Sam Wheeler

@samwheeler.bsky.social

1236 Followers 550 Following

Executive Director, Writers Guild of America East, AFL-CIO. Unions are good. Views are my own.

In China, teenagers shyly ask their crushes on dates. In Russia, families gather for a grandmother’s birthday party. In Yemen, harried mothers decide what to make for dinner. In Ukraine, men get excited for their favorite sports team. In Iran, kids dream about what they want to be when they grow up. A nation is a place where people live their lives. The people are just like you and me. This is the essence of what a nation is. This is the most important thing. This is the substance. Cultures may be foreign but people are the same everywhere. Your birth in one country rather than another is nothing but a flicker of randomness. When you are struggling to imagine what some news event might mean for people in a faraway place, ask yourself: If I was living there, how would I feel about it?