The Late, Great US of A?

By Stephen Pizzo
Created Dec 16 2006 - 10:45am

I'm beginning to understand how folks in Britain must of felt as their
vassals began to shrug off the yoke of empire. That process was sometimes
violent, sometimes a passive aggressive refusal to comply. But year by year,
decade by decade the sun set on the British empire as its one-time royal
subjects -- including us -- went their own way.

Not to beat an analogy to death -- especially such an obvious one - but the
same thing is now happening to America's place in the international pecking
order. We are no longer the best at everything, top dog, numero uno, a
shinning example to the slackers and savages of the world.

I was musing about that this morning. It came to mind as I pondered what it
was that made right wing conservatives so impervious to facts. Whether it's
Iraq, free trade, climate change and universal health care, facts can't
budge them. You can beat them over the head with the hardest of hard facts
and not make a dent in their certainty that America, and everything about
America, is still not only the best, but better than anything our nearest
competitors have going for them by light years.

While that might have been a hard position to disprove just a few short
decades ago, it no longer is. America is demonstrably not the leader any
longer, at least in for the kinds of things that really matter to a civil
society. For example, we are no longer the leader in educating our young
[1] - we're not even in the top ten. We are no longer the leader in
providing advanced, affordable health care [2] to all our citizens. We are
no longer the leader in quality jobs, pay, benefits or retirement security
[3].

And where we do still lead, we shouldn't. We are among the worlds leaders in
incarceration rates and executions.

WASHINGTON - More than 5.6 million Americans are in prison or have served
time there, according to a new report by the Justice Department released
Sunday. That's 1 in 37 adults living in the United States, the highest
incarceration level in the world. (More [4])

We are the world leader in military spending [5]. We are among the leaders
of the shrinking number of global warming deniers, and one the leading
contributors to greenhouse gas emissions [6].

Right wingers deny more than global warming though. If that were all they
were in denial of we'd have a fighting chance of reaching them even on that
issue. But no, they are in complete denial. They believe they live in a
country that began to fade sometime during the Nixon years. Right wingers
sleep with a corpse. They remind me of Norman Bates in the classic movie,
"Psycho." They have their beloved, mummified memories of post World War II
America propped up in their mental attic. For them, it still lives.

I only wish they were right. I'd love nothing better to wake up every
morning secure in the knowledge that my country is, if not always right, at
least trying to be. I'd love to be sure that my government was still looking
out for the wellbeing of the majority, not just those with the means to
return the favor. I'd love to live each day with the knowledge that the
number of Americans unable to afford health care were counted in the
thousands, rather than the tens of millions. I'd love to know that our
children were still getting world class educations, rather than falling
further and further behind.

That was the country I was raised in, but it's gone now. Whether or not we
ever see it again depends on convincing those right wingers that not all
things they consider "liberal," are bad. Some liberal ideas were bad, and
liberals need to admit those mistakes. Lyndon Johnson's well-meaning "Great
Society [7]" became a smothering welfare bureaucracy. If the road to Hell is
paved with good intentions, that one led an entire generation of black
Americans straight to dependency-hell. It broke up families, discouraged
work and virtually obliterated an emerging black business/middle class that
was surviving despite segregation and discrimination.

But not all things liberal are bad. Universal health care, for example. My
European friends just shake their heads in disbelief -- and pity -- when
they hear me talk about my annual scramble to a private health plan that's
not a complete rip off. Oh sure the my British and Canadian friends bitch
and complain about their government-run systems. Nothing is perfect and you
can't please everyone, all the time. But when I ask them if they'd trade
their troubles for mine, and they just laugh. Forget about it.

The only way America can rejoin the top rank of industrialized nations in
health care is to embrace single-payer [8] -- a system that leverages the
kinds of things the private sector does well with with the cost-savings and
bargaining power of a single payer. I'm a capitalist to my marrow. I love
the stuff. It's been good to me. Freewheeling capitalism is a powerful,
dynamic and creative dynamo. Having said that, we need to realize, it's not
a societal Swiss Army knife. It does some things very, very well - and other
things very, very, VERY poorly. And one of the things it does poorest is
assuring that all god's children have access to affordable health care --
especially those who need it the most.

Reducing greenhouse emissions is another thing business can't do well, or
fast enough if left to their own devices. Right wingers are not convinced
it's caused by humans in the first place, and therefore don't understand
what the big hurry is all about. Why saddle industry with the added cost of
cleaning up their acts? But, to silent critics they offer "free market
solutions," such as creating and selling pollution credits. Unfortunately
the rate of warming is beating the rate pollution credits can possibly
address the problem.

This year will be the 3rd warmest on record [9] for the US, and the 6th
warmest on record worldwide. What's needed is a good dose of (liberal)
government intervention - strict greenhouse gas emission limits. Would that
be expensive? You bet!. But expense hasn't lessened right wing support for
the war in Iraq, where we're now pissing away a staggering $9 billion a
month. And just how expensive do right wingers think a global ecological
collapse might be, should it occur? They're not sure that's going to happen,
they say. But are they really ready to gamble their grand children's lives
for a few more bull stock market years on that guess? And if they are,
what's that say about them?

Allow me one final riff on the theme of America's slide from first place. We
are, I am sure you've heard, "the world's last remaining super-power." To
which I say, so what? We live in a age of asymmetric threats, like terrorism
and guerrilla insurgencies. Neither give a fig about how many megatons we
can drop on them. Nor are our enemies today about to spend themselves into
bankruptcy trying to match our nuclear submarines, stealth bombers or
missile defense systems. To them we are a lumbering, muscle-bound, sitting
duck. They can hear and see us coming a thousand miles away. And when we
arrive, they disrupt our best laid plans with weapons that would have been
familiar to WW II French resistance fighters.

America's best defense from such enemies is to leave them to stew in their
own clueless worlds of ideological isolation and social dysfunction. Rather
than spending hundreds of billions chasing them through rabbit warren-like
medieval cities, we should spend a few billion making sure they can't get
into the US.

But America's conservatives believe the US can still call shots far from
home. In reality, the days when we really could are long gone and not likely
to return in our life times, if ever.

It's a lesson the British had to learn the hard way. Once an empire begins
to crumble, all the military force in the world can't hold it together.
Empires are an inherently unstable element. They have a bright, but
incredibly short half-life. And when change begins, it's a sea change.

History is filled with cautionary tales on the subject of crumbling empires.
Reading some Rudyard Kipling would be instructive for conservatives who
continue to believe the US can democratize Arab nations of the Middle East.
Kipling wrote at a time when cracks began to show in the British empire. And
there are useful lessons in his poetry and prose, lessons we seem determined
to learn the hard way too. It's useful to understand that our troops in
Afghanistan and Iraq are fighting on the graves of thousands of imperial
British soldiers whose lives and deaths Kipling chronicled nearly a century
ago.

The British ultimately fled Afghanistan and Iraq. They put some locals in
charge, gave them a "good old clap" slap on the back and high tailed for
home. And so what? Did the UK collapse? No. Did "terrorists" follow to fight
them in the streets of London and Southampton? No, -- at least not those
terrorists anyway. Instead domestic terrorists, the IRA, proved to be their
real problem.

True, today Britain is no longer an imperial power, she's just a power. Her
citizens go about their days in relative peace and security - and that's a
good thing.

What of the "victors," that chased Brits out of Afghanistan and Iraq? Well,
their lives changed little - and that's not a good thing - for them anyway.
Societies change when they're ready to change, and that part of the world
still isn't ready to change.

Simply put, the choice Americans must make in the weeks ahead is as simple
as it is stark:

Continue feeding American soldiers into the meat grinder Kipling describes
in the stanzas below. That's what right wingers are suggesting, in direct
contradiction of the findings of the Iraq Study Group.

Or

Try an enlightened - dare I say -- liberal approach, such as that proposed
by John Murtha. Withdraw our troops and allow the natural
social-evolutionary process in that backward region to proceed at its own
pace and with its own means - no matter how bloody those means may be.

Because, either way, bloody it shall be.

Young Soldier, (st. 13)
by Rudyard Kipling, 1918

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!

Mesopotamia
by Rudyard Kipling, 1917

They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour:
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,
Even while they make a show of fear,
Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,
To conform and re-establish each career?

Their lives cannot repay us--their death could not undo--
The shame that they have laid upon our race.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,
Shall we leave it unabated in its place?
_______
newsforreal.com

About author Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including
"Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans," which was
nominated for a Pulitzer. His web site is News For Real [10].

--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107

"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson