The writers at Salon have been insufferable and self-loathing for years so it’s n wonder they want to impose their American self-loathing upon us.

We, the collective United States of America, need to be more ashamed of who we are, is the narrative. Why? Because everyone hates us, as the story goes from Salon Executive Editor, Andrew O’Hehir.

O’Hehir starts off by explaining these deep thoughts spawned from dropping his college-age child off at JFK for the “summer abroad” to do a “theater intensive”. He admits his (and his kids’) privilege. I mean, good golly, where else could a child pursue a useless theatre degree and go for a three-week “theater” course? Certainly not in any nations where their educational paths and jobs are pre-determined by class or out of necessity.

During our slow drive through heavy traffic to JFK, we talked about the ironies of international travel at this dire historical moment, when the U.S. has come visibly unstuck and the world’s long-running romance with America is well and truly over. I’ll be joining both my kids in Europe later this summer, and we half-jokingly suggested, while breathing the foul air of a clogged subterranean highway in Queens that seemed to embody entirely too many metaphors, that maybe we wouldn’t be coming back.”-Andrew O’Hehir, Salon

Independence Day in Europe! So lovely! And the foul air on that clogged, subterranean highway in Queens is about to get more foul in Zohran Mamdani’s New York Summer of Love. Get out while y’all can. And, don’t come back. O’Hehir and his kids aren’t the first of the privileged class to fantasize about staying in Europe or moving north to Canada:

That kind of anguished, not-funny witticism is another commonplace of the American educated classes: OMG, what has happened to this country? I’m moving to Canada or Iceland or the south of France; I need to find my grandmother’s birth certificate and apply for dual citizenship. Most people don’t follow through on these threats or fantasies, which could uncharitably be described as feeble protests or efforts to evade responsibility for the current state of America: Don’t blame us, we voted for Kamala!”-Andrew O’Hehir, Salon

It’s honestly a shame that most don’t follow through on the threats or fantasies. Some of us wish they would. Their feeble protests and empty threats are just that. It, according to O’Hehir, is their way of saying, “Don’t blame us, we voted for Kamala!”

Yes, they voted for Kamala, the one who let all of the individuals who eyed America and rushed over our borders, unvetted, to commit crimes, traffic drugs and kill innocent Americans, while our pResident slept and dreamt of ice cream cones and she cackled her way into the Presidential nomination.

Just this past weekend, my son shared with me that his former roommate told him straight up on Election Day of 2024 that this is “his fault”. What is “his fault”, you might ask? The fact that his mom is a single mom and has to “struggle” (she is divorced and lives in a very affluent neighborhood). She is struggling because all because of Trump, of course, so it’s my son’s fault. The girlfriend of said roommate, who pays thousands of dollars a year to live in a sorority house, said the same thing. Nothing against the Greek System because I know, for some, it has its benefits, but this is coming from a young woman who is very much part of a culture of rating and excluding people based on looks (and the color of their skin in some cases). This woman is part of a culture that puts beautiful, young women on display, on Instagram, in bikinis, for “summer abroad”. This young woman is part of a culture that has “date dashes” and “Wine Wednesdays” (read: alcohol-induced hook-ups where frat guys can bring down inhibitions of the ladies and, hopefully, score.) It’s cool though. They’re “true gentlemen” and advocate for women’s rights (to get abortions).

But this sub-culture of vanity and utter hypocrisy of some of our young people is not at all why the whole world hates America. It’s the Trump voters. This is why the whole world absolutely freaking hates us.

Only a small minority of Americans are likely to acquire “Armageddon” passports and bail out, but more and more of us have gotten the memo: The world’s just not that into us. Yeah, there were quite a few decades when millions of people all over the planet were way too invested in the American dream, if mostly at a distance. They wanted blue jeans and McDonald’s and road movies and Manhattan skyscrapers and California beaches, or at least they thought they did. Little by little they found out that some of those things weren’t worth having and all of them came with asterisks.”-Andrew O’Hehir, Salon

We still have blue jeans and McDonald’s and skyscrapers and California beaches and highways and diners and honest-to-goodness, salt-of-the-earth people that make America great. We still have the best quality of life by comparison. Individuals who have come here from oppressed nations and lived here for years would attest to this. The only Americans who hate America are the ones reading Salon and planted in front of CNN in their affluent suburbs or in their Brooklyn brownstones. We’ve become a parody onto ourselves with violence and protests and petty resistance of the party that tells anyone who will listen that we need to apologize for our behavior.

I always spend the Fourth of July with my kids. When they were younger, we did fireworks, BBQ, a summer night alive with fireflies and bullfrogs, all that stuff. Not this year: We’re going to an Oscar Wilde play in Dublin, no doubt followed by a couple of pints in the pub. It’s just a momentary escape. We’re still a bunch of Yanks, despite the passports. I’m pretty sure we’ll be coming back, but not that night.”-Andrew O’Hehir, Salon

Andrew? Please. Stay over there. Really. Even the fireflies and bullfrogs don’t want you and your self-loathing offspring back. As for the rest of us, we will unapologetically eat our all-beef, non-vegan burgers and hot dogs and blow some stuff up. No apologies necessary.

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