So yeah, maybe our entire financial system is melting down (thanks wall street), we’ve f’d up the environment to the point of no return, and our war mongering has pissed off the entire rest of the world. And this week I’ve discovered that China even has some really bad ass female beach volleyball players.
It’s times like these that I like to think about arenas in which we’re still unquestionably the dominant world power. 5 things the US still kicks ass at:
- Baseball: Japan and Central America have some pretty good players too, but those players are notable still primarily because of their scarcity.
- Basketball: we might lose a couple of world tournaments once in a while, but let’s face it, just because we’re lazy and the players hardly consider world basketball important.
- Higher education: other countries might have one or two universities that can compete with, say, UC Berkeley. No other country can touch the number of high quality colleges and universities in the US.
- Health care innovation: sure we don’t have nationalized health care or anything, but you know what, we invest a crap load in drug discovery and medical devices, and the rest of the world benefits.
- Entertainment: whatever your thoughts are about American cultural hegemony, you gotta admit that John McClane and Die Hard kick ass. Americans make damn good pop movies, music and tv. And we make some pretty good independent films too.
