Is the United States the greatest country in the world? What does a question like that even mean? Greatest by what measurement? Largest GDP, most acreage, greatest in supply of personal freedom? Greatest in terms of human potential? 

This is one of those questions that’s difficult to litigate and mostly a distraction. Regardless of the United States’s placement in the hierarchy of statehood excellence, I think it’s more applicable to realize that living in the U.S. is like living in a Second World country. In school we learned about the First World, and we did mission trips to the Third World, but now U.S. reality seems stuck somewhere in between. Everything is both terrible and great, if not simultaneously then in lurches, like a car popping in and out of gear. 

I was going to make this observation in relation to the pandemic, or perhaps the election of a manifestly unfit crazy person to lead the executive branch, or perhaps the seeming helplessness of the country’s richest state to mitigate annual apocalyptic wildfires, or perhaps the first transfer of executive power that entails a body count, but I didn’t want to rush to judgment. I didn’t want to be unfair or overly critical of my beloved country ‘tis of thee. I am proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free, and also subject to rapid collapse of the basic studs of infrastructure at the most predictable occurrences, while everyone stands around screaming at each other over ginned-up cultural garbage. But then the cold snap arrived and my state of Mississippi, along with several others, were dunked head first into historically extreme temperatures. It began with videos showing snow at the Texas-Mexico border — huh, would you look at that? — and now there are rolling blackouts across that wild west, because the Texas power grid cannot keep up with demand and is having to ration care, so to speak. Whether this occurrence is the result of frozen windmills or Texas’ weird deregulated power grid depends on your side of the culture wars, unfortunately. (Who could have predicted that World War III would turn out to be a culture war? And who knew it would be this annoying?) I don’t know anything about Texas politics or energy infrastructure, so I won’t even daydream aloud about it. But this is a failure of civilization and to justify it via economics or personal responsibility or however is to turn one’s back on the entire notion of civilization. It’s as ridiculous as the rolling blackouts in California in the vain hopes that fallen power lines won’t start another horrible fire. It’s an inability, or a refusal, to take care of ourselves. And it’s shameful. 

Of course at the same time, everything is also great! A vaccine was developed, approved, and began to be distributed in less than a year, destroying the previous record and, from all appearances, still happening a little on the slow side. MRNA vaccines to my untrained ears sound like miracle drugs. And there are two of them — and that’s just in the U.S.! There are others in the world, which will hopefully be approved in the U.S. posthaste. 

Around the end of last year, there was a rapid string of amazing science news, in addition to the vaccine news: protein folding, SpaceX launching, approval of a cultured meat that does not rely the slaughter of animals, the first implementation of CRISPR, the discovery of new quark particles, and a discovery of what might be the oldest extant example of figurative cave art. (It’s a pig, naturally.) Just this week NASA landed a new rover on a dry lake bed on Mars and it’s sending back sound and images. It’s even tweeting, for the love of God. And that’s just on top of all the normal great American stuff: barbecue, Bandcamp, bagels, and the shiny little computer in my pocket, more useful than a pocket knife, more distracting than a bag of heroin. 

I realize not all of these examples are purely U.S.-based. Such is the (welcome, appreciated) nature of globalization. And I know that the U.S. is not the best country in dealing with the coronavirus but also not the worst. It’s somewhere in the middle — in a muddle, in the mud.

And being in the middle is fine, I guess. You can’t always be number one. But what bothers me is the mismanagement of basic competence, the surrendering of civilization. What I want really goes beyond basic infrastructure to redundant infrastructure. I want backups. I want everyone to be prepared. I want due diligence to become a national mantra. I don’t know if you solve this via the market or via the state or via some third stream my brain can’t imagine at the moment, and really, I don’t care. Arguing about method is a culture war quagmire, a bog unto the status quo. I just want us, as a country, to deal with fairly predictable problems in a more effective way. Wildfires, floods, drastic swings in temperature, even pandemics. These are not new inventions. These are not un-considered problems. I will admit that I have a technocratic leaning and a small desire to give up a smidgen of my freedom for some ruthless efficiency. (Chik-Fil-A, anyone?) But I just want the trains to run on time. Or really I just want the trains to run without hopping the track and plowing into the adjacent countryside while everyone does the savage dance in front of the wreckage. 

I will be the first to admit that it is not normal for it to get this cold in Mississippi. I will also be the first to admit that thus far I have been extremely lucky. I still have my power, though the power company has sent out warnings of potential blackouts. I still have running water, though the pressure has gone geriatric. But having running water during a cold snap shouldn’t be a matter of luck. We pay a price for living in a society, with our taxes, our bills, and our behavior, and as a result we secure a form of civilization. We fabricate it together. Besides, if I wanted to live according to survival of the fittest, I would move to the goddamned woods. 

Just after Trump was elected, I went to a reading by the British writer Geoff Dyer. He had just come out with his book White Sands and was being interviewed by Richard Grant, another British writer, who had moved to Mississippi and written a successful memoir about that weird experience, Dispatches from Pluto. At one point in the back and forth, they said that many of their friends had suggested they would be leaving the U.S. now that Trump was president. 

“You know, many of them said the same thing back when Bush got elected.” 

“They never left, did they?”

“No, they didn’t. I guess despite everything it’s still a pretty damn good country.”

And then these two Britons, both having found a measure of fame and comfort in the U.S., laughed and laughed.