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Rudderless Flagship
Several times in the
20th century during the difficult periods of the international
community, the United States had the trust of other countries as well as the
resources to respond to the call for leadership. Since the turn of the
millennium the flagship seems to have lost its rudders, and accordingly the
international trust it once enjoyed. What went wrong?
Resources are not scarcer than before. People mostly blame it on the inaptness of the captains they elect to command the ship. They should rather blame themselves for that. The American public is introvert, they are preoccupied with domestic problems of their making. For one, they are prejudiced to preserving local authority, but expect assistance from the federal administration, although they are distrustful of the central authority. The problem lies in the inaptness of the people to recognize the needs of the society as a hole and their relation to the world, and of being prepared to make the necessary changes.
Americans do not
want the federal authority to interfere with their local preferences. But when
locals are hit by nation-wide economic, climactic, civic, racial, or pandemic difficulties they
complain that the central administration does not do its job.
For example, they do not call it socialism when Social Security, Food Stamps, Public Housings, Unemployment Benefit programs are introduced, or businesses are bailed out during economic upheavals. They even welcome the paltry no-questions- asked hand out during the current pandemic; there are even reports that some furloughed people had more income than when they were employed. But they fiercely attack when an idea of national health care or education system as being socialist or communist idea.
They cannot relate
uncontrolled gun ownership and high rate of crimes involving guns to the police
being too quick or too easy in firing his.
They complain about
the uncontrollable spread of privacy breaches but non-chalantly continue to
contribute to the growth of the social media swamp.
They suffer from a myriad of illnesses (mainly due to
obesity) but they happily make the food and medical industries richer, instead
of questioning their practices.
They are perplexed by the
cultural-social-economic-racial-national-religious divides in an immigrants’
society but never question the dismal quality of the K-12 education system.
They chide politicians and politics, but they do not mind
being one of the countries with the lowest number of election participation, and
they vote for unfit presidents or politicians time and time again even when their ship loses its rudders.
They are mystified when they vote for a president but the
Electoral College elects someone else than the one they voted for; yet they do
not question whether the Constitution should provide for a president for the
people or for the States.
First, we have to identify whether this seemingly chronic
disorientation is due to an educational or informational level of the public,
or to the educational or ethical level of elected officials, or to the innate
fallacies of democracy exploited by the politicians, or to all the above.
Politicians say democracy is an ever-evolving experiment that needs constant
care. True. But could we not have brought it to a more reasonable and workable
level in more than two hundred years of experimenting with it? How much longer will we
tinker with it? We desperately need to take control of the ship even if it is
no longer a flagship.
We are groundlessly afraid of entrusting the federal government with administering some specific public (social) services. It is our government; we master it and must entrust it with services for us. In areas where the private sector is not or will no longer be interested in and is prone to monopolization the government could run, for example, in the communication field the nationwide landline system overtaken by the wireless-technology; in the transportation field a public bus service in rural areas and small towns; in the education field schooling in remote areas and poor urban communities; in health and sanitation field a nationwide communicative disease prevention and control.
Wake up people. The world is revolving, time goes by with its
each revolution. Stop squandering time and treasures with needless beliefs and
arguments.
August 1, 2020
