Introduction
The Bloom Is Off The Rose
When you fly back to the United States from abroad and look out the airplane window, you see the contours of a great land, with rivers winding through miles and miles of forest, wetlands, mountains and plains as far as the eye can see. As you descend closer to earth you see the well laid out lines of streets, office complexes, industrial areas and residential communities sprinkled with shopping centers, schools, houses of worship, parks and parking lots. And just before your plane touches down, you catch a glimpse of ribbons of cars snaking their way over highways and across bridges in a never-ending procession of people going to and fro with appointments to keep, jobs to work, classes to attend, deliveries to make and friends to visit. It is an impressive sight to behold – that of a country teeming with people, energy and infrastructure.
But once you are on terra firma, look closer. Some of those cities that look so magnificent from the air contain blighted neighborhoods of closed up shops, abandoned buildings, filthy streets, drug pushers, gun wielding criminals, homeless people and neglected children. Those office complexes that shine like beacons to capitalism in the night too frequently lay off thousands of people, not as a result of a financial crisis or employee incompetence, but as a matter of normal business practice to quickly cut expenses and boost share price, thereby disrupting the lives of families and wreaking economic havoc on their communities. Those rivers that so beautifully reflect the sun as they effortlessly flow through our cities, towns and rural areas are all too often unable to sustain their once teeming aquatic life because they flow under the weight of industrial pollutants and agricultural chemicals illegally dumped with disregard for their effect on the environment. Many of the schools to which our children trek each American morning are in deplorable states of disrepair, or are staffed with well-intentioned teachers attempting to stimulate learning without adequate resources. And most horrific of all, schools, offices, shopping malls, theaters and concert venues are increasingly being turned into killing fields for the slaughtering of innocents through the shocking American phenomenon of frequent mass shootings.
These are the sober realities that reflect sad facts about 21st century American life. The bloom has come off the American rose.
Since it’s founding, America has been considered ‘exceptional,’ a term first applied to the former British colonies by the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville while travelling here in 1831. Our large land mass size, geography bordered by vast oceans east and west, David vs. Goliath successful revolutionary history, democratic political institutions, laissez-faire inspired economy, rule of law under an independent judiciary and civil society built upon individual liberties – officially advocated if not consistently practiced – no doubt enabled the United States to develop at unprecedented speed into a global superpower with a quality of life so admired that the country attracted millions of immigrants from around the world, which helped accelerate America’s development to a position of economic and military prominence which enabled it to play a decisive role in winning World War II.
America’s history is indeed impressive and its accomplishments, with a few exceptions, are admirable. But, to take a phrase from ancient Greek and Roman societies, we cannot ‘rest on our laurels.’ We can neither rely upon past achievements and successes, nor fail to adapt to new circumstances and challenges, if we wish to sustain the high quality of individual, family and community life that has characterized the American way of life. As my father used to teasingly ask me as a child, paraphrasing a quote that first appeared in print in an 1862 issue of the Farmers’ Almanac, “What is the biggest room in the world? The room for improvement.” Indeed, Americans for generations have demonstrated the efficacy of applying this adage, constantly innovating and improving.
At the end of World War II, America took a global leadership role in adopting Secretary of State George Marshall’s plan to rebuild the economic infrastructure of the Western European democracies, and in promoting General MacArthur’s plan for Japan to transition to democratic self-government, economic stability and peaceful co-existence with other nations. America became the preeminent influencer and facilitator globally. In the following years, our own post-war economy buzzed, housing construction soared, good paying jobs were aplenty, consumer goods were available in abundance, and a spirit of community involvement led to widespread availability of educational, cultural, recreational, religious and social service resources that enabled generations of Americans to build robust, satisfying lives of purpose and pleasure.
Unfortunately, one unintended consequence of such abundance amidst a much easier life than their elders came naïve assumptions of continuing prosperity without commensurate responsibility. So today we see that many preventable social problems foolishly go unaddressed, causing needless suffering and harm; growing economic inequality is shrinking the proportion of the population reporting happiness; and we have tragic levels of drug abuse and under addressed mental health challenges within our population. Moreover, our political system is being undermined by extreme partisanship, public opinion is being compromised by disinformation and disregard of science, and our communities are experiencing greater incivility and eroding public safety.
This begs the question: How is it that a country blessed with tremendous resources, multigenerational innovation, friendly borders, world class educational, cultural and religious institutions, cutting edge science, technology and medicine, highly developed infrastructure and commerce, well equipped law enforcement and a sophisticated legal system, can sustain the levels of selfishness, superficiality, injustice, poverty, abuse, criminality, violence and mass killings that have become endemic in 21st century American life?
Is this the America that our founders intended? Are we, the current generations of Americans, being good custodians of all that has been entrusted to us to serve future generations? I suspect, indeed hope, that most of us have a gnawing sensation that something is amiss in our country. We need to pay attention to those feelings and respect those thoughts. Our heads are telling us that the incivility, injustice, greed, poverty, crime, violence, eroded sense of community and political divisiveness that have crept into American life don’t belong here and our hearts are longing for us to craft a better, safer, more civil society for all Americans.
There is an old adage that says, ‘Until you acknowledge there is a problem, you can’t begin to fix it.’ Similarly, psychology tells us that in order to work on a problem, we must first ‘accept’ or ‘own’ it. If we acknowledge that these problems are no less aspects of contemporary American life, as are the things about which we are rightly proud about America, then we can have an honest and sensible dialogue about them.
‘Honest and sensible,’ of course, does not mean launching mean-spirited diatribes, disregarding facts and data, pushing conspiracies, advancing hyper partisanship or engaging in the type of blame game that too often passes for ‘discussion’ in the public space of late. Engaging in recriminations for past injustices, or demonizing those with whom you disagree, is not helpful. What 21st century America needs is for all citizens – together enjoying the rights and benefits of living in this less than perfect but no less great country – to also share in the responsibilities for honestly acknowledging, and collaboratively solving, its problems – our problems. This means that we Americans must be as quick to embrace our responsibilities to this country as we are to advocate for our rights from this country.
This book is intended to stimulate thoughtful discussions that help transition us from a politics of partisanship and personality toward a politics driven by common sense public policies and responsible personal actions. This book is not is an attempt to be politically correct or to assuage certain group’s expectations. Not every reader will agree with everything written and that’s okay. That’s the way it should be in a democracy populated by citizens with a diversity of life experiences and expectations.
We can, however, collectively leverage our diversity of life experiences as a strength and embark upon a respectful and determined effort to identify some of our most critical challenges and cooperatively advance common sense solutions to reinvigorate the American way of life.
So I invite you to join me in looking at just ten critical areas in American society currently begging for common sense solutions from ourselves as citizens and from the politicians in whom we place our trust to run our government. Consider the descriptions of each of the areas challenging us as a country and think about common sense solutions that we should be able to reasonably expect of ourselves and our government.
