If America Is a Dumpster Fire, Then Why Are World Cup Fans Loving It Here?

Photo by Leif Christoph Gottwald on Unsplash

If your algorithm is anything like mine, it’s recently been flooded with a breath of fresh air: people from all over the world delighting in their exploration of America. They’ve been talking about how beautiful cities like Chicago and Boston are, how nice and welcoming the people have been in places like Texas and Kansas, how good our food is, and how blown away they’ve been by things like Buc-ee's, the mega gas stations that dot parts of the country. There was even an elegant post written by a Japanese tourist about the trust shown in Mexican restaurants that offer “unearned gifts” in the form of free chips and salsa.

I’m not at all surprised that while most Americans think our country is hurtling down the wrong track — including me — visitors are talking about how great it is here. This is because I’ve spent more than a decade living overseas and have traveled to close to 80 countries. During my travels, there are a few things I’ve learned that explain why these polar-opposite perspectives exist and why both are valid.

“…As I’ve often told people abroad, Americans aren’t fat because our food isn’t good.”

The first is the value of an outsider's perspective.

I don’t think it’s a controversial claim to say that a visitor rarely, if ever, knows more about a place than a local. That said, fresh eyes can often see things that tired eyes cannot. If you’ve grown up in New York and see the Empire State Building every day, it loses some of its mystique, whereas a tourist might throw themselves against a car window just to catch a glimpse of it while driving by.

Sadly, it’s easy to take things for granted, and extraordinary things can become mundane if you’re constantly exposed to them. My mom makes the best macaroni and cheese in the world. It’s very labor-intensive, however, and she pretty much only makes it for my family at Thanksgiving. Would we feel the same way if it was a daily part of our diet? Certainly not.

Visitors to America, God bless them, are reminding us about aspects of our country and culture that for many of us have blurred into the background. In some cases, and this is where an outsider's perspective can be most valuable, World Cup fans are pointing out things that some of us didn’t even realize were unique or distinctive about American culture, like free refills on sodas, ranch dressing, and how friendly we can be, especially people in the service industry.

Photo by Carol Highsmith's America on Unsplash

As I’ve often told my students, who struggle when asked to define characteristics of American culture, we are known the world over for being nice (along with being loud, optimistic, and very ignorant about the world). We smile and laugh often; we’ll engage in small talk with strangers; we take an interest in foreign visitors, as many parts of our country are pretty isolated, and we will try to help them when we can and wish them a good visit. This isn’t true everywhere in the world.

Other posts online talked about how free we are here in America after they were advised to “do what you want” by Americans, while finding out that certain rules, restrictions, and cultural expectations that exist in their country do not exist here, and can be seen in things like how varied our styles of dress are and jaywalking. This and a host of other aspects of our way of life, American culture, can be hard to see if you’ve never immersed yourself in another culture to realize all the ways life can be different in ways you’ve never thought about.

The second reason is that there is a world of difference between living in a place and just visiting.

I have traveled to countries in the middle of a civil war (Myanmar and Colombia) and a coup (Thailand); Countries where authoritarianism was on the rise (Turkey and Hungary), where freedom of speech doesn’t exist (China), or that were under the control of a dictator (Zimbabwe), and I enjoyed my time in each of them. This wasn’t because I supported the people in power; it was that I wasn’t affected by the combat as I wasn’t anywhere near the conflict zones. I did not need the rights that were being repressed because I was not politically informed or active in their domestic politics; thus, I wasn’t the target of the crackdowns.

I did, however, go to see loads of famous landmarks, eat wonderful food (except for in Myanmar) and have encounters with either friendly locals or other tourists. In other words, many of the issues going on within a country were not readily available for me to notice as someone who was just passing through. The same goes for World Cup fans visiting America. They aren’t going to the poor parts of cities like Chicago, visiting ICE detention facilities, or snapping pics outside of noisy, polluting data centers.

Photo by Cord Allman on Unsplash

They are seeing our cops on their best behaviour. Living in New Orleans, I know police officers can be quite charming during big events like Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. They are eating our chemically engineered-to-be-delicious fast food and, as I’ve often told people abroad, Americans aren’t fat because our food isn’t good.

As a visitor, however, they won’t have to deal with the long-term health consequences of our processed food industry. And yes, America can be a great time if you have the money to do the things, and so long as you don’t break a leg and need to interact with our insanely profitable healthcare system, and don’t have to worry about having your vote counted in an upcoming election or think about what it means that we have state-of-the-art stadiums while our schools and infrastructure are crumbling.

America is fun, impressive, and safe in certain ways, in certain places, and in certain doses. Wealthy tourists are likely to hit that trifecta perfectly.

The third reason is that there’s a big difference between the people of a country and the government of a country.

I have yet, in all my travels, to go to a country that fully met all my expectations. None of my preconceived notions have ever matched the realities on the ground, no matter how many news reports, articles, or travel blogs I’ve read. People and countries are complex, and no one source of information, no one perspective, will capture it all.

This has been especially true when all of those perspectives have cast a people or a country in a negative light. In defying my expectations, I’ve found any reported dangers to always be overstated and more navigable than expected. There are always safe parts of cities, be it Cape Town, Mexico City, or New Orleans.

Even when a country is at war, that war isn’t happening everywhere all at once. I’ve traveled to countries in the Arab world that some would label as backwards that were among the safest and most welcoming I’ve ever been to. I’ve been to countries that are underdeveloped but full of happy, generous people.

People around the world might dress differently, pray differently, and have different social norms, but a few things are universally true: kids play, parents want what’s best for their kids, and people laugh. That’s a lot to have in common and is a good starting place for connection. I suppose this is why even when I’ve visited countries my government has gone to war with, embargoed, or sanctioned, I’ve been able to get along with the people.

Photo by Isse Anarika on Unsplash

Thankfully, they’ve been able to see me as an individual separate from whatever punishment, atrocity, or terror my government has unleashed on theirs. On my end, I’ve been able to overcome the endless propaganda my government and its media have come up with to justify whatever form of harm it has chosen to inflict on theirs.

My final reason is that two things can be true at once.

Americans across the political spectrum would do well to remember this as I’ve seen people on both sides display their incomplete or inconsistent views of America in the comment sections of these World Cup fans’ posts. In one post, a foreigner said she’s told restaurant servers how much she’s loving it in America, only for them to ask if she was being sarcastic. The comment section was full of people saying things like, “Oh, you met a liberal. They hate America.” (Or maybe this World Cup fan was meeting people who make $2.13 an hour with no benefits.)

In other posts, visitors talked about how surprised they were to feel safe in America because of all the warnings they’ve gotten online and from American media about how big cities are tantamount to open war zones. The comments under these posts were full of people calling out conservative “alpha males” who will say America is the greatest country on earth while also saying they’re scared to set foot in big liberal cities.

Never mind that the World Cup is being held exclusively in these big liberal cities that conservatives love to trash as not being the real America. These host cities, however, are the same places that are diverse and embrace multiculturalism, which is part of why World Cup fans are having a great time and being so welcomed, even in places like Lawrence, Kansas, a blue dot in a sea of red America that’s been the home base of Algeria’s national team.

America has problems, big problems, but America isn’t all bad. America, even today, can be a better place to live with more opportunities and freedoms than other places. That said, it also has things that desperately need to improve (we’re the ONLY team in the World Cup that doesn’t have universal healthcare or paid maternity leave). Anyone who doesn’t realize that both these things are true has drunk too much from a single perspective.

The biggest thing this World Cup is once again showing is that the issues we are facing in America and in the world are not about the people in it. The exuberant joy everyone is feeling as people from different parts of the world come together, share their cultures, and engage freely with each other, even as their countries compete, proves this. The problems the world is facing are coming directly from the people on top who profit off of fear, division, and conflict, who insist on hoarding resources for themselves, and who will use war, religion, tribalism, and racism to keep us apart and to fill their pockets.

All that said, I’m going to continue watching the games and enjoying watching people as they find out what I’ve long known: The world is a wonderful place, full of good people, and it has a lot for us all to see, explore, and learn.