WRITE OF CENTER
The 2026 World Cup is over. The final whistle blew, the pitch has been cleared, and thousands of visitors from Europe and around the world headed home.
Many left with something they did not expect: a completely different view of the United States.
They came for soccer, the original football. What surprised them most was America itself.
Across host cities, European fans, especially younger ones, posted, talked and wrote about the same themes. The friendliness of ordinary Americans. The scale of the place. The energy. The food. The hospitality that felt genuine rather than performative.
More than a few said, in so many words, that the country they experienced was not the country they had been told to expect.
That gap matters more than you might think.
For years, large parts of European media and elite commentary have painted the United States in the darkest possible colors. Many younger visitors arrived carrying those assumptions.
They left talking about how clean the cities felt, how helpful strangers were, how big and open the country still is, and how ordinary people treated them with warmth.
Reality contradicted the narrative in the grandest way.
This happened in the year of America’s 250th birthday. That timing is not lost on me. While we celebrated two and a half centuries of the American experiment, the world got to walk around inside it. Many discovered that the experiment is still working better than the critics claim.
At the same time, the Democratic Socialists of America have been getting heavy media attention with their new “Workers Deserve More” platform. They are pushing for public control of major companies, free universal housing, healthcare, education and transportation, along with abolishing police and prisons. It is a clear vision of socialism offered as the answer to America’s problems.
The World Cup gave younger Europeans a chance to see both models side by side. They could experience the results of American capitalism — the abundance, the opportunity, and the sheer scale of what free enterprise has built — while at the same time hearing the socialist pitch at home. Many of them noticed the difference.
The country that produced the largest economy, the most innovation, and the highest standard of living in history is the same country some of their leaders want to remake along socialist lines.
As the Kendall County Republican Party chairman, I watch these moments closely. We spend a lot of time defending American principles at home: secure borders, economic opportunity, personal responsibility, and the freedom to build a good life.
It is encouraging when outsiders see those principles producing real results on the ground. Especially with what I have personally seen during extensive trips overseas.
The best advertisement for the United States has always been the United States. When people experience it firsthand, the propaganda loses almost all power. That is a lesson worth remembering as we head into the fall elections and the years beyond.
We should be proud of what visitors saw. We should also be cleareyed. The gap between the America that exists and the America that is described in certain media is wide. Closing that gap starts with telling the truth about our own country, its strengths, its flaws, and its unmatched capacity for renewal.
November will test whether we still believe in that capacity. The World Cup gave the world a glimpse of it. Our job is to keep living it and to make sure the next generation sees the real America, not the version they are being sold.
Let ’s make that happen.
Traften Werenskjold is chairman of the Kendall County Republican Party
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