A view of America, from Missouri to Muscat

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When you’re traveling far from home, you don’t want to hear that the water heater exploded, flooding the basement and short-circuiting the electricity. You just don’t want anything bad to happen when you aren’t there. In the same way, the news from America last week was especially disturbing to us as we traveled through the United Arab Emirates, from Dubai to Abu Dhabi to Fujairah to Muscat.

As I write, from a distance of 7,757 miles, we are getting online accounts of the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Mo., not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown. We’re learning about the protests overnight in more than 170 cities across the country. We’re reading about the dozens of buildings destroyed by rioters in Ferguson and the violent clashes between protesters and police.

As we absorb the shocking images, we are visiting countries where there isn’t the remotest possibility of any public demonstration of displeasure or protest. Rioting is unheard of, a cultural, political and legal crime for which the punishment would be swift and severe.

And that’s not because the people here live an idyllic life and there’s nothing to complain about. The citizens of the emirates live a good life, with certain caveats. They get free housing, free health care, free education and free money from the ruling families, which get their money from oil. This is a desert. They grow nothing but dates — and oil. They get only one inch of rain a year, so the government builds huge desalination plants.

Our guide said with complete equanimity that the sheiks run the country in secret, with absolute power and no transparency. He explained that that was fine because people have what they need, including lots of subsidies from the government. Of course, the hundreds of thousands of people who actually make the wheels turn are foreign workers who live in substandard conditions. They make low wages and have no perks. There is no “pathway to citizenship” — ever. And if they lose their jobs, they have 30 days to find another or they get deported.

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