Time to calm our long national freak-out
This week’s bizarre scene of U.S. and Russian spies being traded on a tarmac in Austria is just the latest in a string of surrealistic images that have marked a year in which we’ve seen the Gulf transformed into a rainbow-hued oil slick, political candidates alluding to taking back the government forcibly with arms and an economy on life support, with those in charge of its welfare arguing whether or not to pull the plug.
While politicos, media pundits and economists debate the number of angels standing on a pin, most Americans are wondering about the fundamentals of our democracy and our capitalist society.
In short, we’re in the midst of a great national freak out, a collective anxiety attack that threatens to shake our collective faith in the ability of this country to confront and solve the problems it’s facing.
What we need to do is to take a deep breath. We’re not in the midst of collapse; we’re in the midst of reinvention.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the spy scandal, if it can even be called that, is how blase the whole affair has been treated. The administration’s primary concern was not that Russians were spying (albeit, by all accounts ineptly) on U.S. interests, but that the affair could damage relations with Russia.
This is remarkable progress and the Obama administration deserves credit for handling the situation so adroitly that most of us responded with a sense of Cold War nostalgia, not fear.
It also highlights how much the world has changed in the twenty plus years since the end of the Cold War. 1990-2010 may very well be viewed as an interregnum between two eras, the later of which we are just now entering.
What was once called ‘national defense’ is now referred to as ’security’. The United States, having failed in its attempts to force democracy on the Middle East is beginning to move away from its Cold War mission of spreading U.S. style democracy across the globe and is now beginning to engage global partners like China and the E.U. as equals.
If you believe in American supremacy, this is cause to throw up your arms in disgust, but as we’ve learned from our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, trying to remake the world in our image requires abandoning the very values we hope to promote. China is a better model. By tying our economy with theirs, we’ve brought a nation famous for isolationism into the global sphere.
Yes, this means more competition, but it also means we’ve created a far more stable world than what preceded it.
In our fight against terrorism, we’ve also been wildly successful, incapacitating Al Qaeda and thwarting dozens of attacks. While terrorism, nine short years ago seemed to be the defining threat of the 21st century, it has now become a manageable, if ever present threat.
After a decade of myopic focus on international threats, it’s now our domestic problems which seem intractable, but even here, progress is happening at a rapid pace. Considering the fundamental ways that the globe has changed; geopolitically, environmentally and economically, it would be naive to think that the country could continue without a major realignment.
Take the Tea Party, for example. It’s neither as seditious as those on the far left make it out to be nor is it as revolutionary as its proponents claim.
As Judge Joseph L. Tauro’s decision in favor of gay marriage based on the 10th Amendment (a favorite of the Tea Partiers which requires that anything not explicitly stated in the Constitution is the domain of individual states) shows, this is a discussion which transcends the left-right divide.
Admittedly, Tauro was most likely trying to spank Tea Partiers and illustrate their hypocrisy, but he also, perhaps inadvertently, legitimized the Tea Party’s states rights platform. Should the Tea Party create a cohesive, philosophically consistent platform (which would mean ditching the nativist, racist and homophobic strains it now embraces) it could become a legitimate and powerful successor to the Republican party.
Liberals deride the Tea Party as a bunch of lunatics, but they do it at their own peril. Should the Tea Party get its act together and make the new political dividing line states rights vs. the federal government, they could very well find themselves painting themselves in a corner. Nobody like the federal government and for good reason. It’s ineffective, even when run by Nobel peace prize winners.
But the Left also needs to get over its self-defeating accommodation. On most issues, it’s liberal politicians who have the forward thinking solutions that will make America prosper in this new era. Of course, we need to move to alternative energy. Of course, the next great economic engine will be creating sustainable and environmentally friendly products and systems. Of course, we need to invest in healthcare and education and improving the lives of the poor if we are hope to be successful.
And of course, the Right’s suicidal embrace of irresponsible big business and social conservatism is what’s holding this country back.
We must keep following the path we’ve set and move forward, but we must accept the consequences for those actions and account for what we have done. It’s these two alternating principles that are the new demarcation between Left and Right.
Far more than gay marriage or fiscal economics, it’s the Left’s desire to push forward with progress and the Right’s desire to preserve and protect what we have that animate our public discourse.
For better or worse, we’re a binary country, forever arguing for two competing visions of the future. What we have yet to realize, but are at last become aware, is that the terrain has changed. Abraham Lincoln’s charge that “As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew” is as true today as it was 1862.
When seen through the lens of a 24-hour news cycle, it’s just crisis after crisis, but if we step back and look at how far we’ve come in twenty years, the same spirit of adaptation, improvisation and ingenuity that has made this country so wildly successful in its brief history is as alive as it’s ever been.
We’re at the start of a new era and so long as we have the strength to realize it, the future is on our hands.
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Mr. Grant,
You wrote:”What we need to do is to take a deep breath. We’re not in the midst of collapse; we’re in the midst of reinvention.”
I have to say that I disagree with your assessment, we are indeed “in the midst of collapse”. The Great Recession shows no signs of abating. The US manufacturing base, the basis for the post-WW II prosperity, is shrinking faster and faster. The last ten years, a period of supposed prosperity, was the worst performing decade in the history of the stock market (and it is not getting any better). Government is bankrupt at all levels, deep in debt and deficit.
That is the root problem. On top of that, there is a political crisis rooted in the economic crisis. For the last thirty years US politics have been dominated by the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Their program of demonizing government, deregulating business, “borrow and spend” financing which ran up huge government debt and deficits, and lower taxes has been wildly successful at winning elections and crippling government. Republicans also gave political power to conservative Christians and cut out a role as the defender of racism and attacks upon immigrants. Republicans favored a war-like international posture resulting in two unsuccessful wars, Iraq and Afghanistan which are fantastically expensive and wildly unpopular. The voting core of this is a demographic group of rural, white, Christian, conservative voters in the South(who at one time were knows as “Yellow Dog Democrats” but are now died in the wool Republicans) and wealthy urban business voters in the North who consistently delivered large numbers of votes in key elections.
The Republican domination of US politics has failed in the last two elections in no small part because the those two disastrous wars, the collapse of the financial markets, the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, and the shrinking size of their core voting demographic group, angry, white, male, Christian, conservatives. It is the very success of the Republican Party that is causing its own political crisis.
Unfortunately the Democratic Coalition (it is not really a Party with any internal discipline like the Republican Party has) has yet to create an alternative power to supplant the Republican one. This has caused a deepening of the political crisis rather than a resolution. People see the economic and political collapse around them and are indeed freaking out and the angry white conservative anti-immigrant, racists are are freaking out in their won way – The Tea Party. There is plenty to freak out about, it is just a question of how you do it. I would suggest that the Tea Party is a backward expression of a very reasonable level of legitimate concern.
Quite frankly, if you are not freaking out, you are not paying sufficient attention.
I’d love for you to be able to see what my generation, Generation Y, is doing in Spokane, Wa. Through organizations of like-minded people (for example, http://spovangelist.com/ and http://launchpadinw.com) we are beginning to affect great change on the local level. I like what you say about not being in a collapse, but a reinvention; I believe that it is my generation that will reinvent America.
I think that in twenty years, when the boomers have passed on, you will see a more calm, rational, tolerant America. My generation prides itself on its liberal attitudes (http://millennialmarketing.com/2009/07/values-shift-gen-y-sees-things-differently/). You don’t even need a study to see that this is true. Just spend some time with us. We want to create the America that you have envisioned. I believe that what you have said here will come about as a natural consequence of our generation inheriting America.
I am optimitistic. We are smart, educated, and have a strong desire to rebuild a nation left ravaged by McMansions, gas guzzlers, and consumerism gone mad. We have come into the workforce in the midst of the worst job market in a century, toughening our resolve and spurring innovation. America is definitely not going to collapse. Before it does, our hands will have become capable, and we will affect positive change from the local level, to the national level.
These are some great points Sam, though you should know, I’m a Gen Y’er myself. On the old end of the scale (I was born in 1979), but I’d rather be lumped in with Generation Y than the X’ers any day of the week.
In response to another comment. See in context »*gives dap to my Gen Y bro*
Gen X never defined itself. It remains an unknown variable. My vision is that we will not be called Generation Y forever, but rather something more like, the Rebuilder Generation. The Innovator Generation. Maybe I’m being grandiose, but it’s certainly not an easy mantle for us to bear, however good it might be.
In response to another comment. See in context »Hey now you two, I’m a gen X’er (and live in Spokane, oddly enough)!
Although, I do believe you are right in that my generation has never really defined itself, I don’t think that is necessarily the product of Gen X not wanting to do so.
I think we’ve been stuck in the middle, between the reinforcement of the old values of this country (My father, to this day, still tells me the stories about his childhood, about my grandparents and my great grandparents) and the, as you so aptly put it, reinvention of our country with new ideas and values.
To a degree, we’ve never really held the cards to our own success. With the boomers living longer, working longer, etc., we’ve yet to really be put into a position to enact change. At least on a micro level.
To be honest, I think we will go down as the generation that was largely responsible for the transition, but not necessarily the end result itself.
And Sam, I’m on launchpad as well.
Good points, thanks for sharing!
In response to another comment. See in context »Oh and please look me up on LaunchPad! You know the name.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] Time to calm our long national freak-out – Japhy Grant – California Stars – True/S… [...]