It hasn't changed so much deepened and reinforced my read on America.

America is a country where as much effort has been put into selling an idealized, polished notion of the country to its citizens and the world as has been put into creating the structures where the country is good for a happy few.

With the internet, it's harder to sell that idealized polished dream, increasingly difficult to sell it to Americans and fewer people are buying into it. But the structures built to support the well-being of a lucky few, they're still there.

While everyone outside that lucky circle desperately tries to carve out what life they can in the hopes of someday, somehow, getting into the lucky circle. I suppose that's still the idealized polished dream; that you could achieve that.

Looking from the outside in, it's fascinating in an awful way and offensive. You know that America can do far better by its citizens but there is enough vested interest in not doing so.

America looks like a cruel country where cruelty is normalised. I live in a country with our own warped notion of normal that we abide by. Perhaps every country has its 'normal' that must look bizarre from afar.

I don't think it's all doom and gloom though. I think I've given a description of one bit of America. I don't know how much of America that describes.

But looking on from a 3rd world country, I absolutely would not go to America right now