Talke Talks: USA: Society-Splitting | nd-aktuell.de

Howdy from Texas, dear readers,

When we moved from Germany to the USA eight years ago, Donald had just been elected president. And when the Protestants on the street chanted “Not my President,” I was still in so-called denial status: This idiot isn’t my president either, I have a chancellor with a doctorate! A woman asked me a few months later when Trump was sworn in whether I wanted to go to the women’s demonstration. I had just returned from a trip to Hamburg and Vienna, was jetlagged and cultured and stayed at home. I didn’t need to wear a “pussy hat,” I thought, my chancellor never wore a hat. But she was a proud “outfit repeater” in Bayreuth.

My new US circle of acquaintances was divided into two. Well-heeled white women said embarrassing things like, “I don’t read party manifestos. My husband says Trump is better for the economy.” A Latin American acquaintance wanted to defund the police and abolish the military; not exactly wise either. Muslims were rightly afraid of leaving the country because of the “travel bans,” and my Jewish doctor was initially happy about Trump’s supposed friendliness to Israel; But when he pretended to be neo-Nazi, the enthusiasm dried up. After four years of Trump, America’s population was exhausted and bitter. Trump lovers seemed excited, hateful of the “radical left” and sensing the approaching loss of power. Trump haters saw him as Lucifer himself, conjured up the Third Reich (a tendency I detest because it demeans the victims of the real Third Reich), and threatened to leave the country – where remained unclear. (They all want to go to Italy until they find out which party the Prime Minister is in.)

Then Joseph Biden became president and it was said that everything would be the same as before. I don’t know exactly what it was like back then, but society hasn’t been united in the last four years. On Tiktok, on the one hand, so-called Trad Wives explain how to make your husband happy as a self-sacrificing and hard-working housewife, even though their recipes look hideous and could probably only make a guy with no sense of taste happy; on the other hand, Gen Z is waging war against Western capitalism on the campuses of elite universities that cost their families hundreds of thousands of dollars, cloaked in keffiyeh, calling for an intifada. Both are paradoxical: the conservative hunger for more freedom while simultaneously eliminating women’s rights and the liberal thirst for freedom while simultaneously glorifying dictators and fundamentalist rebels.

The division in US society is evident everywhere; The only thing that seems to unite the Americans is their unconditional love for Taylor Swift. And there is not only a division, but also enormous contradictions. The USA has both the largest porn industry in the world and a pathological obsession with chastity, the fattest people despite bad food (thanks, Trad Wives), a sedentary lifestyle despite the most beautiful natural parks and world-famous technical innovations that create what feels like the weakest household appliances in the world. The differences between states are also constantly astounding. There are people in prison in Texas for something that is legal in California. Now, some countries have the strictest abortion laws in the Western world, but these are coupled with the ability to choose the gender of the fetus that you implant in your surrogate mother (both are banned in the EU). Sex work is illegal, but not in parts of Nevada. You’re not allowed to drink on the street, but at brunch with “Bottomless Mimosas” – breakfast cocktails made from champagne and orange juice – people drink more than at a wine dinner in Bordeaux. You find taxes annoying, but everywhere you go you are forced to donate for something.

Germany, on the other hand, always seemed very homogeneous to me: Sunday rest, sorting out old glass (except Sundays), after work, bike rides, asparagus season, Easter fires, dog school, seat reservations. Anyone who doesn’t follow the rules doesn’t belong. German society is also slowly changing, because if immigrants can do one thing, it is setting new trends. Maybe America’s status quo is Germany’s future? Anyway, dear readers, I have to go and listen to the new Swift album.