Facing Our Failures

The U.S. is a wonderful place in many ways.  We have incredible natural resources, national parks, landscapes and cities.  We have many of the best research and technology institutions in the world.  Our medical care, in many cases, offers the best and most advanced care available in the world.  The energy and innovation of our economy is also remarkable.  Our cultural offerings – music, art, movies, theater, opera, comedy – are diverse and impressive.  And the American people, for the most part, both liberal and conservative, are hard-working, generous and good-natured.

But there is, and always has been, a dark side to our country.  The COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on it.  The rest of the world, which has looked on for several years with a mixture of disdain and schadenfreude as Donald Trump’s incivility and reckless leadership tarnished our image, is now watching in undisguised contempt as we flounder through the pandemic in abject, leaderless chaos.  American exceptionalism indeed!

We are a land of contradictions.  We have more billionaires and multi-millionaires by far than any other nation.   But we also have far more of our citizens in poverty and more blighted urban or rural landscapes than any other developed nation.  We have highly advanced medical technology and physicians, but a third of our people cannot take advantage of it due to cost and availability.  We have many of the best higher educational institutions in the world, yet our lower income areas generally have horribly broken schools, and large numbers of students go into debt financing their education after high school.  We also have far more people in prison than any other developed nation, and we suffer more from gun violence and drug addiction.

Europe went through two catastrophic world wars in the twentieth century.  But it emerged from the devastation with a commitment to a more just and harmonious society.  It has achieved that goal to a much greater degree than we have.  The U.S. became the undisputed world leader in commerce, military and technology during that time, relatively untouched by the cataclysms around it.  We gained the whole world, but somehow lost our soul in the process.

One can argue that we continue to pay for the twin sins of our founding – the genocide/displacement of indigenous peoples and the exploitation of slaves.  But Europe has many original sins in its past and it has somehow managed to rise above them.  I would argue that it is our stubborn, fanatical embrace of pure capitalism and rugged individualism that hampers our efforts to make a better society. 

And now, the richest, most technologically advanced nation in the world is suffering horribly from a pandemic, sacrificing its most vulnerable citizens in a tardy, panicked attempt to minimize economic consequences.  Our workers and poor are more at risk than any other developed nation because of the lack of protections that exist in our otherwise rich society.

America in its better days would have leaped into action right away, rallying its people around a common, national effort to prevent deaths, protect health workers, and then begun helping the rest of the world in its great need.

Now is the time for America to take a hard look in the mirror.  The narrative of exceptionalism we have told ourselves for so long is only partly true and is becoming less true by the year.  Indeed, it is a kind of delusion that blinds us from our all-too-real challenges.

We can learn from the hard-won successes of other nations and societies.  Our problems of income inequality, poverty, healthcare, violence and broken educational systems must be confronted or they will build into a tsunami of unpleasant consequences.  They are difficult but not intractable.

The death and misery of this pandemic will not have been entirely in vain if America wakes up and begins to acknowledge its ills and search for answers.  The first step will be to replace the deeply damaged and divisive man who is our current president.