Travel in India for a month. I have such an appreciation for how things are in the US now. Here are some cultural things I never appreciated.

• how everything is the same price for everybody, and you can look up those prices.
• how a restaurant that served wine watered down to the point of being homeopathic could never stay in business.
• How scams and bribes are the exception not the rule.
• How when someone starts talking to you it’s almost never that they want to sell you something.
• How people throw trash in garbage bins instead of into the street
• How businesses empty trash bins into dumpsters instead of into the street
• How garbage trucks work. You can’t appreciate them until you’ve seen a man with two pieces of cardboard scraping up as much trash as he can and putting it in the back of a pickup truck where it can blow right back out. Thats the official trash management system.
• How there are no unofficial urinal walls or alleys.
• How when you get your change back from a government official, you probably don’t have to count it twice.

Politics might be a shit show right now but I have a new found appreciation for the American way of life and great optimism for its future. In contrast I have developed a pessimistic view of the US having success changing how any other country operates for the better. Just to understand how different a place is, much less choose actions for its betterment, is a herculean task that’s often spoken about far too cavalierly.