Examining America’s Greatness
In my recent post There Are No More Apolitical Americans, I suggested that a significant percentage of Americans believe that Trump is “a sociopath, riding a wave of bigotry and ignorance, inflicting enormous damage and embarrassment on this once-great country on a daily basis.”
Frequent commenter Cameron Atwood writes: “I’m (aligned with that), except that I believe our nation’s greatness is far more in its potential than in its history.”
I often get myself into trouble when I refer to the U.S. as “this once-great country,” as it draws backlash from three different sets of people:
• Those who never thought the country was great in this first place, at least in any important sense of the word, i.e., morally,
• Those who thinks it was always great and continues to be so, and
• People like Cameron who see most its greatness ahead of it.
All these groups have decent points to make.
To the first group, I freely admit that America is essentially a story of a relatively few rich and powerful people who built the largest empire the world has even seen on the backs of slave labor, land expropriated from indigenous people, busting unions, institutionalized racism, foreign imperialism, and the exploitation of immigrants and mistreatment of other desperate people here at home.
The second group can point to the protection of citizens in the U.S. Constitution, and can, correctly, remind me that the only reason I can write something as incendiary as the paragraph above is that I live in a country that protects freedom of speech.
I respect optimists (group#3) on the basis that their belief tends to be a self-fulfilling prophesy (as Arthur C. Clarke put it). Yet looking realistically at the totality of features that define America, it’s hard to make this point convincingly.
Here’s a challenge you may find useful.
Imagine a series of line graphs whose x-axes represent time over the last 50 years and the next 50. Then think of what the past half century has given us, and what the they might look like in the future, given the following y-axes: job prospects and disposable income, sane leadership, no scarcity of important resources, education, justice, kindness/compassion, minimizing U.S. involvement in war, the fair treatment of whistleblowers and dissidents, security from crime/terrorism, safety from extreme weather events, avoiding another (even deeper) financial crisis, quality of the environment and a stable climate, the survival of a free press/access to truth, and affordable health care.
To be optimistic means believing that the preponderance of these graphs will be climbing over time. Personally, I don’t see it.
Anyone who’s participating this in this “challenge of the imagination” needs to read this article, The Pentagon’s Plan for Never-Ending War, before he concludes that the prospects for a peaceful future look reasonable.
I hasteb to add: just because I can’t see it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. The forces of evil absolutely adore cynics. “Go ahead! Give up!” they smirk under their breath. Without believers, we’re doomed.
Craig,
In the last week President Trump has delivered two important speeches.
In the first speech the President outlined his governments policies regarding how America sees it role in world affairs. The speech was important because before the WEF at Davos he expanded on his speeches on Poland and China.
The second speech was the first State of the Union speech delivered to congress and addressed a domestic audience of Americans.
President Trump has improved as a speaker on formal and important occasions. He delivers carefully considered content with more authority and sincerity than his random outbursts and confusing reactions.
The speech in Davos was generally understood and well received, even by opponents.
Domestically, the State of the Union speech seems to have been also well received.
CBS reports ” A CBS poll conducted in the immediate aftermath of the speech indicated that it was a hit with viewers. Three in four Americans who watched the speech said they approved of it, with just a quarter saying they did not” .
Other polls reflected similar findings.
The rebuttal from the President’s opposition was at a best, weak, at worst tabloid gossip, bizarre, and even “shoot yourself in the foot”.
(“shoot yourself in the foot”.) One female democrat legislator, made a speech on immigration entirely in Spanish ! Followed by a demand the US become a bilingual nation with Spanish as an equal official language ! Difficult to imagine anything more divisive and likely to drive voters to to support Trump .
Ol’ Bernie Saunders boycotted attending, but along with Joe Kennedy condemned the President for his Dreamer policy. The wheels fell of that attack when one young reporter persisted in asking, ” Why don’t you just pass legislation letting them stay ?”. Saunders refused to answer while Joe Kennedy replied ” that’s not our job, it’s up to the President ” ! and refused to take further questions.
The Guardian and leftist tabloid media concentrated on why the President and his wife traveled to the speech separately, (the traveled home together)while an “informed White House insider” (some guy in a bar) was quoted as saying the President and First lady have separated, and she is speaking to a divorce lawyer.
With opposition of that calibre the President looks to be making up ground.
Give us all a break. No one reading this blog is anywhere close to being stupid enough to believing this crap. OK, yes, Trump can read from a teleprompter without going off-script and supporting the Nazis or provoking a nuclear war.
I second that Craig.
I typically don’t even read political posts from Trump apologists anymore.
Thirded. 🙂
Craig,
I was at Davos, Trump spoke without a teleprompter and although he had notes, he seldom refereed to them.
The importance is in the content, in the content of his major speeches the policies and aspirations of his administration can be found.
The Trump Presidency is a reality, the policies of his administration represent a profound change in Geo-political reality. The changes are irreversible, not because of any grand decisions made by this administration, but because the balance of power is in flux.
President Trump is simply the first US President to enunciate these changes. His speeches may not have the gravitas of Macmillan’s “Winds of Change” but the content has much the importance.
Whether you agree the President is the right individual to lead the US through these changes or not, you can’t disagree with the reality. Just putting your hands over your eyes and listening only to acolytes and fellow travelers like Cameron, will diminish your ability to contribute in a meaningful way to the future.
There will always be very loud and vehemently vocal minorities operating at the extremes of any democratic society. The strength of any elected representative government is the non-political institutions and the Constitution.
It’s these institutions in which the vast majority of citizens place faith and those institution rely upon the support of the judgement of the moderate political centre to maintain the political stability of the nation.
With the election of President Trump you seem to have panicked . Caught up in the frenzy of a media gone into Hyperdrive, you seem now oblivious to any moderate reality, preferring to merely yell frustration and a refusal to accept the change in reality.
Like many on the left, you appear stuck in a time warp. The world of Obama has disappeared. In truth much of that world was already a nostalgic illusion during his Presidency.
The party is over ! The guests are going home to nurse their hangovers and face the cold, harsh light of a new Dawn which brings a new and sobering reality. Closing the curtains and pretending with the few party goers remaining the old reality can be indefinitely kept at bay or resumed is impractical.
It’s time to move on….
You’re at liberty to move on if you want. As for me, I see a country headed towards fascism (along with a great deal of Europe), and I’ll be fighting it every step of the way.
I count myself as an optimist. Yes, Trump was shoehorned in with the help of Comey breaking the law and interfering in a campaign that was heavily influenced by the Russian government and possibly had vote counts tampered with. So now we have Trump, and that sucks.
But we had eight years of truly great leadership under Obama, and Trump only has four years to damage this country before he’s thrown out.
Hopefully next up would be Gillibrand. But whoever it is will be better than now, and will re-enact all of the Obama policies that Trump has torn up.
We’re going to go into another crash because of the current leadership, but we’ll get out of that one too. Demographics is destiny, and we’re looking at a future of prolonged Democratic control.
But beyond politics, technology is still marching forward, and increasing the net productivity of the world at a faster rate than population is growing. That will lead to a better life for the average inhabitant of the world. Yes better leadership would make it better, while worse leadership will make it worse… But overall we will continue to gain in wealth, which does lead to more openness in the population.
50 years ago minorities were openly attacked and even lynched. Racial epitaphs flew freely and minority students had to be escorted to class by national guardsmen or else the throng of protestors would kill the kids and their families. Now we have a small group of people who are willing to express that kind of hate and vitriol openly… and still an unfortunate majority of older people who are willing to express it privately… but it is represented by a minority of my generation, and within the millennials it almost doesn’t exist at all.
In 50 years, 90%+ of the people who voted for Trump will be dead, and they won’t be replaced by similar people. There will be more social justice in 50 years than there is now, just as there is more social justice now than 50 years ago.
Medical technology is still improving people’s lives and people’s lifespans.
Renewable energy, combined with nuclear energy, will represent a super-majority of energy sources in 50 years… and this will be true in all countries. Yes, we will have a carbon load of >500 ppm, and that will require a LOT of accommodation. Yes there will be changes. Agriculture will be rapidly moving indoors, we will likely synthesize a rapidly growing but still small portion of our meat consumption (“Smeat”), we will have massive desal plants along every coastline in the West producing billions of gallons of water per day…
There will be storms, and storm damage, and killer heat waves, and a rapidly rising ocean (on the order of 2-3 cm/year by then). Life will not be perfect, but life in America will be, overall, more just and more privileged than it is today for the majority of Americans.
If we lived in sub-Saharan Africa or the Indian subcontinent I wouldn’t be so optimistic. But we don’t live there… and the 50-year forecast is still pretty good.
The 10 year forecast is terrible. We’re going to be spiraling into another deep recession and we’ll have a debt crisis on top of that…
But 50 years is a long time.
Glenn,
I share your optimism, and I also share your belief that with modern communication and education each generation becomes more socially tolerant.
I don’t share your belief ‘demographics’ will produce a prolonged leftist nirvana. That won’t happen. Whether we like it or not when we are still young, in most regards we tend to turn into our parents as we age and share the same challenges and responsibilities!
Political demographics change as the young lose idealism with increased responsibility, and a better regard for complexity.
Each generation stands on the shoulders of the previous generation, or at least a romanticized version of the previous generation.
I agree with your assertion that technology is moving ever faster and it’s impact is growing ever more profound. Profound changes in defining wealth and economic reality have rendered yesterday’s economic models obsolete and irrelevant.
All “prophecies” especially gloomy or extreme future predictions are doomed to become sources of humour for future generations.
I recently attended a talk with the former head of a noted academic publishing company, who shared his firm and long-held belief that human progress follows an ascending sine wave, with each peak and each valley higher than the last. On the down slopes, it may still feel like things are falling apart, and they may be, but the up slopes take us a little higher than our previous peak.
I can see his point, in that despite ups and downs we have made tremendous (though sporadic) progress over the open absolute monarchies, serfdom, and widespread barbarism that predominated and plagued earlier periods.
I just hope we see enough upswing in the needed areas – like sustainability, education, and fiscal policy – that we need, to avoid the cliff edge so plainly looming before us as a species.