Here’s the America Trump doesn’t get
By Fred Hiatt Editorial Page Editor November 6 at 7:33 PM
As the most frightening election of my lifetime draws to a close, I find myself thinking of a teenager I met many years ago in Siberia who was moved to tears after sitting for an exam to win a U.S.-sponsored study trip to the United States.
She didn’t yet know whether she had won or lost — but it was the first time she had ever felt she was competing for something on her merits, where bribes or connections to people in power would have no effect. That alone made her grateful and admiring of the United States.
She was seeing what, to me, is the real America.
I find myself thinking, too, of the many U.S. Foreign Service officers I met during that same phase of my life, when I was working for The Post as a foreign correspondent. They didn’t live glamorous lives, these young and not-so-young diplomats, and they didn’t get much glory. They became fluent in the local language in Dushanbe or Seoul or Yerevan, and they spent long days and nights meeting local politicians and activists and artists, writing cables that might or might not get read back in Washington, doing their best to understand other cultures and explain ours.
Many of them could have been earning more, and living more comfortably, in other jobs. But they wanted to serve their country. The quality of their work ranged, I’m sure, but for the most part they were impressive and dedicated. Certainly they were not “stupid.” They were no “disaster.”
They also were the real America.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-real-america-is-already-great/2016/11/06/143e37c6-a2a7-11e6-8832-23a007c77bb4_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
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