On Being from a Failed Empire
by Gary Shteyngart
Past seven years I've been joking about how I was born in one failed empire (the USSR) and how someday I'm going to die in another one. Is it time to retire that joke? I came to America as a child. I studied hard, got circumcised, wrote two books, and then W. happened. I remember how excited I was to get my first U.S. passport, how happily I brandished it when going off to some ridiculous country where the ruling elite gorged itself on oil profits while enemies of the state were sent to roast in a dank tropical hell.
And then we became that country. Mr. Obama: Please make it better. All that work, all that lost foreskin, all those years of mooing the Pledge of Allegiance with one hand on my fast-beating immigrant heart—give me some pride back. Raise our taxes, if you must. We'll write even more crap for The Stranger to make up the difference. We'll do anything to redeem our butchered ideals. Let us throw off this threadbare imperial mantle. Weren't we a nation once?
From http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/here-comes-the-sun/Content?oid=757896
Everyone should read The Stranger, all the time
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