I made a lot of friends when I was stationed in Europe. They were all nice, they were all intelligent, they were all rational. And they all understood the United States of America in the most convoluted, erroneous way imaginable. They had absolutely no grasp on who we are, how we think, or by what we are driven. Everything they “knew” about us was derived from the BBC and Le Monde.
Their version of America was identical to our own elites’ version of America, i.e., a hellish wasteland of poverty, illiteracy, racism, incest, and gun massacres. An otherwise highly intelligent friend of mine for many years told me (back in 2001) that she didn’t like President George W. Bush because, and I quote, “he slaughters black people in Texas.”
These are some of the crazy things they actually think about us.
So when I would ask if they’d ever actually been to America, the answer was no. And when I asked if they were ever actually planning on traveling to America, their answer was always identical. Literally, every single European friend of mine gave me the same exact answer, and it was this:
I do want to travel to America. I’m deciding whether I want to go to New York City, Miami, or San Francisco.
To which I always replied… Why?
No WONDER Europeans didn’t like America. They consistently pick one of our three deepest islands of miserable deep blue isolation, and now they think that represents the entire country. If I visited Malmö and nowhere else, I wouldn’t like Sweden. If I visited Clichy-sous-Bois and nowhere else, I wouldn’t like France. If I visited planet Earth and nowhere else, I wouldn’t like Islam.
But this summer changed all that. This summer, European visitors are falling in love with America.
Ironically, leftist insistence that Americans drop their predilection for brutish, uncouth sports like football and baseball and embrace a cultured, international sport like soccer brought this about. This push had nothing to do with the sport itself. If Americans loved soccer and the rest of the world loved baseball and football, leftists would be arguing for the opposite.
Okay then, what better way to expose us ignorant, backward Americans to soccer than to host the FIFA World Cup on our shores? We did just that, and the world came to watch.
And here is what the left expected to happen: Europeans were supposed to smirk at us. They were supposed to mock our religion and our guns. They were supposed to turn away in righteous disgust at our abundance and free refills and buffet lines and big trucks and big houses. They were supposed to shake their heads at our supposed lack of culture. They were supposed to see a racist behind every tree and under every rock. They were supposed to catch a glimpse of discord and poverty and hate and perpetual ignorance. And they were supposed to leave here hating this country even more so than when they arrived.
But they didn’t.
They fell in love with us. And by “us,” I mean the real, everyday America. They didn’t go to the Met Gala; they went to Walmart. They didn’t dine at the French Laundry; they ate at Waffle House. They didn’t scoff at bigger portions; they consumed them with glee. They weren’t impressed by Priuses; they were impressed by Ford F-150s. They didn’t sniffily order some 25-syllabled cup of pretention from the local fair trade cafe; they drank American beer, listened to American country music, and ate American bar food. They don’t marvel at inner-city legal drug zones; they marvel at the wide open expanses of American beauty.
They love ranch dressing. They love the military flyovers. They love the gas stations. They love the 24/7 business hours. They love the huge American flags.
They love that America is so big, but not so much because of land mass and square footage. In those terms, Russia is big. China is big. But there is a bigness about America that isn’t measured in yardsticks. Anyone who has taken road trips across America can attest that you don’t just grasp the bigness of America. You grasp its openness. You feel free. It’s something you can’t explain until you’re immersed in it. And that feeling is reinforced through the welcoming friendliness of every drive-through town.
In short, everything our visitors love about America is everything the left hates about America.
Related: The Left Warned World Cup Tourists About the South. Then One German Fell in Love With It.
The leftists watch this in paralyzing horror. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Foreigners were supposed to return to their homelands and report that America is exactly what Barack Obama, Michael Moore, and Sasha Baron Cohen told them it was.
But that’s not going to happen now. Because our foreign guests realize that everything their "elites" told them about us has been a disgusting lie. Just like everything our "elites" tell us about ourselves is a disgusting lie.
After this summer, Europeans (and others) will be telling a very different story. They are going to tell their friends and family about the real America, the one you and I experience on a daily basis. Dutch fans will tell how a bar in Kansas was decorated to resemble the Netherlands. Awestruck Scottish fans will regale skeptical friends back home about the American tradition of beautiful, scantily-clad women dancing in unison before a game to rev up the crowd, and how Americans refer to this as “cheerleading.” Japanese fans will tell how restaurants here bring you the food before you prove you can pay, and that hospitality here isn’t considered a debt to be returned.
But the most important lesson I hope the Europeans take home with them is this. Patriotism is a moral virtue. It’s good to be proud of your country. And despite what the government, the public schools, the universities, Hollywood, social media, the elite globalists, and both the domestic and foreign media tell us, Americans are proud of their country. And if visiting Europeans can see through the lie they’ve been sold about America, I hope they can see the lie they’ve been told about themselves.
Related: The Left’s Latest Fantasy: Florida as a Police State
Europeans should also be proud of their countries, not out of any reflexive competition with America, but for the simple fact that they have a lot to be proud of. Like us, their "elites" have told them that their civilization is rooted in fear, ignorance, and oppression. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reasons to love Europe are very different from the reasons to love America. But both sets of reasons exist and can coexist in mutual support and admiration. If Europeans go home with an understanding that the problem isn’t patriotism, but with those who harangue both them and us that patriotism is evil, so much the better.
So to the leftists behind the soccer push, your persistence has inadvertently led to the greatest PR success our nation has experienced since Tocqueville. Thank you, leftists, for bringing middle America and middle Europe together. Thank you for helping to demolish your own lies. Thank you for helping the world fall in love with us.
And as I thank you, my dear leftists, I want you to picture me driving a loud, rusty pickup truck, wearing a Gadsden t-shirt and dirty blue jeans, sporting beard stubble and a 1776 cap, with a fully loaded AR-15 on the passenger seat, with “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue” blasting from the radio, as I sing along in a masculine, non-inflected voice, with a McDonalds Big Mac in my free hand, with an American flag mounted across my rear window, with American eagles soaring overhead, as I cruise through God’s country, passing huge houses with huge yards with huge numbers of kids, on the way to my church which doesn’t have a pride sticker on the front door.
And I want you to notice my smug, s**t-eating American grin.
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