Replying to Trump's wistful entreaty that "We should have more people from Norway," Torbjoern Saetre, a Norwegian conservative pol, tweeted "On behalf of Norway: Thanks, but no thanks." Firm, but also gracious, polite, even friendly, you might say.
Less cordial was a tweet from Christian Christensen, an American journalism professor doing easy time at Stockholm University: "Of course people from #Norway would love to move to a country where people are far more likely to be shot, live in poverty, get no healthcare because they’re poor, get no paid parental leave or subsidized daycare and see fewer women in political power. #Shithole."
Only natural is that Christensen, being more familiar than the Norwegian with Trump's America, would lean to a shitholish take on these united states under kleptocratic, kakistocratic Republican control. In plainer words, America's dumbest, most crooked and least qualified are piloting its ship of state. Three-hundred-fifty-eight days ago we went from the impeccable elegance of a biracial philosopher king to a kraut-mcfuckface little corporal who has never read a book and never examined a thought. Assisting the orange vacuum is an unbrotherly band of gothic horrors still called on occasion the party of Lincoln, who, as I write, is lodging a heavenly defamation suit.
Why would no rational Norwegian wish to emigrate to the United States? Because she would be tripping down 13 steps of national happiness. That is, in 2017, a U.N.-assembled panel of social scientists ranked the United States 14th in national happiness. Norway came in as "the world’s happiest country." To anyone of my political bent, this was no surprise; the top-five happiest countries were democratically socialistic.
The social scientists' chief criteria in gauging this collective sentiment of contentment? There were six: "gross domestic product per capita (a basic measure of national wealth); healthy years of life expectancy; social support (having someone to rely on during times of trouble); trust (a perceived absence of corruption in government and business); the perceived freedom to make life choices; and generosity (measured by donations)."
While the U.S. has seen a steady rise in postwar GDP per capita (as has most of the world), our life expectancy has seen "a statistically significant drop"; our "social support" is under assault by Republican kakistocrats, and our president, concerning criterion #4, is a kleptocrat to boot; women's "freedom to make life choices" is also under assault — by the usual suspects; and finally, happily, our "generosity as measured by donations" is up. Sadly, we're down in four of the six criteria for national happiness.
Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, an editor of the U.N. report, has observed that America is "mired in a roiling social crisis that is getting worse. Yet the dominant political discourse is all about raising the rate of economic growth." I have always found it a doublespeak absurdity that America's political party that most champions God, patriotism, family and other domains of feel-good intangibles is also our most materialistic party — materialism being the more proper realm, so we've been told, of godless socialists. To hear your average Republican pol or the very abnormal Donald Trump tell it, nothing is more important than your worldly, middle-class, tangible welfare. There is no tomorrow. Gather ye bank accounts while ye may. Your happiness is dependent on the Dow and other indexes of material comfort.
Coming from Republicans, yes this foofaraw is doublespeak and yes it's absurdity, but it's also hypocrisy, and we must forgive them their Beelzebub-given giftedness. The more essential point, though, is that FDR did more for the uplifting of the human soul in one fireside chat than Republicans have done in 38 Reaganesque years.
"We should have more people from Norway," said Trump. We probably would have, if only Roosevelt's conservative-progressivism of the democratic socialist sort — of which the aforementioned biracial philosopher king partook — had stayed in control, arm-in-arm with a likeminded Congress. Even if Norwegians failed to jump westbound steamers by the tens of thousands, we would be happier.