USA under Trump: The quiet dream of a better life

T he Airbnb I stay in Dallas has a strange vibe. “Have you noticed,” another guest asks me, “that people here don’t look you in the eye?” As a World Cup journalist, I live away from the reporter bubble for a week in an interchangeable terraced house with numerous rooms.

It's very cheap. Apart from me, only male guests live in the house, and some of them sit in the common room all day and stare at their cell phones. Someone says that he is waiting for a trial and about his anger problem. But mostly they are silent. Some have settled in for a longer period of time. And yes, they often don't look you in the eye. “Because they are ashamed,” believes the guest who is not ashamed. “They are ashamed of their situation.”

The USA is the land of big dreams and even bigger human rights crimes. Perhaps logically, they are also the land of romanticized outsiders. From Jack Kerouac to Hunter S. Thompson, authors celebrated life on the margins of society. But something about the white macho nonsense was always unpleasant. Maybe there were just too many middle-class men telling me how iconic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was. The current liberal reports about precarious Trump fans are unpleasant in a different way, with their elitist view and melodramatic sound. Many people want to uncover the sediments of America. But perhaps the layer of pop culture on top is now too thick.

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In here in Dallas, we are strangers together. In the area: a huge golf course; deserted sidewalks and wide highways; Fast food chains, of which there is probably an oversupply, because they are also often empty.

And so we start talking. There's the guy who last worked in an Amazon warehouse. He despises capitalism, and I'm surprised at his explicitness here in the US. He has never been abroad. Europe is dangerous, he saw that on Tiktok. He wants a better life and is waiting for an idea. There's the older man from Las Vegas, he works in casinos. He moves from one casino city to the next, alone. His hands are shaking violently. I don't ask about it.

And there is the guest who is not ashamed, he comes from an East African country. He went to a Catholic Church boarding school, where he was constantly beaten, for example because he used his native language. So he forgot about it. Thanks to his education he was able to emigrate. And because of the beatings, he never returned to his homeland. Yes, the USA delivers strong stories. It's not difficult to find them. It's difficult to tell them correctly. How about just do it without a punchline in mind.