Re-imagining America

In my last post, “The Best in Us,” I argued that a breach of character – specifically the loss of honesty and humility – was at the center of our political, economic, and social problems in America.  Bringing honesty and humility back to our discourse and decision-making is indeed elemental to the recovery of America.  The lunatic fringe who stand on ideological and religious fantasies, and who spew invective that is void of any credible or durable ideal must be marginalized.  Obama has tried, although addled by his own Socratic disposition and by the virulent and racist attacks against him, whereas a guy like Governor Chris Christie might have a better chance.  Christie doesn’t appear to cotton to stupidity, and he seems to have the honesty thing down. His disposition and, lets face it, his ethnicity, may be more appropriate for the crisis we face.  The last part, as repugnant as it is, is a sorrowful reality.  That said, once we heal our character – in our leaders and ourselves – we must also move forward to re-imagining America.  This requires a holistic makeover of American identity.

            Now, before you go running around with your hair on fire accusing me of being an unpatriotic _________, let me be clear: the basics do not need to change.  Independence, self-reliance, and innovation remain core values in a re-imagined America.  But other myths, dispositions, preferences, and behaviors, which have found their way into our identity since the end of the Cold War twenty years ago, must change.  Unfortunately, the end of the Cold War made us dumb, and 9/11 made us dumber.  It is time to get things back on track.  The “end of history,” which was hubristically claimed by Francis Fukuyama in 1992, was actually the beginning of our self-inflicted decline, which hit warp speed after 9/11.  The post-evil-Soviet-empire era did not result in a prophesized thousand years of peace and prosperity; when coupled with digital technologies it simply created new ways to compete, mostly asymmetrically.  Meanwhile, we Americans gorged ourselves on nothing-down ponzi schemes instead of doubling-down our investment in the things that made us great, most notably all things related to intelligence.  Here are four things we need to re-think.

1. The Power Trap.  The United States won the hard power game based on brawn.  Meanwhile, the rest of the world came up with new pathways to power that are soft, generally based in intelligence.  China has focused on education and economics.  Russia has focused on resource power, principally oil.  Brazil has focused on agriculture, energy, and demographic power.  India is growing a well-educated middle class faster than any state in the world.  Germany kept their debt low and invested in industry and trade.  Ireland welcomed immigrants and entrepreneurs.  But, the United States kept playing the old game: bigger weapons systems and odious domestic security schemes financed with debt and founded in fear.  We are trapped in Cold War power narratives.  Americans need to wake up to the new world and start thinking brains over brawn.
2. The Wealth Myth.  Since the Peace at Westphalia in 1648 that gave rise to the state-centric international system, wealth has been the denominator of power.  The more land, resources, people, and money a state had determined its power in the world.  Wealth is still important, but as argued above, intelligence (which is not always closely correlated with wealth) is now more important.  However, there is another dimension to the wealth myth that needs to be considered anew.  Wealth does not always mean we are better off.  Affluence can actually weaken civil society.  We need look no further than the last twenty years of American history.  Even before the current recession began, depression was up, test scores and graduation rates were down, poverty and homelessness was rising, and the number one threat to our health was not some incurable disease, it had become self-indulgent obesity.  All this occurred as the United States hit the pinnacle of its wealth and power in 2000.  If we are going to succeed in facing the current crisis, we need to shift our focus away from wealth to well-being. We need to practice self-restraint and summon compassion.  We must prefer austerity to audacity.  We need to focus on those things that make us strong and content.  Dignity, respect, resilience, and, moreover our core values of independence, self -reliance, and innovation do not come from wealth, they come from strong bodies, agile minds, and whole hearts.  They come from well-being. 
3. Our Growth Obsession.  The orthodoxy of growth – that more is better – may be fatally flawed.  We are reaching resource limits and facing environmental impacts that suggest we better get on the less-is-more bandwagon.  As Herman Daly, a former member of the World Bank recently argued, “In an empty world, growth is good.  But that is not the world we inhabit.  We live in a world that is full of us and our stuff, a world that is finite in terms of the economic activity it can sustain.”[1]  All of our current financial models call for growth.  It has become the wicked requirement of affluence and the only relatively painless way out of overwhelming financial deficits.  However, what if we rejected that orthodoxy and, with a steady eye on well-being, conceived plans that aimed at contraction?  What if we designed our lives and attendant expectations around less, not more?  I will further suggest contraction, not growth, is the more reasonable way to survive the current crisis and to transcend the many maladies of affluence realized over the last twenty years.  It may seem antithetical, even heretical, when considered through the lens of our current American identity, but it just may be exactly what our future identity requires.
4. The Piety Preference.  May we please retire piety from the political sphere?  Until the 1970s religion was in the private and public sphere – at home and in church.  It crept toward the political sphere during the 1950s as a point of differentiation with “godless communism,” then lurched further forward during the civil rights movement and anti-war demonstrations on the left in the 1960s, only to be met by even more fiery rectitude from the far right after Roe v. Wade in 1973.  Since then, faith-based rectitude has produced more division – and violence – than at any time in US history.  When I hear politicians and despots summon their faith I cannot help but wonder what Jesus, or Moses, or Mohammed, or Buddha, would say to them.  In America, where most politicians claim Christianity, I seldom witness even the slightest correlation between what politicians say and how they behave with the teachings of Jesus Christ.  The fiber of diversity is what made America great, not the twisted interpretation of scripture for the projection of political power.  To those who are elected to lead, please respect our differences by leaving your piety at home.  We are a nation of laws, not prophecy.

It is time to think differently to save our future.  As argued before, we must heal our character, but we must also re-imagine America.  Old orthodoxies that served us well twenty, fifty, or one hundred years ago will not work today.  They may even work against us.  Our core values remain: independence, self-reliance, and innovation.  But, the paradigms we employ – how we think about the world and our role in it– must be reconsidered.  Things will likely get even worse before they get better, but the sooner we start the conversation about re-imagining America, the sooner we will all be better off.

---

[1] Interview of Herman Daly by Martin Eirman, September 5, 2011, “We need a Crisis, and a Change of Values,” http://theeuropean-magazine.com/356-daly/357-the-end-of-growth.

The Best in Us

It is often said that the worst times bring out the best in us.  As I reflect on 9/11 and the decade that followed, I oscillate between anger, sadness, and disgust.  At times my jaw is clenched, while at others the tears well up.  Then, too often of late, I just hang my head in disbelief.  As an historian it is impossible for me to avoid comparing 9/11 to other moments of crisis in America, to other ‘worst’ times.  The run-up and aftermath of the American Revolution, Civil War, and Great Depression and World War II are obvious candidates for comparison.  What I find is that the significant markers that define the beginnings of these crises are characterized by both grave challenges and collective determination.  Americans come together and address the crisis with a high sense of resolve, responsibility, and sacrifice.  Our character is lean and strong.  During this period of comparison there are many more similarities than differences.  It is in the ‘out’ years, roughly three years and beyond the initiation of crisis, when more differences are found, and where prospects for the future are defined.

            Our initial response to 9/11 was similar to other crises.  Flags were everywhere and while a few people behaved in a manner unbecoming an American, most of us kept our cool and rallied around our leaders with compassion for those who lost loved ones, and a determination to seek justice.  In the out years, however, we lost our composure by compromising two things: our honesty and our humility.  Ideological bullies like Vice President Dick Cheney began by lying about weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda in Iraq.  Inside the Beltway of Washington DC they call it ‘politicizing intelligence’.  I will call it what it is: lying.  The lies enabled a call to action that has cost us at least two trillion dollars and, across the world, the loss of tens of thousands of lives.  Once our honesty was lost, what little humility remained since we had become the world’s sole remaining superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union was vanquished by our hubristic response to 9/11.  Once our humility was gone, our national character – our identity – was lost as well. We were all sucked into a charade that has proven catastrophic.  The promises of the Cheney bunch – of cheers, bouquets, and new democracies – were never realized and now we are stuck in a quagmire without a clear exit.  The tally of blood and treasure lost is far from over.

            Dishonesty, and moreover, arrogance, appear to be the primary products of the out-years after 9/11.  Now we behave at home the way we have abroad.  Our leaders in Congress swagger about with Cheney-esque anger and certitude.  Ideological bullying has become the norm.  Meanwhile, our president hides in the White House like a prom king who has just realized the student body doesn’t love him so much after all.  What courage he had has been overcome by his naiveté.  No, President Obama, the old white pudgy boys in Congress are not enamored with a young fit black man in the White House.  They want you out and they will do anything possible to bring that about.  It is time for you to fight for our future and forget about a second term.  Use the rest of your term to be the best one-term president ever.  If you do, who knows, you might even have a second term.

            As I watched the tears shed by the children remembering their loved ones at Ground Zero on this tenth anniversary, I couldn’t help but also wonder about all the tears shed by the children of those who have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan.  As I watch Wall Street prosper, I wonder why we can’t do the same thing for main streets all over America.  As I watch the middle class rise across all of Asia, I watch and wonder why we tolerate its decline in the West.  As I watch students across Scandinavia and Asia excel at levels significantly higher than our own kids, I wonder how we expect to remain a superpower.  As I watch our security, health, and environment decline from our dependence on fossil fuels, I wonder why we don’t launch a massive public initiative to produce new fuels and new distribution systems. 

            Many wonder these days if Karl Marx was right; if capitalism will produce its own demise.  It is an interesting question given our current circumstances.  I conclude, however, that capitalism and democracy are not the problem, character is.  We must regain our sense of honesty and humility to face the many challenges we face.  Once our character is lean and strong again we will have the courage to do what we know is right.  We will not allow those we elected to serve us to continue serving themselves first.  We will, once again, summon the best in us.

The Neverwillbe Reagans

As the Republican presidential hopefuls gather at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library this coming Wednesday evening, there will be (no doubt) a number of attempts to borrow the alchemic allure of President Reagan as each candidate seeks to channel his homespun American exceptionalism.  However, the top-tier, including Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman, and Mitt Romney, have very little in common with Reagan.  They are the product of an angry and twisted exceptionalism steeped in religious certitude, nationalistic fear, and elite entitlement.  Perry espouses state’s rights and secession in a manner not heard since Southern Confederates used the same arguments to preserve the institution of slavery.  Bachman suggests we deserved our earthquakes and hurricanes as a rebuke of our evil ways, while Romney claims that corporations are people too.  At its core, their exceptionalism holds a contempt for Americans – especially for those who do not look like or believe as they do – and for the liberal ideals of the Founding Fathers.  Furthermore, while hope is a dirty word for today’s Republicans, commonly derided in the phrase “hope is not a strategy,” hope is exactly what Reagan brought to America.  (While President Obama tried too, he has – so far – failed.)

            Reagan gave Americans access to a special grace that his predecessor Jimmy Carter couldn’t or wouldn’t offer; largely due to the fact Carter was locked in his evangelical revivalist trinity of sin, redemption, and salvation.  Where Carter admonished Americans to sacrifice in order to alleviate a “crisis of spirit,” Reagan simply offered Americans absolution.  Reagan’s theological innovation was transferring the concept of original sin from the individual to the institution.  On the domestic front, Americans were good, while government and its bureaucracies were bad.  In foreign relations, the Soviet Union was evil, but Gorbachev (the human) was worthy of Reagan’s respect and consideration.  Reagan exalted Americans regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity, or even Party affiliation. Reagan’s ire was reserved for communism, not Americans, which he saw as the principal threat to God’s gift to humankind: freedom.  Reagan’s America was the chosen land inhabited by chosen people who had a responsibility to the world: to establish a divine imperium of freedom.  While Reagan did battle with his political adversaries like Speaker of the House Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, when the day was done they would share a drink, a story, and a song.

            As charming and effective as Reagan was at attracting political support, it is easy to find fault with his presidency.  Besides his promises, government got bigger, deficits swelled, and illegal activities were conducted from the desks of the National Security Council.  Reagan never delivered on the social agenda of the Religious Right, although that should have surprised no one; as Governor of California, he allowed abortion to be legalized and he supported gun control.  He was often heralded as a great communicator, but he was also a lousy executive.  He lived in his own world where too often fantasy trumped fact; where reason was set aside for faith.  But, Reagan gave Americans something that the dismissive angst spewed by today’s field of Republicans will never accomplish: Reagan made Americans feel better about themselves. 

            It is a long road to the election in November 2012, and America is indeed in dire straits.  Things might get better by themselves, although right now I’d bet on worse.  But, we’ve been here before; there have been many dark days in our history.  What’s required now is a humble sense of self, a platform of mutual respect, and above all, the courage to do right by our founders and our children.  Reagan’s alchemic American exceptionalism may not be the answer today, but believing in each other and taking personal responsibility to make the country and the world a better place while setting aside certitude, fear, and elitism would honor his legacy in the most worthy manner.  Less than one hundred yards from where the Republican candidates will debate Wednesday night is Reagan’s tomb.  Above it, carved in granite, reads, “I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph, and there is a purpose and worth to each and every life.”  Reagan loved his God and his country, and he loved Americans.  That is a message the Republican candidates would do well to heed.