There is a telling scene in The Americans (the 2013-2018 FX series about two Soviet KGB agents, posing as an American married couple, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, living in a Virginia suburb of Washington. DC, while spying for the U.S.S.R. and raising their American-born children), in which Elizabeth struggles with Washington's heat, while her husband cones to the rescue by turning on the air-conditioner. Air-conditioning is but one of many benefits of American prosperity that Philip (more than Elizabeth) would come to appreciate during the series. It is but one of many benefits of American prosperity and our consumer-oriented culture that we Americans increasingly just take for granted - like large portions and free refills for drinks in restaurants.
Given the ubiquity of American popular culture abroad, one might have assumed that foreign visitors to America would already know a lot about American life - certainly more than most modern Americans know about life elsewhere. And yet, if media reports are to be believed, for the legions of 21st-century de Tocquevilles experiencing the U.S, for the first time this World Cup summer and posting about it on social media, the many material benefits of American prosperity and our consumer-oriented culture have been something of a revelation - a happy one, apparently.
That many foreign tourists coming to America for the World Cup like what they see and experience here is a good thing. Our country can use all the good press it can get these days!
Before the World Cup began there was some anxiety that tourists and soccer fans would experience "sticker shock" at the price of everything - especially World Cup tickets and train tickets to the New Jersey stadium. If so, that has been more than counterbalanced apparently by the sheer consumerist joy of shopping in American big box stores and eating in American restaurant and fast-food outlets. It is not necessarily the quality of the products being consumed that has been making such an impression. It is the sheer amount of stuff available for purchase and the size of the portions to be consumed.
A friend of mine likes to observe that, in the lottery of life, the luckiest outcome is to be born in the U.S. Never perhaps has that been more true. That is not to deny that there have been other periods, such as the 20 years after World War II, when the material benefits of our living in this country were more equally shared and there was a greater sense of unity, more shared prosperity, and a more commonly shared popular and civic culture. There is much more malaise - material and spiritual - now than there was then. And, for many Americans right now, their material situation is genuinely precarious, despite the wider picture of prosperity.
If tourists stayed long enough they might well pick up on more of that malaise. but the first image of America in every age has always been its abundance - from its amber waves of grain and its purple mountain majesties to its skyscrapers and highways to its supermarkets and department stores.
Of course, living in our air-conditioned comfort and consumerist gluttony, we may ask ourselves whether this is all there is, whether this is all we want to be about. Such concerns have likewise plagued us throughout our history. Religion used to offer answers to such questions. As fewer people respond to religion's answers, fewer may even be able to formulate the right questions. These are real problems, which sensitive souls still struggle with.
When communism collapsed in eastern Europe, there was a brief hope in some quarters that there would be a widespread spiritual revival and renewal of European Christianity. It quickly became clear, however, that prosperity proved more popular than virtue.
So it certainly seems here, this World Cup Summer, living in this abundant land of More.
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