It’s this ubiquitous thing when an American travels abroad and they see an institution functioning. Whether they fill up their gas then go pay for it, get better quality food for less than if you cooked it yourself, walk through a walkable city, get healthcare, travel via public transportation easily, some tourist attraction does any quality-of-life improvement, or someone is nice to them. You might know intellectually that America is a deeply unwell place, but when you escape, even to other parts of the anglosphere, you realize that it’s fucking cooked.
It took me years to realize what I liked about Japan was the walkable city and good public transportation. I can fill up on anime slop at home, but I couldn’t place it for years that what really made me love living there was the fact that as a teenager I could just go out to a place and just do stuff. I ended up being in really good shape and lost basically all the excess weight at the same time. There was also a lot more of a community in the local block I lived on, small neighborhood events that you’d do with the neighbors for a night just to kinda stay familiar not to mention the more culturally Japanese things like 回覧板 where you’re just passing around a notice from household to household so you kinda have to interact with your neighbors a bit.
well, obviously the solution here is to reduce the material security of the working class so much they can’t afford to travel abroad, to ratchet up global tensions through militarism and “warnings” to make traveling abroad seem more dangerous than it is, and to increase the bureaucratic hoop-jumping around gathering/maintaining the documentation necessary to travel abroad.
Free museums were a culture shock for me.
Let me guess:
: “Those evil EVIL authoritarians let me see the doctor and it was all paid for by….the T-WORD!1!1! No deductibles, no premiums! And service wasn’t deliberately sabotaged!1! The HORROR!1!1!1”No it’s more “everything bad people say about China is propaganda, dealing with their healthcare system was way cheaper and easier than dealing with the one in America”
I’m scared of what the comments might be like though.
That original video is much longer and they really do a great job explaining way more than just healthcare. I’ll see if I can find it
Here’s a link: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8Nss8tY/
ah nice
Meanwhile in burgerland: Sure you can see a specialist, in the new year.
Me: okay great so early January?
Person on the phone: No, early July
That’ll be $2500 thank you
I was supposed to go see a specialist back in October, but the schedule was wrong and so my appointment has been moved to March. Cool stuff! Hopefully it’s nothing serious or life-threatening. Be a shame if I had some sort of cancer or whatever the fuck and it had another 6 months to spread.
