Country Roads Take Me Home
For over a week now, the United States has seen an estimated five million tourists come in for the FIFA World Cup.
Personally, I didn’t even know it was happening here until I saw the posts on X. I’ve never really been a Soccer guy… or football/ futbol, for our foreign friends. Patriot that I am, even seeing America do vastly better in the competition than other countries expected us to only gives me the tiniest amount of satisfaction.
Soccer just isn’t for me.
What does interest me is the unintended consequences of having millions of foreigners traveling around our country and discovering America.
If you listen to old media and social media, the United States is one of the most hated nations in the world. They hate us! They want our borders dissolved, our government eliminated and for us to become a footnote in history.
And yet, the last week has told a different story entirely.
Tourists from around the world, after experiencing our people, our food and our many, many cultures, seem to be experiencing a kind of joy that I’m not sure I’ve ever felt.
One of the stories that took over X, was the story of Freddy. As near as I can tell, Freddy is just a random young man from Germany. Since he arrived in America for the World Cup, he has been touring across the entire country, expressing his unabashed sense of wonder. The internet was so taken with Freddy’s experiences that it’s opened doors for him. He toured the New Orleans Saints facility. He got to meet Country Music star Ella Langley. Maybe the coolest opportunity came from a trip to NASA. Freddie got to facetime astronauts on the International Space Station.
That’s incredibly cool. But while Freddy’s experiences are special, he isn’t alone. Overwhelmingly, the people who came for the World Cup seem to love our country and embrace what makes it great.
And you might say, “well those are videos of a handful of individuals. You can’t point to a Japanese man being brought nearly to tears by tasting Texas BBQ ribs for the first time and say they all love us.”
Maybe.
But for me, the coolest thing is the tourists embracing John Denver’s Country Roads Take Me Home. Here’s a video of a bar full of Scottish fans absolutely losing it whilst singing this classic.
Astonishingly, my point isn’t that the America is the best. This isn’t going to end with me chanting “USA! USA! USA!”
What all this tells us is that for all of our differences, foreign and domestic, we aren’t that far apart. There will always be things that separate us, but how far that gap is and how virulent that disdain depends on how much we allow. What does it say that a Futbol tournament can unite people in Boise, Idaho with Argentinians? To be fair, the Europeans do call it, “the Beautiful Game.” Maybe there’s something to that.
Or maybe… just maybe… despite popular belief, the world is better than advertised.
You know what? Screw it.
USA! USA! USA!
#FIFA #WorldCup #US #tourism #soccer #football #futbol #USA #politics #freddy #freddyLA7
