Looking Back At America From Overseas

The old Spanish church in Pidigan used to store refillable Coke bottles was damaged by the 2022 earthquake.

Spending over a month overseas clears the head of the American fog. Even someone like myself who tries hard to stay informed has to work hard to see outside the American bubble when iiving on the inside. Issues that are so dire and immediate inside the U.S. pale against the backdrop of a world where the self-centered concerns of the worlds richest nation seem like the petty squabbling of kings in a far off castle.  This week, lamenting the Supreme Court's Chevron decision, rolling back governments ability to regulate literally everything and protect the public, seems prosaic and meaningless to me in a place where such protections don't even exist. Since many countries around the world often use U.S. regulations and standards as a benchmark and model, the whole world will suffer from the Chevron decision.

 I watched the Trump/Biden debate on CNN with my father in law and it came across like demented theater in a place where the American hand will likely be much the same no matter who wins. Nobody else really cared to watch something that is of little consequence to them. If Trump wins, he and Marcos, as two spoiled rich kids with questionable ethics, will be fast friends. If Biden wins, if he still knows what is going on, they won't be best buddies, but the American hand in the Philippines will be much the same.

I try to keep up with news back home in addition to imersing myself in the journalistic zeitgeist of my temporary home. There is a whole world of things going on here and America is just a place "over there" where people's relatives are and people are unbelievably rich. It is also of late an important guardian against Chinese encroachment. Other than these few things politics matters less than learning to karokee Taylor Swift and watching the Los Angeles Lakers; in short, just like Americans 

                                                                                       

As I sit here writing in the dark after another of the almost daily power outages; a thing most Americans never worry about unless it is a storm, it is just one of the million other things that concern people more than the quibbling over how to split up a very large and rich pie. The rechargable and solar lights and fans still work, which makes me wonder why we even need power from the grid. A few more solar panels and we will be just fine.

A week from now we will be on our way to Seattle via Tokyo, returning to the rich world of the imperial core that is out of touch with itself and the rest of the world. Filipinos know a lot about America in part because many of them are Americans and everyone has a family connection there somehow. Flip the script, what do Americans know about Filipinos? For the average American, not a lot.