USA! USA! We’re #1! We’re #1!
What’s wrong with this? Besides the fact that there are no periods between the U, S and A, I mean.
Yes, it’s the fact that we’re not #1 these days. I imagine we are in something, but not in any of the major areas we used to dominate. The sad fact is, we seem to have blinders on. And it’s called American Exceptionalism.
I only recently heard of the term. It seems to be getting a lot of media play these days as the world passes us by on the express lanes of progress while we site behind the big semi overloaded with a sagging economy and misplaced bluster.
While the media is just seizing on the idea, it seems to have its roots in the 1900s when Joseph Stalin first used the term. He was talking about our crazy belief that the U.S. is somehow different from all the other countries in the world and that it is our God given duty to spread liberty and democracy around the globe, force feeding it, if necessary, down the throats of those that don’t even want it.
Now, I still think the U.S. is a great place to live and I don’t really want to live anywhere else. But if you think about it, perhaps those in other countries don’t want to drink the Kool Aid because the Kool Aid isn’t as desirable as it once was.
After all, look at the rankings. We’ve slipped, and we only have ourselves to blame:
Education: 14th (South Korea is #1)
Math: 25th (South Korea #1 again)
Science: 17th (Finland is #1)
Health Care: 37th (France is #1)
Infant Mortality: 178th (second worst among industrialized countries)
Social Mobility: 9th (Denmark is #1)
GDP: 159th
Life Expectancy: 49th
While it would be great to blame the guy in the White House (not just the one there now, but all of them in the last 50 years or so), we really need to take a hard look at ourselves.
Let’s say the United States is a car, a domestic one. You drive it off the lot all shiny and new in 1776. Initially you gave it regular tune ups and washed and waxed it religiously. Then somewhere along the way, you got a newer toy to play with. The big shiny American car wasn’t as cool as your smart phone or iPad. So it began to languish. As you know, complex machinery needs constant attention. The American car started to rust. It began to ping. When you drove it, it didn’t shift as smoothly as it once did. Soon, other cars began passing it on the highway because it was wheezing its way down the turnpike.
When it came time to sell your car to someone else, no one was buying it. They wanted something dependable, something that kept up with the times. Sure, the American car was a classic, but no one wanted a classic anymore. They wanted a new model and America wasn’t producing anything that anyone in the world wanted.
It’s all our fault, too. Sure, we can blame the politicians. Even politicians are blaming the politicians. Just look at Mitt’s hatchet job on Obama and vice versa. Does anyone honestly think Mitt is going to fix the American car and make others want to buy it? Ain’t going to happen.
Why? Because we let it slip. By ‘we’ I mean the real owners of the car. We have all let it go to hell. We are far more interested in staring at a smartphone texting banalities than we are in what is going on next to us. Just as the power mongers in our country hoped, we have tuned out. We stare blankly at reality shows, iPhones and computer screens. We have stopped thinking. We simply exist in a zombielike state while those who want to steal our country right out from under us high five in the back alleyways, continually figuring out new ways to rip us off, rape us and leave us in total desperation, always looking for a messiah to save us from our plight.
There isn’t a messiah coming, folks. Sorry. Any economist in the world knows that cutting taxes doesn’t increase wealth, except for the wealthy. We have to pony up if we are going to save America. Healthcare costs are out of control. our highways and byways are going to pot, people are going homeless and hungry each night, millions will never find jobs in their respective fields and desperately need new training, our educational system is in the pot, and all we want to do is vote in guys who promise to cut our taxes a couple bucks on our already meager paychecks.
And yet, no one rises up to stop it. No one demands that politicians do our bidding if they want to get into office. Few vote with any forethought. If they did, then all the jokers in the last Congress would be out of office this fall. Remember them? The ones who caused our credit rating as a country to be lowered? The ones who almost shut down our government? The ones who are playing God with each and every one of us when it comes to meeting our collective needs as citizens, voters and human beings?
We don’t rise to stop it because we’ve swallowed the bait of American Exceptionalism. We bought the story. We drank the Kool Aid that says everything’s going to be alright because we’re America.
Well, we definitely are that. And the world is beginning to pass us by. Rather than do a lot of maintenance on our American classic, we seem content to simply stay behind that slow moving semi loaded with broken promises and shattered dreams.
America, wake up! Time to get to work fixing the old gal. She’s got lots of miles left in her, but not if we allow ourselves to be sold a bill of goods by used car salesmen who only have their best interests at heart. They want us to believe that she’s in perfect working order. She may seem like it too. That is until we need to step on the gas and something finally snaps, leaving us on the side of the world of progress, trying to hitch a ride from those damned South Koreans and Danish who are passing us by.
In the Emerald City, still believing that our best days are ahead of us, if only the fat cat politicians would move over and let us take a turn at the wheel,
– Robb