1hundredsixty8

The United States is a truly amazing nation. When one considers the diversity of our population, the many contradictions in our attitudes on most issues, the dysfunction of our governing institutions, the venal behavior of some of our politicians, the puissant strain of anti-intellectualism that runs through our culture, and the hedonistic devotion to material consumerism, it is a true wonder that we are currently the Earth's solitary "super power". Of course, the latter title has been conferred on the US because of our willingness to dedicate a larger percentage of our economic output to military spending than the next 13 nations combined.* None of this prevents large segments of the citizenry from beating their chests and unabashedly proclaiming America the greatest country in the world. Inconvenient truths such as our poor healthcare outcomes in spite of paying more for healthcare than other first-world nations, our poor ranking in education, the growing inequality in wealth and income between those at the top of the economic scale and the rest of us, or the fact that the US leads the world in the per capita rate of people incarcerated do not seem to be cause for embarrassment. We are the richest nation on the planet with a great many people living in poverty. As the comedian Lewis Black used to point out in his act:

"The amazing thing is that there are people who've never left this country who talk about the fact that we're the greatest country on Earth. How fucking dumb is that? 'Cause you don't know. If you haven't left here, you don't know."

It would be cynical to attribute these unconsidered attitudes to the sciolistic character of the American public, a character rooted in a withered educational system, informed by a media that compacts the reporting and commentary of public issues into 30 seconds or 140 characters, and entranced by data-driven marketing. At the core of the American psyche is an ambivalence, nourished by the myth of individualism, a primative formulation of liberty that leads us to believe, on one hand, that we are free to live our lives in any manner we choose, while we maintain, on the other hand, a simultaneous intolerance of those that do not conform to preconceived norms.  This contradiction is obvious in matters of race, religion, political ideology, sexual orientation- there is the us, and then there is the other.  It is not a recent development; it has been part of us since the inception of the Republic.

The social compact is is need of repair at both the top and the bottom. The past week's arrests of officials in New York on corruption charges are the latest example of the decay among the power elite. However, the fundamental issue is not crooked pols; they, too, have been with us since the beginning. It is us, the public, that is the problem. The erosion of civic virtue, social responsibility and the sense of obligation to political society en toto are apparent at all levels of society.  Consider the following:

- Less than 58% of eligible voters cast ballots in the 2012 elections.

- Less than 1% of the population has fought in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

- In a recent Public Policy Poll, 4% of those polled believe our political system is controlled by "lizard people."

Truism: In a democracy, the people get the type of government they deserve.

I think deTocqueville said that 180 years ago.

 *While the accepted euphemism is "defense spending", it would appear that much of our military actions over the past decade have been decidedly offensive. Hence, I prefer the term "military spending". A case can be made that much of the budget of the Department of Defense has no particular relationship to defending the nation.