American nightmare.
I read an interesting article in December 2nd’s National Journal today. The story was about “how the world would look if Uncle Sam were no longer No 1”. This is something I have been giving a lot of thought to for quite a while. We (Americans) are pretty damn cocky about our position in this world. How will we react when we suddenly find ourselves falling behind Korea in technology? Or behind China? Or any other country?
The fact is that we are lagging a bit. I am not qualified to contemplate how far, but when I was last in Germany, I noticed that they were far advanced in cell phone technology than we are. I think part of the reasoning for that stems from our highly capitalistic ideologies that manipulate the amount of forward movement in technology. By this I mean that I believe that America doles out just enough information to profit from.
As a people, I think that Americans are getting more and more entitled in their behavior, and thereby not working as hard to achieve greatness. Will Smith said that he was told the director of the film “Pursuit of Happyness” could not be an American because an American does not understand the concept of the American dream. I agree. I believe the American dream is fulfilled by coming to America from a place where life is a struggle. The thought of America and life’s potential there is part of the dream. As Americans, we live in relative safety (spoken as a true middle class Washingtonian) and while many work hard, many more are sedate in their lives here. I always wondered if I had had to battle some level of intense adversity; like a war in my country, or true poverty; would I be a better person? Would I work harder to achieve the life I want?
Other countries are truly catching up to the US in every way. We may be the richest country, but for how long with the way we are flinging money at the war in Iraq?
We have a powerful government, but how much power do we want them to have? How much can we trust these people who establish legislation to guide how we live our lives while they disregard the rules for themselves?
This is a powerful country. America is a great country. If we want to keep it this way, we need to stop standing around and allowing things to happen. There is no reason why the government is run on money. It should be run by people whose first and foremost thought is how better to help their constituents. Whatever happened to the true leaders, the people who became politicians to make a positive change in the country? It seems that the people on the Hill are there to feel powerful, not to be powerful. And it is our own fault. We vote them in. Politics has become a dirty word and the only ones who can change the definition are us.
The fact is that we are lagging a bit. I am not qualified to contemplate how far, but when I was last in Germany, I noticed that they were far advanced in cell phone technology than we are. I think part of the reasoning for that stems from our highly capitalistic ideologies that manipulate the amount of forward movement in technology. By this I mean that I believe that America doles out just enough information to profit from.
As a people, I think that Americans are getting more and more entitled in their behavior, and thereby not working as hard to achieve greatness. Will Smith said that he was told the director of the film “Pursuit of Happyness” could not be an American because an American does not understand the concept of the American dream. I agree. I believe the American dream is fulfilled by coming to America from a place where life is a struggle. The thought of America and life’s potential there is part of the dream. As Americans, we live in relative safety (spoken as a true middle class Washingtonian) and while many work hard, many more are sedate in their lives here. I always wondered if I had had to battle some level of intense adversity; like a war in my country, or true poverty; would I be a better person? Would I work harder to achieve the life I want?
Other countries are truly catching up to the US in every way. We may be the richest country, but for how long with the way we are flinging money at the war in Iraq?
We have a powerful government, but how much power do we want them to have? How much can we trust these people who establish legislation to guide how we live our lives while they disregard the rules for themselves?
This is a powerful country. America is a great country. If we want to keep it this way, we need to stop standing around and allowing things to happen. There is no reason why the government is run on money. It should be run by people whose first and foremost thought is how better to help their constituents. Whatever happened to the true leaders, the people who became politicians to make a positive change in the country? It seems that the people on the Hill are there to feel powerful, not to be powerful. And it is our own fault. We vote them in. Politics has become a dirty word and the only ones who can change the definition are us.
Buggie spilled her guts for you at 12/07/2006 09:57:00 AM
4 Comments:
I agree with you. It really frustrates me that the people who are running our country are not necessarily doing it for the good of the country and it's people.
That was an interesting article. I'd actually been thinking a lot about this a couple months ago.
Here's my take.
We are bleeding ourselves in Iraq, it can't go on forever. I say this as one of the idiots who said "Yeah let's go in there!" It was a bad bad decision.
Economic factores are what create super powers. The more free people are to trade, the more value they can accumulate, the more wealthy a population becomes, the more other countries want and need to trade freely with them.
Unfortunately most of the US population thinks that by trading with countries like China, we are actually hurting ourselves somehow. This is simply not the case. Even worse, there's this movement to stop people from coming to this country. The more people we have, the more people trading, the wealthier and more powerful we become. Regardless of what language they speak.
I don't think the corruption in government is anything really new, I'm actually inclined to believe it was much worse in the early part of the second half of the 19th century, and that's when our economy actually exploded (in a good way)
Politicians don't make our country powerful, they can make it weak though, and the whole "build a giant wall against mexico" and "Send a trillion dollars to defense contractor consultants" will certainly make us weaker.
I'm rambling.
Vote for Buggie!!
You go girl!
Chanuck, you can't vote!
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