Everything is dirty. Nothing works. But everything’s also more expensive. And oh, by the way, you don’t have privacy anymore...That is how I described life in the US to a friend who had been living abroad for a bit more than a decade when we met up earlier this year during his brief return to the states. We’re not a first world country anymore, I told him. Hopefully our decline stops somewhere around second world, I half-joked. That’s probably the best we can hope for.Earlier that evening over dinner at what was once our regular spot, he told me of...