People keep claiming that, as a New Yorker, I live in a bubble. Let me tell you about my bubble. There are 8 million people in my bubble. My neighbors are like 50 feet from my front door. Every day I have to travel to work by train, boat and subway with thousands of other people. I work in an office with people from around the state, country and planet. And if that’s not enough, my bubble is so special, that people from all over the world travel here just to visit. These people crowd our sidewalks and Burger Kings. Businesses are run from my bubble. Companies erect skyscrapers with their names on them to mark their section of the bubble. International decisions are made here. As well as other decisions; like, for lunch I can choose to get some egg rolls, or pizza, or empanadas, or curry chicken, or a hamburger, or a Philly cheese steak or a hot dog. Or some of each…
My kids went to school with hundreds of other kids. Neighborhood kids. Kids from the other side of the borough. Military kids stationed nearby. Kids with whom they had to work, compete against and share multiple childhood diseases.
It’s a crowded bubble where people have learned to get along. There are rules and laws that the vast majority agree to live by if we are all going to get along and move along. We can have tall buildings that don’t constantly burn down, ferries that don’t capsize regularly and trains that don’t crash and kill hundreds often.
Yet I have to listen to people carry on that where they are is the real America. They tout places that don’t get a lot of visitors until it gets flooded or a twister rips through. They carry on as if somehow they have their fingers on the pulse of what “real Americans” want because their neighbors live “down the road a-piece.”
The whole point of coming together as a nation is that we are stronger together. As a country, we are a mutt, made up of all the people that couldn’t hack it in the old country. They all brought their customs, traditions and foods here. But they’re here because they wanted to be here, not because their parents happen to live here. America was their goal.
They also brought a sense that what’s good for the least of us is good for the greatest of us.
I don’t understand what other people, in their big empty states, are getting so cranky about. They live isolated lives, worried about things that just don’t happen. They hold grudges against others they don’t know because some loud-mouth tells them too. But mostly I don’t get why these salt-of-the-earth, hard-working Americans elected a loud, elitist, lying, crooked business man and pseudo-billionaire from New York City as the face of the nation. If this is what real America should be, I’ll stick to my bubble, thank you.
It’s a crowded bubble where people have learned to get along. There are rules and laws that the vast majority agree to live by if we are all going to get along and move along. We can have tall buildings that don’t constantly burn down, ferries that don’t capsize regularly and trains that don’t crash and kill hundreds often.
Yet I have to listen to people carry on that where they are is the real America. They tout places that don’t get a lot of visitors until it gets flooded or a twister rips through. They carry on as if somehow they have their fingers on the pulse of what “real Americans” want because their neighbors live “down the road a-piece.”
The whole point of coming together as a nation is that we are stronger together. As a country, we are a mutt, made up of all the people that couldn’t hack it in the old country. They all brought their customs, traditions and foods here. But they’re here because they wanted to be here, not because their parents happen to live here. America was their goal.
They also brought a sense that what’s good for the least of us is good for the greatest of us.
I don’t understand what other people, in their big empty states, are getting so cranky about. They live isolated lives, worried about things that just don’t happen. They hold grudges against others they don’t know because some loud-mouth tells them too. But mostly I don’t get why these salt-of-the-earth, hard-working Americans elected a loud, elitist, lying, crooked business man and pseudo-billionaire from New York City as the face of the nation. If this is what real America should be, I’ll stick to my bubble, thank you.
