Never Retire: Living Well Shouldn’t Be a Radical Act

The U.S. is broken—and it won’t be fixed by another election.

The United States is broken. And a big reason why it won't be fixed anytime soon is because we keep waiting for the next election to fix dysfunction that is wholly and completely cultural.

Politicians won't save you. Trump didn't save his uneducated minions. What happened the other night—or any other symbolic and incremental changing of the tide—won’t save the people who think they know better. Because even if they do know better—and I believe that, to some extent they do—they’re also missing the point.

In the United States, I watched quality of life disintegrate precipitously over the last decade or two. Since moving to Spain it has gotten exponentially worse. Now that I live in a place with an objectively higher day-to-day way of existing I have been trying to understand why life feels and is so different in Spain and across parts of Europe.

I want to know the core drivers beyond the the seemingly little things like being able to walk and bike everywhere and buy better food and drink at reasonable prices. These are only examples of the many things that happen when quality of life is high. They're the components of it, not the fundamental reason why it exists. They're the things many people who weren't indoctrinated by the US consider the norm. They're the things Americans romanticize in their soulless suburbs and on Instagram after blowing a few grand on a whirlwind two-week tour of Europe. They're what give some Americans an inferiority complex and others an endless case of cognitive dissonance.

Further, how can a country like Spain where there's always a protest and at least a subset of an engaged population not be defined by politics?

In the US, for too many people, what we call politics IS the culture. In Spain and other parts of Europe, there's a more meaningful culture that transcends political differences and battle lines.

Maybe that's it—the US is effectively culture-less. The racists and xenophobes who exist on the right can’t stand or reconcile the reality that any semblance of culture they see around them comes from someplace else. Places that look and act much different than the United States with different languages, customs, and governments. So they reject diversity and inclusion in search of this empty idea of what they think America should be and replace it with hostility and ignorant ideology.

Which really misses the point of what America is—or should be—all about. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce should be lauded by the right as the distinctly American fairy tale they actually are. The music superstar who beat the odds and the elite jock who got the girl.

They should hold up Zohran Mamdani as a prime example of the American dream—you come to this country from Uganda, become “legal,” and next thing you know you're Mayor of New York Fucking City.

Bad Bunny shouldn't be marginalized and mischaracterized as not American. He should be cherished as the pride of Puerto Rico and Latinos—who are officially a force in the US—across the mainland.

You can feel it on the streets and in the air in the United States. The culture is divided by nonsense that doesn't even deserve the descriptor political. It's a cartoon of a country quickly losing its identity.

Living well shouldn’t be a radical act.

But in America, it is.

We’ve created a country where the simplest forms of joy—walking to the store, having a drink outside, knowing your neighbors—are either luxury goods or nostalgic dreams. It’s a nation that makes you have to hack gamified apps to pay a lower price. It’s a nation that confuses stress with productivity and interprets rest as weakness. It’s a nation that values mindless bravado and “work ethic” more than compassion and the inherent benefits of living a soft life.

That’s why the culture war feels endless: there’s no shared culture left to defend. And whatever remnants remain aren’t worth defending. You’re certainly not testing nuclear weapons again to protect the American right to idle through the fast food drive-thru. Politics has filled the void where community, dignity, and daily sanity used to live.

Meanwhile, here in Spain, politics are loud, but they feel more like background noise. They exist around life, not instead of it. You still go to the market, the terrace, the beach without looking over your shoulder or anticipating an altercation with the cashier or a fellow citizen in a store or the parking lot.

In Spain, protest—and any angst it stems from—isn’t lifestyle. It’s a punctuation mark.

Life hums in the streets no matter who’s in office. Valencia is governed largely by a conservative coalition with significant far right influence. The two parties in charge are doing well in national polls, but it sure doesn’t feel like it—especially to an American.

That’s the real difference.

Europe didn’t “solve” society. It just never fully monetized or dumbed it down. It didn’t hand the public square to cars, corporations, and cable news. It didn’t sell off every ounce of convenience and call it freedom.

The U.S. loves to say it’s the land of opportunity. But opportunity for what? For working yourself sick? For clawing your way into a shrinking middle class? For spending half your income on rent and the rest on subscriptions designed to numb you from it all?

Living in Spain has made me realize: I didn’t move for sunshine or cheap beer. I had an ample supply in Los Angeles thanks to a wonderful climate, my supermarket app, and cool bartenders. I moved for proportion and a humane setting in which to live out the second act of life. For the balance America forgot was even possible.

Going to the grocery store here isn’t about skimping so you can save and still end up with rotten avocados. Here, food isn’t a moral test or as much of a financial calculation. You don’t have to feel guilty about buying tomatoes that actually taste like something. It’s about buying what you need, eating well, and moving on with your day.

Walking isn’t wellness or counting steps—it’s how you get around and get home.

Work matters, but it doesn’t define you.

The public good still means something tangible. The Prime Minister gives NATO what he feels like it deserves and tells Trump to fuck off to maintain and strengthen social programs that carry broad benefits.

That’s not fantasy. It’s functioning adulthood on a national scale.

And once you experience it, it’s impossible to unsee the dysfunction you left behind.

That’s the heart of Never Retire: Not a newsletter about escape, but about what happens when you stop pretending the system that raised you still works.

It’s about learning—day by day—how to live like joy isn’t a luxury item.

If you’ve ever looked around and thought, “It shouldn’t be this hard to live well,” you’re not crazy—you’re seeing the system clearly.

Never Retire is for the people building lives that make sense when their countries don’t.

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From last week in Rome. Not necessarily a pedestrian-friendly city, but still much better than most of the United States.