Having come from my birth-country of The Netherlands to the United States some twenty years ago, I want to make my reasons for coming and staying here very clear to you, as they reflect not a predisposition but my experience of the United States as a country and as a people.
First off, it is easy to criticize a country that has been, and still is, the inspirational leader of innovation, change, and improvement for most countries around the world. And as we catch most of the wind riding upfront while being relatively transparent in failure and success, it looks as if the countries that follow our example are just as brave. But let me warn you they are not. I know, from understanding deeply how other cultures work, how they ride comfortably in the slipstream of the ground we broke for them. Examples abound.
Second, yes, we have elected some class-clowns as Presidents over the years, yet the people of The United States have outperformed many other countries on a per capita basis not because, but despite those class-clowns. Sure, you might be swayed by the notion China is on our heels with a GDP approaching ours, only to be rudely awoken by the realization their version of capitalism benefits its government, not its extremely poor people. Be careful what you wish for when you use silly economic metrics as the declaration of success.
Third, in the words of Winston Churchill, The United States is an amazingly flexible country with “a unique ability to reinvent itself, only after it has exhausted all options not to.” I have seen this in practice many times, and I could not think of another country where, when the urgency reaches the minds of sanity, major shifts in policy are instituted with remarkable fortitude and speed. It is exactly for that reason I believe reinventing the operating-systems for humanity, which I am driving hard and in premature form, have already had the opportunity to present to Congress, can only become effective when initiated and endorsed by The United States. For I know, despite much rhetoric to the opposite, most of the world’s systems are delayed and cheap knock-offs from the ground we broke.
Let my message to you not be perceived that despite brash appearances, we are full of ourselves, quite to the contrary. To be a world leader requires that we are not content being merely the best of the worst, but instead continually push to be the best of the best. Beyond the boundaries of where we have been to push towards greater foresight, not derived from the mere regurgitation of hindsight. Let the mess such controversy and change sometimes induces not be confounded with the perception we are lost. Instead, we, the people, are busy recalibrating ourselves around a better and higher normalization of evolutionary truth the whole world is bound to benefit from. Freedom is messy.
So, peace out and by all means, compete to drive the excellence of humanity no matter where you live. Underestimating the phenomenal contribution of the United States in your quest to improve humanity is, considering what I wrote here, not a very bright thing to do.
Let’s instead remove the geographic and divisive borders from our collective minds, and collaborate wherever we can to save humanity from itself. As we are all citizens of a planet on which the plurality of our meaningful diversity will prolong the strength of our evolution and our peaceful coexistence.
