1. United States
2. Letter

When the average American wakes up in the morning, they don’t go sit on a golden toilet. Their breakfast isn’t brought in on a golden tray or served on a silver tea service. Their work isn’t brought in and explained to them by a team of subordinates, and their lunch break isn’t enjoyed at a country club. And their afternoons aren’t spent golfing until sundown. When they get sick, there’s no private motorcade waiting to bring them over to Walter reed where the best doctors will work them up. The average American wakes up and stops at Dunkin’ Donuts where they grab an affordable coffee picked by South Americans and shipped to the United States. They eat an apple that was picked by undocumented migrant workers. They toil away the day in the elements or at a desk in a go-nowhere job just trying to make a living to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads. They eat at their desks or in their trucks and then go back to the same grind. By the time they get home, they’re exhausted, but they don’t have a staff to provide their meals, so they still have to cook whatever food they were able to afford that week at the grocery store. Some of them live in food deserts where there is not access to fresh produce or fruit, so these dinners will come from boxes and tin cans coated with chemicals and preservatives to keep them edible. Some of these things are cancer causing. Some of these things lack the basic nutrients for a healthy existence. When they get sick, there’s an ambulance that will charge them a week’s pay for the transport, and a doctor who wasn’t good enough for private practice to tell them they’ll be fine while billing Medicaid for a host of screenings they never performed. There is a huge difference between your life and the American experience. We know you don’t care, but we hope that you just didn’t know. Now you know. Do better.