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SEVEN STEPS TO LEARN AND MASTER ANYTHING AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLEI hate learning.I wanted to learn how to trade stocks and I ended up losing my home. I wanted to learn how to play chess better and in one of my first tournaments I threw all the pieces on the floor and cried.I wanted to learn to play poker and I lost about $20,000 the first ten times I played.I wanted to learn how to start a business. I wanted to learn more about investing. I wanted to learn computer programming, how to make a TV show, how to write a book, how to speak to a large audience, how to do standup comedy.Heck, when I was a kid I wanted to learn how to breakdance. I wanted to learn how to kiss a girl. I wanted and wanted.Every time I ended up crying. Over and over.This is what I learned about learning.A) HACK THE 10,000 HOUR RULEThis rule, developed by Anders Ericsson and popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, damaging me for years thinking I needed 10,000 hours to succeed at anything, states that you need 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice” to reach master-level potential.For instance, as Gladwell writes in “Outliers” (but Ericsson disputes in his book “Peak”), The Beatles got their 10,000 hours playing 20 hours a day in strip clubs in Germany before they wrote their first album.Mozart played piano for 10,000 hours by the time he was 12 years old.Story after story.So I felt frustrated. I feel frustrated.I’m almost 50. I only like to learn something if I can be among the best. If I can reach my potential. Potential enough to see the nuances in something I love so much I want to get good at it.But I’ll be dead after another 10,000 hours of learning.But now I’m convinced the 10,000 hours can be skipped.Here’s how.B) PLUS, MINUS, EQUALPLUSFind mentors.A mentor can be real (someone who is willing to help you analyze your mistakes), or virtual (read books).Both real and virtual are good.For anything you are interested in, you should read 100 books a year. You should watch 100s of videos.We have mirror neurons that learn by watching or reading our virtual mentors. It’s as if we download their lives into our brain and the mirror neurons think that their experience are ours.For instance, when I wanted to learn how to be a better public speaker, I would watch videos of great public speakers right before I had to speak.When I played in chess tournaments I would play through the games of world champions so I could learn more how they thought about the game.And every time I lost a game I went over the game, move by move, with a grandmaster who I paid to coach me. He would set up similar positions to my losing position and we’d play game after game until I mastered the nuances.When I wanted to learn about investing I read every investment book I could find and spoke with 100s of other great investors.When you read, to maximize what you learn: immediately after reading a book write down “ten things I learned”. Else, you won’t remember more than 1 or 2 things at best from the book.I’m trying to learn Standup Comedy now. I capitalize it because it’s that important to me. It’s the hardest skill I’ve ever had to learn.I’m in year two. I probably watch 20 videos a day. I videotape myself on stage 4–6 times a week. And I read books about and by comedians. And, fortunately, I have a podcast. So I ask great comedians to come on and I can ask them any question I want.EQUALSThis is so important it really deserves its own letter. This one category alone, “Equals”, is worth about 4,000 of the 10,000 hours.Find people who love what you love and spend as much time talking about this shared area as you can.If you are all equally striving and finding your own path through learning this new skill you all want to share, then you will build community and learn together.(the “Beats”. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S Burroughs, all rose up as writers together by comparing notes, editing each other’s works, encouraging each other, for over 20 years as they rose up in the industry together).When I was learning poker, my friends and I would compare notes on every difficult hand we played during an evening.When I was learning investing, I’d talk to friends in every area of investing (day trading, arbitrage, value investing, special situations, quantitative, etc etc) and we’d share notes and quickly learn through the experiences of each other.Why not do this with mentors? Because the mentors have so far passed this level they are not always able to get into the weeds in the same way as the Equals.MINUSExplain what you are learning while you are learning it. Two reasons:1) If you can’t explain in a simple way, then you need to learn more. Beginner’s mind.2) People who are behind where you are at in learning the skill will ask basic questions that you often need to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse. Again: beginner’s mind.—C) MICRO-SKILLSEvery skill worth learning has dozens of micro-skills:For instance, when I started my first successful business I had some natural skills at sales and technology (it was a technology business) but I had to learn so many micro-skills in order to succeed that it felt like I was going to die and fail almost every single day.Here are some business micro-skills:Sales, Management of employees, Negotiating, Selling to investors, Selling to acquirers, Product development, Product consistency and execution, Motivation, Emotional stability, and on and on.All of the skills are exclusive of each other. Negotiating is not the same as Sales. Product development is not the same as management. But each skill needs to be developed to be successful.Chess micro-skills: openings, middle game, endgame, tactics, positional play (which can be divided up into about 50 micro-skills, as well as all the different types of endgames), attack, defense, psychology, etc.(White to move and win. Checkmate in two moves).Standup micro-skills (I think. I hope): likability, commitment, crowd work (20–50 different types of crowds, mic work, pacing, stage control, and finally humor, which includes: punchlines, premises, tags, call backs, story telling, persona, act-outs, etc etc.For whatever you are interested in: list the micro-skills. Figure out what you are good at, what you are bad at, and how you can learn to be better at each.D) FAILUREAnything worth learning, you’re going to suck. You’re going to suck badly.The first day you play chess: you might love it, you might be talented, you might be confident, but you are a disaster compared to anyone with experience who has studied the game.The same goes for business. For investing. For writing. For acting. For art. For creativity. For everything worth learning.And failure is painful.(It took Edison 10,000 attempts before he found the right filament to invent a lightbulb)Nobody wants to lose money in poker. Or in investing. Nobody wants to spend months or years writing a book nobody reads.But if you love something, and you want to get to your peak potential, your heart is going to break when you inevitably fail. And you will fail big and horrible and it will be like your brain and heart are torn in half.But that’s the good news:Because then you’re uncertified to study the failure. You can go to a PLUS, and your EQUALS, and look at where you went wrong.You can’t learn as much from succeeding because it’s harder to pinpoint where mistakes are (and it means you are not taking enough chances).Ray Dalio, the largest hedge fund manager ever, told me on my podcast, “Pain + Reflection = Progress”.Pain is a must.With standup comedy, I always say “Yes” to a challenge. Do comedy on a subway car? Yes. Do comedy on a Monday night in a blizzard with the entire audience from Norway? Yes. Go on stage with a 102 fever and my voice completely shot? Yes.Then videotape. Then go over quarter second by quarter second.I was speaking to one of the best comedians in the world a few weeks ago. He told me he still videotapes and studies every single time he’s gone on stage. Every year, every month, he’s better than the month before.With business, it’s difficult because a business can take years. But try to have mini-failures. Challenge yourself on deadlines, challenge yourself on customer acquisition, on customer service, on micro-execution of product, and on and on.Figure out the ways that you can fail, do them, study them, repeat.E) ENERGYThis should be the first item. Because it’s the most important.Without energy, you can’t learn.If you don’t sleep enough, you’ll be too tired and you won’t learn.If you’re in a bad relationship, your brain will be distracted and you won't learn.If you don’t exercise your creativity, you won’t be able to combine ideas and learn from “idea sex”.If you are too anxious, you will spend too much mental energy worrying about the future instead of learning in the present.When I went broke for the fourth or fifth time I finally had to take a look back and say, “What was I doing right every time I made money?” and “What was I doing wrong”. It all boiled down to:PHYSICAL HEALTH: Eat / Move / SleepEMOTIONAL HEALTH: Eliminate ALL of the toxic people in your life.CREATIVE HEALTH: Write down ten ideas a day. The ideas can be about anything.SPIRITUAL HEALTH: Learn how to deal with anxiety and regret. Release control over the things you have no control over.Just these four things gave me so much energy, it probably took another 1000–2000 hours out of the 10,000 hours.F) THE ONE PERCENT RULE:Try to improve 1% a day at whatever it is you are trying to learn.This seems like a small number. Just one percent!But 1% a day, compounded, is 3800% per year.That’s 37 times better than where you started in just one year.I had a friend who I always played chess with. He played chess all day every day. But he never read a book on chess or studied with anyone.He just played the same moves and made the same mistakes game after game. I asked him why he didn’t take the basic steps to improve?All you have to do is take basic steps each day to improve as small as 1%.He said, “Ahhh, I just like to play.” Which is fine.But he never got better. Chess is much more enjoyable (everything is much more enjoyable) when you get better and when you learn and can appreciate the subtleties and the nuances.Everything is an art form. The greatest artists have a vocabulary of 100,000s of patterns in their chosen field.“Speaking” that vocabulary is pleasurable because you can enjoy the art form more, you can succeed more easily, you get acclamation for your success, you make friends with others who are also successful because you speak their language - but it requires every day learning new “words” in your art form.Studying how Warren Buffet invests. Or how Bobby Fischer plays the King’s Indian. Or how Richard Pryor brought his authentic voice into his comedy. Or how Richard Branson can build and manage 400 businesses.Or challenging yourself to fail a little bit each day to expand your comfort zone.One percent a day = 3800 percent a year.G) DO ITYou can’t get better at chess just by reading about it. You have to play. Then you have to play in high stress situations (like a tournament).You can’t get to be the best at business just by reading about Richard Branson. You have to start a business (or work for a startup or even work for a big business and notice their small successes and failures).You can't get to be great at comedy by watching videos. You have to go on stage. Every day.Every day.Summary:PLUS, MINUS, EQUAL2. MICRO-SKILLS3. FAILURE (Pain + Reflection = Progress)4. ENERGY (Physical, Emotional, Creative, Spiritual health every day)5. ONE PERCENT RULE6. DO IT (every day)7. USE THE ABOVE TO HACK THE 10,000 HOURS RULE (10,000 hours of deliberate practice gets you to your full potential).

Let’s look at Reich’s points one by one:1. Gun laws save lives. Consider the federal assault weapons ban. After it became law in 1994, gun massacres—defined as instances of gun violence in which six or more people were shot and killed—fell by 37 percent. The number of people dying from mass shootings fell by 43 percent. But when Republicans in Congress let the ban lapse in 2004, gun massacres more than doubled.This statement is correct - if you play by Reich’s rules. But the ban was allowed to expire because there was no evidence that it had produced any real impact on total firearm-related homicides.Mass shootings, as notorious as they may be, account for only a fraction of a percent of total homicides. Comparing the CDC reports of homicides during the 1985–2014 period, we find that total murders dropped about 19.5% between the ten years from 1985–1994 and the period from 1995–2004 (the Assault Weapons Ban didn’t become effective until the end of 1994 and expired at the end of 2004). The decline continued after the ban expired falling to its lowest point in more than 50 years in 2014 - in spite of a huge gun-buying frenzy from 2008 to about 2012. During that entire period, mass shooting deaths accounted for 0.16% of total firearm-related murders.The fatal flaw in the original Assault Weapons Ban was that it grandfathered in all of the banned guns and high-capacity magazines that were already owned on the ban’s effective date and the government allowed manufacturers to sell existing inventory.That’s the same flaw in the proposed Assault Weapon Ban of 2018 (H.R. 5087). While there is no provision in the current bill for manufacturers to sell existing inventory, all of the guns and magazines currently owned would be exempt and would also be transferable, meaning they could be bought and sold. The pool of such firearms is far larger today than it was in 1994, so the new ban would most likely be less effective than the original, which wasn’t all that effective at all.2. The Second Amendment was never intended to permit mass slaughter. When the Constitution was written more than 200 years ago, the framers’ goal was permit a “well-regulated militia,” not to enable Americans to terrorize their communities.Reich’s interpretation of the Second Amendment has been dismissed by the Supreme Court in case after case. Decisions all indicate that the framers of the Constitution considered the right to keep and bear arms to be an individual right. The decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (544 U.S. 570 - 2008) is just the latest example of that. While the decision in United States v. Miller (307 U.S. 174 - 1939) has been used to justify the militia interpretation, it actually had nothing at all to do with collective versus individual rights. The explanation gets long but the short version is that the court determined that a sawed-off shotgun was not the type of firearm in common use in the militia and was therefore not covered by the Second Amendment. The court upheld the National Firearms Act of 1934’s requirements for registering such firearms with the federal government.3. More guns have not, and will not, make us safer. More than 30 studies show that guns are linked to an increased risk for violence and homicide. In 1996, Australia initiated a mandatory buyback program to reduce the number of guns in private ownership. Their firearm homicide rate fell 42 percent in the seven years that followed.The studies to which Mr. Reich refers have all been challenged based on methodology and conclusions. They essentially say that guns incite violence, which is clearly not true. A number of states with high percentages of households with one or more firearms have very low homicide rates. Gun control advocates have to resort to using suicides, which are a totally different problem, and accidents, which make up a tiny percentage of gun deaths, to make their point. They also minimize the number of times that a firearm is used defensively without being fired. A 2013 study by the CDC indicated that those who used a firearm defensively had better outcomes than those who did not have a firearm.The comparison to Australia is just cherry-picking. While the number of firearm-related murders did fall in Australia, it was falling before the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre. The total homicide rate in Australia also declined, but at roughly the same rate as the decline in the U.S. This is according to Australian government statistics.4. The vast majority of Americans want stronger gun safety laws. According to Gallup, 96 percent of Americans support universal background checks, 75 percent support a 30-day waiting period for all gun sales, and 70 percent favor requiring all privately owned guns to be registered with the police. Even the vast majority of gun owners are in favor of common-sense gun safety laws.Citing polls as evidence means standing on shaky ground. After, all Hillary Clinton did not win the 2016 Presidential Election, just as Thomas Dewey did not defeat Harry S. Truman in 1948. Support for stronger gun laws rises and falls depending on whether there has been a high-profile mass shooting recently. Polls about guns and gun laws also have widely varying results based on how questions are asked and the accurate responses of survey participants.There is certainly support for stronger gun laws: with the barrage of media and political posturing, it would be almost a miracle if there wasn’t. Coupled with most people’s desire to give the kind of response they think the pollster wants, it’s not surprising to see big numbers.In the real world, popular support isn’t as widespread. Efforts to enact universal background check laws in a number of states have had mixed results. The largest margin of victory in a referendum was about 60% while similar measures failed in other states. States where the laws passed tended to have larger, more liberal urban populations. Legislators in more conservative states tend to avoid the expense of a referendum, knowing that it would fail.Incidentally, police support for stricter gun laws comes largely from police chiefs and commissioners, who have to be at least partially political animals. A 2013 PoliceOne study of sworn law enforcement officers below command rank indicated that they don’t believe more gun laws will have any effect on crime.5. The National Rifle Association is a special interest group with a stranglehold on the Republican Party. In 2016, the group spent a record $55 million on elections. Their real goal is to protect a few big gun manufacturers who want to enlarge their profits.Yes, the NRA is a special interest group. So is Everytown for Gun Safety, the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the Brady Campaign, the Violence Policy Center and every other gun control advocacy group.What makes the NRA different from the others is the fact that it is composed of dues-paying members who provide the majority of its revenue - more than 60%, according to the NRA’s Form 990, which is submitted to the IRS. The majority of the income from manufacturers comes in paid advertising in the NRA’s various publications and Internet sites. Only about 18% of total revenue comes from grants or gifts. Since both corporate and individual gifts are included in that figure, it’s really impossible to tell how much comes from each source through publicly available records.On the other side, Everytown for Gun Safety is largely supported by Michael Bloomberg, who has been know to lavish millions on advertising, elections and legislative influence. He has committed tens of millions of dollars to oppose a single piece of legislation. The Violence Policy Center is almost entirely supported by grants and the Giffords Law Center relies on donations, gifts and grants. All claims to the contrary, these are not grass-roots organizations.What Mr. Reich doesn’t know, or more likely doesn’t want to acknowledge, is that the firearms industry has its own lobbying and trade organization, the National Shooting Sports Foundation.The NSSF represents the gun makers while the NRA promotes the interests of its members. The fact that the two groups’ interests overlap isn’t surprising. Firearm manufacturers need a large pool of customers and firearms owners want to have the broadest possible choices for their needs.So the lack of citations shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. Mr. Reich is making statements that rely on the sad truth that most people won’t question them. After all, he’s a noted authority on some things, he must know what he’s talking about when it comes to guns, too. Heaven knows that there is an endless supply of self-styled experts when it comes to gun control, even if it’s a bit suspicious that they all say the same thing.A word to the wise: Anyone planning to use Mr. Reich’s five reasons to refute someone “repeating NRA propaganda” would be well-advised to avoid that person if the person knows anything about Mr. Reich’s propaganda. You’ll get shut down in a heartbeat because that person has probably heard Mr. Reich’s reasons many times before.Note: I am sorry this is so long-winded but I wanted to be sure I provided specific examples and as many sources as possible.

I’ve been in the US for about 6 years as a undergrad and then a grad student. One summer, when I was a sophomore, I decided to go to Canada to learn how to fly and get my private pilot’s license using some money I had save up. It has always been a dream of mine.Based on reviews, I had decided on a great little affordable school called Harv’s Air in Steinbach, Manitoba. Steinbach is pretty close to the US border, maybe 30 or so miles up from Grand Forks, ND. I decided to drive there from New Jersey, where I was studying, to see the country and visit Chicago on the way.Crossing over into Canada was easy. I had no problems exiting the US either. It’s really just cornfields and wheat up there. I should mention that I have a Singaporean passport. This is significant because as a fellow commonwealth country, we’re allowed to stay in Canada for basically any reason, visa free, for up to 6 months. I didn’t need a special student visa or anything to learn how to fly, since it was a short duration—in all, I was living in a little trailer taking advantage of those 18 hours of daylight to fly. I was done in a little over a month, passing my flight test with just 60 hours. Not bad!The trouble started when I tried to come home. Crossing back from Canada, I entered into the US. The guard asked me what I was doing there.I answered: “learning to fly, getting my pilot’s license”. I wanted to be honest with him because that’s how I was raised.He looks suspicious. His next question: “okay, but how are you allowed into Canada? Where is your Canadian visa?”I tell him about my Singaporean passport. He hasn’t even heard of the country, think’s it’s China. He says confidently that China doesn’t have a visa with Canada. I start sweating.His next questions are horrendous and riddled with assumptions. He asks for my travel itinerary over the next couple of days (I want to travel further west to see Yellowstone, Jersey’s great but it sure ain’t Yellowstone!), as well as why did I drive all the way from New Jersey. I answer, showing him my I20, which is a form that proves you’re a student in good standing in the United States.He also asks me if I am carrying any poultry, eggs, fresh food and such. Obviously, I am not, and I answer in the negative.Now, I’ll admit that a lot of things don’t add up. A scrawny asian kid driving a toyota camry in a place where you’re more likely to see chevy’s and dodges? All the way from Jersey? Who says that he’s getting a pilot’s license?? And he’s travelling with all these laptops and ipads and what not? (I had many devices—all student work related). This part I don’t blame. But here’s where the horror really begins.I get detained. Within 5 minutes, I’m brought to a little cell. I’m told to surrender all my items except-get this-the physical cash notes on my person, which is returned to me with a little clip, drug dealer style. They make me surrender all the passwords to my electronic devices, and take off my shirt (although they give it back after patting me down). I am terrified. No calls, no indication, nothing. If I died there none of my friends or family would’ve known for at least a couple of days.I sit in this cell for 4, maybe 5 hours. I don’t even have a watch. I’ve got quite a head on me, so I try to run through things to understand what’s going on. I finally reach the conclusion that they must think that I’m some drug dealer. I know that there are a couple of east asian, maybe vietnamese gangs in Winnepeg, and there’s big drug money there. But still you’d have to be pretty damn daft to equate this with me.After a while though, they take me out, make me walk through my own car where, I’m told, that I’m in big trouble for contraband. My luggage is torn open, and the felt liner of the trunk is ripped off and searched. Even the AC vents are taken out. I feel violated. But strangely, when they tell me that they have found contraband, I feel vindicated. I don’t do drugs, smoke or drink. Pray tell, officer, what is it? They don’t tell me. They do, however, take me to a bigger lobby area.It’s an upgrade! There’s a bathroom too. And other people. Every other person here is a minority—that should tell you something. There’s a couple from the Dominican Republic on their honeymoon. Why they honeymooned in goddamn North Dakota, I will never know. But the couple tell me that they are both professionals. One is a vice president of a bank. Somehow, he’s suspicious to these hick guards. The man asks me to look at his detained car, his wife, and his watch. Does he, a bank president, look like the sort of person who would illegally cross into the United States to be in NORTH DAKOTA?? After this, there’s a Mexican family, an Indian IT professional , and a Chinese professor who was teaching at the University of Winnipeg. The only person detained who is white is a German guy. But he’s let out pretty fast. I swear to you, the man looks like a child predator. But he’s let out before all of us.I ask to go to the bathroom. The officer at the desk looks puzzled. He says: “ You’re not being arrested, you can go whereever you like.” Nice. I’m not being arrested, but my car, wallet, phone and everything I own as a student sure as shit isn’t going to be left behind in bloody North Dakota. What am I to do, walk??I do, however, take the opportunity to explore the building since I’m free. I don’t get very far; I get shouted back to sit down and watch the terrible TV that is there. (They still use CRT TV’s, damnnnn) Before I’m forced back down, I note that the walls are adorned with TSA and the Custom’s pledge to treat everyone with dignity and quality and professionalism and what not. I have nothing against TSA. It’s a tough job. But think about the kind of people that would be chosen for, selected, and trained for a land border crossing with Manitoba. Yep.I’m the last person there; everyone else is released. I know I’ve done nothing wrong. They finally call me in.“Do you know why you’re being detained?”“Nope”It turns out that during the first impromptu inspection they found a yoghurt cup and some blueberries and a granola bar, and a jerky stick. What can I say? I’m a student driving around. Before crossing the border, about 15 miles back, I had made the decision to get a quick breakfast. The things that I couldn’t finish I placed in a bag. The officer says, you said you didn’t have food on you when we asked. We found this. Food? You know how many people disembark from a plane with a bloody bar of granola in their pockets????? And this wasn’t from some quarantine exotic country like Gambia or New Zealand. This was Canada. Manitoba, for chrissakes.But this isn’t the end of my problems.Nope. The officer walks me to the my pile of belongings. There is a average size box there. The box contained 24 packets of chicken-flavored ramen when I got it, and now there were about 12. I got it in Canada because I lived in a trailer for a while. You get hungry. Ramen is great for travellers in these situations! I had genuinely forgotten about these in my trunk. Try studying for a flight test, an aerobatic rating, and a road trip by yourself to Montana. You’ll forget the bloody ramen in your car, I assure you.The officer points. “Sir those are a prohibited item. You unlawfully attempted to smuggle them in.”Smuggle? Prohibited? WTF???I can’t say anything, but my eyes give it away. The officer continues.“Yessir. These contain Chicken extract. They were made in China. Chickens from China are a prohibited quarantine item”I squint to look at the packaging. I forget what it says, but it says something like ingredients : Wheat, flour, soy, salt, monosodium glutamate, E244 coloring, C7234 Chicken Flavored Extract type no. 3 (or something like that I forget).This is just incredible. I’m furious, stupified, tickled. Oh man, with a story like this, I have a career in improv for sure.But it’s not the end. You know how the packets have fine chinese words on them? My chinese is rusty, but they were generic words. words like , “made in Shandong province, factory no. 234, of the People’s Republic of China, imported for sale and use only by Real Canadian Superstore retailers”. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure. I offer to translate though. You know what this proud denser than lead representative of the America border services does?This unclutched transmission case of a man pushes me down, says quite seriously:“Sir, step back. This is an unknown chemical. You may have violated a law.”He leaves and I wait for another 30 minutes.You know what happens in that 30 minutes? These bloody fruitbats, they call up TSA or homeland security or whatever in Washington DC to request an interpreter to translate the chinese words so that they’re sure that it’s C7234 Chicken extract, which I can swear on my mother has likely never even seen the inside of a Chicken.I’m sure they get chewed out on the phone. When they come back, they sound and look different. They help (help is generous, they just shove) to pack all my things back. Souvenirs like flight tables and logs are torn. The certificate from my first solo is torn. Nevermind, I’m just glad that my items are safe and my car is in one piece. The AC vents are ripped out though. As I turn to leave, checking through all my papers to see that I have them back, one officer waves me to come back over. I sigh.She shakes her head at me ominously.“Sir you were very lucky. Because you only had 12 of these (points to the ramen) you are not in violation. It is a prohibited product, but only if you travel with more that 13 of these where you’d need an importation license, which would have meant an offense fine of 400 dollars. However they are still prohibited items. You must fill out a declaration form”By this time it is 6pm. I entered the border at 10 30 am. It is late for everyone, but the bright Canadian sun is still up. I change my tone of voice to plead with her.“look, can I just, throw these away? I got them at a store for 5 dollars.”“No sir you cannot dispose of them because you did not declare these items, and you tried to smuggle them into the United States. We have to file paperwork”.I sigh. I’m tired, filthy, hungry and weak. “okay,” I say. “I’ll go in and do whatever you need.” I start walking back to the main shed.Halfway there though, Jesus Christ himself must have appealed to these Neanderthals. She waves me back.“look, just leave it here and go.”“okay”“wait, actually, just take it. You got very lucky today, remember this.”I shove the box into my trunk and laugh once my car door closes, pulling out as slowly and cautiously as possible. My car had been idling for an hour, even the gas needle moved. Once out of visible sight, I speed away as fast as I can till night falls, where I text my parents and closest friends. It takes me another 1600 miles and two days to reach Yellowstone, but when I do, I pull out on a bend over bear’s tooth highway, and sit on a stone, laughing and crying while sipping a snapple. You can’t make this shit up.As a foreigner, I really like the United States. I have found no other land like this one. I have met such great hospitality, and I have studied under the finest professors. But whenever people ask me if I am truly optimistic about the future about the United States, I think back to this memory and shake my head. Why? Because my fear is that the product of generations of poor funding, poor connectivity, racism, nationalism and paranoia lead directly to my experience of being detained over a packet of instant noodles, and that it’ll lead to the kind of slow death that other empires have met. Scholars and people say that it’s bureacracy that’s slowing the country down. It isn’t. Bureacracy, like the tired voice from DC that must’ve saved me that day, is holding this contraption of a country together. It’s this infantile parochialism that’s killing us slowly in terms of trade, hospitality, reputation, education…..whatever.I often think back to that day. I was lucky. I got to see a side of America that normally I, with my New York Ivy league education, would never see. You know who are the unlucky ones? The other people that’ll have to cross everyday, only to be subject to the never ending paranoia and rhetoric. The DC elites who’ll have to deal with being disconnected from stupidity. The businesses that will be choked because of unwarranted security needs. And the guards themselves, for thinking that they, and their actions that day and every other day, really matter. As Virgil said, “Fear is proof of a degenerate mind.” Virgil was understated though. Fear is proof of a degenerate nation. If America’s place in the world is superseded, it will be because it was buried under the millions of stories that are as funny, as surprising, as banal and as torturous as this one. If America’s place in the world was superseded, it will not be by China’s, or Russia’s or Europe’s hand. It will be by it’s own, with those thin fingers reaching out first from places like North Dakota.Oh, and those damn noodles? I ate them because I’m a broke student. Still keep the last packet with me somewhere though. After all, I took a lot of trouble to ‘import’ it. Cheers!