By Charles C. W. Cooke
Tuesday,
February 13, 2024
‘The city
of Moscow,” Tucker Carlson announced this week, from his populist redoubt at
the World Government Summit in Dubai, “is so much nicer than any city in my
country. I had no idea. It is so much cleaner, and safer and prettier,
aesthetically. Its architecture, food, and services than in any city in the
United States. And this is not ideological. How did that happen?”
The
simplest answer to this inquiry is that it didn’t.
I
daresay that Carlson did, indeed, have a nice time when he visited Moscow. As a
rich foreign tourist who was being carefully minded by the Russian government,
he was undoubtedly exposed to the Moscow that its champions wanted him to see.
And that city, I’ll wager, is pretty swell. But still. Better than every city
in the United States? The idea is ridiculous. I have been to Moscow. I have
also been to most of the major cities in America. There is no sense in which
Moscow could be placed at the top of the list. There is a small part of the
place that is rather pretty, and, thanks largely to the mafia, a few good
restaurants have popped up, but the rest of it remains as bleak and moribund
and soulless as it was during the Soviet era. It is a museum, and an ugly one
at that.
As
for the “food” and “service,” which Tucker considers superior to that of the
United States? What rot! Forget New York, New Orleans, Charleston, Chicago, San
Francisco, Atlanta, or Las Vegas, the food and service are better in Milwaukee than
they are in Moscow. Walk into an average joint anywhere in the United States
and you will likely leave pleased with your drinks and your meal. In Moscow?
Not so much.
Carlson
says that Moscow is “clean” and “safe.” When I was there, it was neither.
Moscow has a chronic homeless problem — at night, you see people warming
themselves by lighting fires inside discarded oil drums — and it is teeming
with petty crime. I saw an old lady pushed down a flight of stone steps by a
beggar, I saw a black teenager punched for no obvious reason (although we know
why), and my father and I were mugged on that ornate subway that naive visitors
always gush about. It is true that none of this would have happened to us if
we’d been there to interview Vladmir Putin, but that’s rather the point, isn’t
it? When you’re a guest of the government — especially of a totalitarian
government — you’re treated to the full girlfriend experience.
Were
he pushed, I suspect that Carlson would defend his apologia by pointing to
American cities such as San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. — all of
which are, indeed, extremely badly run. But he would still be wrong. San
Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., need to get their act together, no
doubt, but if I had to choose between living in Moscow or in any of those
places, I’d choose any of those places in three seconds flat. Any American who
wouldn’t is a fool. Moscow is a drab mausoleum in an economic backwater that is
ruled by a dictator. I have no time for the blanket dismissal
of Russian culture that we have seen in some quarters since 2022, but,
by the same token, I am profoundly uninterested in lionizing the place either.
Certainly, Russia is a different sort of villain than it was
between 1917 and 1990, but it is a villain, nevertheless. Whether they are
native-born or they moved here by choice, Americans ought not to envy it.
Do
they? No, and yes. No, in that, for now, Tucker’s particular brand
of trollish Russophilia has been confined to the silliest corners of the Too
Online, “based” American Right. Yes, in that this sort of thing
only happens when a people forget who they are and start looking elsewhere for
inspiration.
Last
summer, the Pew Research Center asked Americans whether the United States was the greatest
country in the world, one of the greatest countries in the
world, or not a great country at all. Appropriately, much of the discussion of
the results focused on the negative answers given by young Americans and by
self-described Democrats. Just 9 percent of Americans aged between 18 and 29
contended that the United was the greatest country in the world, with a
remarkable 43 percent choosing the “other countries are better than the U.S.”
option. Among Democrats, those numbers were 9 percent and 36 percent. When
combined, this became even worse. Only 4 percent of Democrats aged 18-29 said
that the United States was the best country in the world, with 50 percent
saying that it wasn’t great at all. Among Democrats aged 30-49, meanwhile,
those numbers were 8 percent and 40 percent. Sometimes, stereotypes really do
hit the mark.
Naturally,
I was appalled by this. But, all in all, I had a different reaction to the
numbers than most conservatives, in that what bothered me far, far more than
the Democrats’ indifference toward America was that the Republicans’ numbers
weren’t that much better. I expected Democrats between 18-29
and 30-49 to be indifferent or hostile toward America. That’s what Democrats
are for. What I didn’t expect to see — what, frankly, shocked me — was how
lukewarm the Republicans were by contrast. Only 31 percent of Republicans said
that the United States is the greatest country in the world, with 51 percent
saying it’s one of the greatest countries, and 17 percent saying it’s one of
the worst. That is astonishing. Even more alarming is that, among Republicans
aged 18-29, more (28 percent) believe that “other countries are better than the
U.S.” than believe that the “U.S. stands above all other countries in the
world.” How sad.
At
this point, I am accustomed to being given snooty lectures on this topic, and,
at this point, I simply don’t care. I believe all the stuff about America that
immigrants are supposed to believe, and I believe it unashamedly and
unironically. Having traveled widely, it seems profoundly obvious to me that by
far and away the best place to live in the world is the United States, and that
by far and away the best time to live here is right now. Yes, our president is
a vegetable. Yes, the guy trying to replace him is a scoundrel. Yes, we have
all manner of problems to address, from inflation to debt to crime to foreign
affairs to a rising ride of cultural illiberalism. But the important question
in this realm is not “what” but “as opposed to what,” and,
simple country boy at heart that I may be, even I know that the correct answer
to this inquiry sure as heck ain’t Moscow.
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