It’s more of a general American problem once you leave the coasts.
Could be. But in my small hometown in the US, less than 2500 year round residents, there were 14 fentanyl overdoses in a recent year. Three quarters of them under 25 years old.
I have private healthcare. I vote in Massachusetts. Is that a problem for you? Why on earth? Oh. I see with have here a disgruntled racist Dutchman who has anger management issues. Relax. Life is short You can change.
So I am not necessarily onboard with some of the excesses in America. (I was recently told by an American that she wouldn’t go to a Picasso museum because he “culturally appropriated” African art.) but America is a place of extremes. I am not keen on the GOP’s embrace of its far right, either. Spain is both socially conservative and politically liberal. In my town there is an LGBT safe space in the youth center, contraception is easy to come by, and people are non judgmental but respect social norms and don’t get mean with each other.
For what it’s worth I used to have a job that brought me close to a lot of US politicians in both parties. Of all of them, from Bernie Sanders to Mitch McConnell to Lindsay Graham, the single most impressive one I’ve met is Gavin Newsom, who I’ve worked and socialized with. I didn’t expect to like him. The first impression is of a slick pretty boy. But he’s the whole package and one political thing I miss about California.
While my money goes further in Europe, that’s not the primary reason I live here. I don’t like spending a lot of time in cars and European cities are more pleasant and walkable. The weather in southern Spain is among the best in the world. (I am from the SF Bay Area and lived years in Southern California and Baja. The weather here is better.) I have children and worry about US drug culture for bourgeois kids at private schools. Here is more sheltered. The lifestyle is more culturally conservative here without being churchy. As an atheist I like that. I have a daughter at one of the Phillips Academies in America as a boarder. I like the education there but the American kids are more materialistic than when I attended a similar boarding school forty years ago in Massachusetts. Only the very elite American restaurants hold their own against the top ten percent of European restaurants. The one exception to this is ethnic cuisine- Mexican and Asian and the like. There are more places to travel from Europe. Both in Europe and from Kenya to India.
America has declined a lot in recent decades. While a weekend in Cape Cod is nice for catching up with old friends, the lifestyle in Europe is better. With one caveat: camping and outdoor life is better in North and South America.
Well you sound like you haven’t been following America’s degradation since 2016. This is classic gaslighting on your part, by the way. Just saying “LOL” as the GOP burns the country to the ground is what’s really teenagerish here.
Excuse me? Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? If you haven’t researched Speaker Mike Johnson then it’s clear you really don’t. If you have done any research, then the most charitable assumption is that you’re being disingenuous. The Speaker has a documented history of one-sided pro-theocratic Christian positions going back decades. His closest allies are revisionists, liars, and toxic theocrats. Johns lies about the US Constitution. He believes Adam and Eve palled around with dinosaurs in the garden of eden on our “six-thousand year-old earth.” He wants to ban abortion and end gay rights, gay marriage, and even gay intimacy. His positions on southern history are revisionist in the extreme. He’s the GOP’s choice to lead the fascist break-out. What part of the GOP hard-right is not fascist? Its leader, Donald Trump? Give me a break. He’s called for “suspending the Constitution,” using the DOJ to go after his enemies, and ending the apolitical civil service. He wants to pardon the J6 insurrectionists. He worked with Vladimir Putin to get elected in 2016. You can dispute all these facts with your Fox News-fueled feelings but they’re still facts, and those who dispute them are liars.
The French far right divides into fascists and monarchists. Last I checked neither one of these were in senior government positions in France nor were any of their representatives the overwhelming favorite to win the next presidential election. So, what, exactly, are your feelings telling you when you say I “seem” to “throw” my facts “around”? Give me a break.
Look. Paris is not for everybody. I like it there but I have the advantages of being male and fitting French prejudices about a certain kind of upper middle class yankee,!which makes life easy for me. Having been around the French my whole life, I think it’s ten or twenty times harder to be an American woman in France than an American man. I am pretty sure the US is a lot closer to fascism than France is. But I am also certain that it’s way easier to be an American woman in the US than an American woman in France. For what it’s worth I have two grown French daughters. One has embraced her Frenchness and has moved there. The other far prefers New York because of French attitudes towards women. Everybody gets to choose.
Get German citizenship if you can. Even if you have to suck up a couple more years. With German citizenship many possibilities are open.