by Willem Meiners
IN THE past 13 months, the granddaughter of Grandma Meulenkamp from Gelderland performed in 53 American cities. More than 70,000 people filled the stadium in Pittsburgh to see and hear Taylor Swift. More than 80,000 in New York. In Houston: 70,000. Nearby in Austin: 80,000. One hundred thousand in Los Angeles, 140,000 in Seattle. And Taylor wasn’t the only one. Beyoncé also filled sold-out stadiums everywhere last year, as did Bruce Springsteen of the Springsteen family from Groningen, the Netherlands. One big party every time, and a new record everywhere.
This summer, American teens are again filling more job openings in restaurants and stores than ever. Five years ago, young school students covered one-fiftieth of those jobs, two percent. This year, it’s one-fifth, twenty percent. Since 2019, minimum teenage hourly pay has increased from $10 to $15. It doesn’t really come as a surprise, as Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer, which closely tracks wage levels in and for America, reported that hourly wages improved significantly in 26 of 50 states last year. In 23 other states, this was already the case the year before. A shelf stocker at Walmart or Target makes at least $15 an hour. Costco pays $16.
MORE PEOPLE are getting married this year than ever since the early 1980s, and they are spending more on that fun day than ever. Birth rates are also up. Cause: young people are on average more optimistic about their future, and they took their time arriving at that conclusion – most babies are being brought into the world by thirty-something mothers. Also: more than ever, people are working from home, a Covid era after-effect, reason for more couples to start a family now.
In 23 million households, moreover, they added a pet, to the delight of dog and cat food sellers. As a result, vet schools can barely keep up with the demand for veterinarians. Meanwhile, the DIY stores of Luuk Lowe, descendant of Rebecca Gerrits from Amersfoort, are also seriously benefiting. Lowe’s and its competitor Home Depot have been making record sales since at-home workers decided en masse to tackle overdue home maintenance.
WHAT DO such numbers tell us? What does it say that 800,000 police officers are patrolling America’s 4 million miles of roads every day, keeping the streets safe far more often than not? What does it mean that 1.2 million firefighters, male and female, are on standby 24/7 to respond with ladder trucks and ambulances, not only in cases of fire, but also when cars collide somewhere? All are paid with taxpayer money. The short-lived protest call to defund the police did not stand a chance on Main Street USA.
And this here, never happened before: today, four of America’s five largest cities are governed by Black mayors, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, equally divided by gender. Women are mayors in LA and Philly, but also in places like Phoenix, San Francisco, Washington, Boston and Las Vegas. Within the span of a single generation, such changes have become perfectly normal. So normal that people react with surprise when I alert them to this data – they hadn’t even noticed.
WHY NOT? Because America’s everyday occurs in an everyday manner, mostly in unity. The vast majority of everybody stops at a red traffic light, almost every household pays their taxes on time, in the ballpark everyone stands during the playing of the anthem, hats off, hands on hearts, no one tosses fireworks or stuff on the pitch. And although the madness of mass shootings happens far too often, last year at 38 schools alone, nothing of the kind happened in the remaining 115,538 American schools. The country has a gun problem, no doubt about it, but it has had one since Ellen Rijsdam of Rhenen messed with Virgil Earp’s head in 1881 and he started shooting like there was no tomorrow. The gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone would not have been out of place in 2024.
Depending on what news channel you watch, what social media you follow, or what poll you believe, you are inundated with claims that America is divided to the bone. This is incorrect. Yes, there have, with varying levels of success, been attempts to ban books from libraries in 138 school districts recently, including a work about Anne Frank. But there are 13,800 such school districts in the US. In 99 percent of the libraries, all is fine, nothing stupid is happening.
Politics divide, then? Over the past 40 years, since Ronald Reagan, the margin between winner and loser in presidential elections has fluctuated between 4 and 8 percent on average. Biden beat Trump in 2020 by a 4.5 pct difference. Relatively low in the average span, but better than Obama and Bush Jr did in their re-elections. The difference is not necessarily partisan; America has more nonpartisan voters than registered Democrats or Republicans. And unless the omens are deceiving, the winning margin in 2024 will increase rather than decrease.
AFTER ALL, from day to day, from neighborhood to neighborhood, America functions in a much more united manner than we are led to believe. With an economy running at a healthy clip, with unemployment near zero, and with more and bigger foreign investments that yield good-paying jobs than ever before. It also shows in what Americans privately do with their wallets. Every day, together they donate more than a billion dollars to charity. They are head and shoulders the world’s most generous givers, to their neighbors as the Scripture asks, to fighting disease and combatting woes. Republicans, Democrats, independents, more than seventy percent of each group participate.
Restaurants and cinemas are full again since the face masks have been taken off, towns everywhere have posters hanging from lampposts showing the pictures of boys and girls who won this or that tournament with their basketball, softball or soccer teams, and districts all over the country are hard at work recruiting school bus drivers – demand for staff exceeds supply wherever you look. Roads and bridges are being repaired coast to coast, ever since the government enacted its infrastructure improvement law. And on the shoulder of those roads the Navy actively advertises, looking for young men and women to serve.
DIVIDED? I live in a Trump district. The neighbor voted for him, and will again, as did and will most other neighbors. I gave him a copy of my book on optimism, for his 60th birthday. Gosh, he said, “I was standing in a bookstore the other day in line behind someone who was buying your book. When she wanted to check it out, she was told that the customer before her had already paid on her behalf.”
Paying forward, the vast majority of Americans get along wonderfully well. They are good folks, they behave normally, they help shovel snow at the neighbors’, they get up for elderly people and mothers with babies, and when the sun eclipsed last week, spontaneous happy parties broke out everywhere people went to watch the event together, from Texas to Maine. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, because everyone knows a hundred other people, family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances. Virtually all of whom are perfectly normal folks, just like you and me. Everyday men and women, united, in agreement, in harmony in the vast majority of aspects of life. And not, I repeat: not, deeply divided.
* Willem Meiners is the Editor of De Daily Dutchman. He is the husband of Alice, the father of two daughters, and grandfather of two grandchildren. Meiners has traveled all 50 U.S. states, lived in Maryland, South Carolina and now Maine, and has resided in the United States since 1991.
