>the more I've realized there's almost no aspect of American life worth preserving
I would suggest living in a third or second world country without outside support. I had your same mindset, and did that for a few years. I could not wait to come back.
Even so, the third world is not our standard. We’re ready for the version two improvements by virtue of the iterative process, and our own expectations for ourselves.
Actually it was living abroad in a third world nation that soured me on America. Bringing my children back to the USA was painful to me and disappointing to them.
East Berlin used to be second World, but many of my American friends moved there because they were tired sick of being harassed by their own country brutality and would never go back.
Even many African countries are safer than the US if you are black.
On the other side, one of the most annoying kind of tourist you can find in my city, which is Rome in Italy, are Americans.
They lack the basic notions about "respecting others cultures and habits"
I sure have, Venezuela. No water, constant power failures, gas at 8-12 USD per gallon (controlled by the military police$$$, though that is a recent development), minimum wage at 5USD per month. Food at international prices. Basically non-existent judicial system. Police brutality several notches above what you see in the US.
So out of the 200+ countries you could have compared the US to you chose a failed state. There are many other 3rd world/developing countries who have fully functional governments.
Obviously not every other country is the same. The situation is not that the US does everything one way, and the entire rest of the world does it another way; there are about 200 different countries, and they all do things differently in some ways. Some countries get most things right, some get most things wrong, but most countries get some things right and some things wrong.
There's a lot to learn and improve by looking at how other countries solve their problems.
This was also the topic of Michael Moore's Where To Invade Next. Instead of taking other countries' oil, the US should take other countries' ideas, and Moore had a couple of suggestions for interesting ideas from other countries, like school lunches from France, prison system from Norway, etc.
Bullshit. If you had really lived there, you would know that Venezuela's problems are mostly caused by USA-imposed sanctions. The police are so "brutal" that they have let the would-be coup leader and CIA contractor Juan Gauido prance about the nation unmolested for a couple of years now. How many poor black Venezuelans have died under the knees of Venezuelan cops in the last month?
Or even Western Europe. I’ve lived in the UK, and it absolutely gave me an appreciation for many aspects of American life.
For example, municipal government and school boards. Yes they can go bad. But as the protestors in Minneapolis are showing, the city is extremely responsive because it is local.
If there was a similar protest in Birmingham (UK), I can’t imagine the city disbanding the police department under any circumstances.
It might result in parliament taking action. But the idea of independent municipal government is very lacking.
Municipal governments in England are very much subordinate to Parliament.
There’s a reason Blair was so pathetically and stupidly pro-American. America actually has a lot to offer.
Nobody actually thinks that we can have no law enforcement. That doesn't mean that disbanding systematically corrupt departments and rebuilding from scratch isn't a good idea.
Sure. When an organisation is totally broken, ripping up and replacing isn’t alway the worst solution. See the Stasi, for instance, or for a less dramatic shakeup, the RUC.
"Other cities are still struggling. Kansas City, Columbus, Phoenix, and Birmingham saw homicide rates reach new highs in 2017. In Baltimore, homicides hit a new per-capita peak."
If I have to place bet, the fate of Minneapolis will be similar to that of Baltimore.
I would suggest living in a third or second world country without outside support. I had your same mindset, and did that for a few years. I could not wait to come back.