Allure of America

In the interest of full disclosure ... I had spent 12 years and 5 months in the US. Yes, even for a non-Jewish like me America was the Promised Land. But that promise became shattered within about 2 years after my landing there. Details need not concern us, except to say that even while enjoying the facilities I had access to, I never felt at home, particularly after an incident during 1979-1980.

The feeling of always being the other screwed my mind to such an extent that I essentially forgot what I came to the US for in the first place. It took another 10 years to detach myself from my craving to be in the US – to become a Green Card holder and subsequently obtain the coveted US Citizenship – and I came home, without any regret to face an uncertain future. I was not immune to the allure of America, though it got diluted slowly and steadily, without my noticing it.

During those ten years, I immersed myself in reading about the US – history, political and economic systems, the Civil War, the unfolding of the Constitution Amendment for Equal Rights and its final collapse, other socio-political-economic pathologies, veneration of personalities – from the highest to the lowest, the importance given to the so-called Commerce Clause of their Constitution, the conflict between the federal and state governments, activism from the Bench of the Supreme Court, not from the perspective of the experts in the field but as a layman. I found that there were dreams and also nightmares. No personality was without any flaws – Bill Cosby! I read about Martin Luther King Jr. and also on Malcolm X in the context of the Civil Rights movement. I read The Bible, four different versions and also the “Documentary Hypothesis”  

My reading spanned the gamut of self-congratulation and self-flagellation by Americans; not of the native kind, I must add. Truly.

In this post, I try to question myself whether I would have been 90% Aye and at best 10% Nay to go the US and stay there now, but anachronistically aged between 20 and 30 years. Whence that 10% Nay?

This is obviously contrafactual as whatever I decide on this question cannot ever be answered without raising further and more awkward questions. The critical point here is that my estimated Nay would be rooted in what I would have read in social media, an unimagined source of news – MSM and Fake or Fox – in the decades of the 20^th century.

It is in the above perspective, I am unable to criticize educated Indians, having enjoyed subsidies from Indian taxpayers (however inefficiently delivered), flocking to western countries (besides the US, the UK, Australia, Germany, New Zealand ...).

To summarize, I cannot thumb my nose at people choosing to go to the US now, even after learning how broken up the system is there.

How broken the system is in the US? “Grab them by the pussy” does not matter to them. Kavanaugh’s nomination to be a Supreme Court judge does not matter to them. Ivanka Trump’s profit-seeking outsourcing of manufacturing does not matter to them, while her father is TRUMPeting bringing back jobs to the US. Trump’s craven effort to promote his business interests does not matter to them. The silence of the US GOP controlled Congress to question their president does not matter to them. What matters to them is the strength of their Curriculum Vitae (CV). It is no different than what it was some 50 years ago as regards goods: “Made in the USA”.

That is, the allure of the US has remained the same over the past few decades, changing only appearances. It has always been a wolf in sheep’s clothing and I fell for it 40 years ago. Having been a victim, I cannot criticize others falling victim to the same attractions, with or without social media. But, I can wonder whether craving would, if ever, reduce.

Conclusion – Allure of America for Indians would never subside, even after Trump gets out of the White House and Pence ensconced in 1600, Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C.

Raghuram

P.S. Does anyone remember the name of the never elected POTUS, the VP under Richard Nixon, who went on to lose to Jimmy Carter?