Couldn’t agree more.
What we could’ve become.

Nobility and grace have gone missing. Sixties gave birth to bright possibilities… quite stillborn, it turns out.

Remember USIS? Call it neo imperialist but I think it accomplished quite a bit in the way of giving the ‘third world’ a positive peek into America. I remember sitting in the USIS library in Lahore leafing through magazines. Lovely friendly staff. There were even country music groups off and on, merrily playing bluegrass or John Denver type songs! It was a hangout for everyone, rich and poor alike. A community center for kids who ended up pushed into religious institutions for lack of any such gathering places.

The British Council was another haven with a borrowing library. It’s still there decades after USIS disappeared. It was an abandonment of sorts - brings to mind a microcosm of American withdrawal from Afghanistan!

Suddenly it was all gone. Funding cancelled. How short-sighted! Today radicalized youth might’ve been less closed-minded.
USIS did for America what decades of pompous ambassadors haven’t done - showed us the vistas of the American Dream.