America is, after all, full of dirt-cheap comforts. My T-shirts are five bucks at Walmart. The most amazing fast food costs less than what you’d pay to make it yourself. A good coffeemaker will beat anything you get in a fancy café. Cheap alcohol gets you drunk faster than the expensive stuff. So you can chill in a lawn chair on a nice autumn day with a beverage in your hand and say, “This isn’t so bad.” But if one of us gets a toothache or breaks our glasses or, god forbid, both? Well, now our whole world is threatening to come apart.
