American Exceptionalism

A friend pointed me to this article a while back, and for whatever reason I hadn't really paid any attention to it until now. It's a quite lengthy expose on America's decline amidst the shadow of a rising Chinese superpower. The article inevitably strikes a conciliatory tone to America's future, but I am of the opinion that we are otherwise at the beginning of a spiral of irreversible decline. 

I think one of the most frustrating aspects of American politics is that the imperceptive belief in America's perpetual status as the Greatest Nation Ever is an absolute prerequisite for holding public office. It's an entirely dangerous line of thought that is firmly entrenched in our political system, and it blinds us from realizing effective national priorities. We are so terrified of terrorism such that we will sacrifice anything and pay any cost in pursuit of Absolute Safety, yet we are perfectly fine with the rest of the world outperforming us in healthcare, education, infrastructure, and even life expectancy. And it has become so reflexive that our politicians believe we can continue doing what we have done in the past and expect superior results. 

I think a much more salient political position might be, "Hey - we spend all of our damned money on our military while the rest of the world is running circles around us in pretty much everything else. This is a greater threat to our country than scary brown people hiding in the mountains in the AfPak region. We probably ought to do something about it." I realize the President is trying to do this through his WTF (Winning the Future) slogan, but it is pretty tepid messaging and lacks the urgency which the situation requires. No one gives a shit about spending money on community colleges to re-train workers. Maybe it's great on policy, but on the politics it sounds awful, shortsighted, and ill equipped to deal with the magnitude of the situation we face. 

The fact that our political system is so completely polarized and unable to effectively unite on this front will probably be viewed by historians as one of the greatest modern American failures. That we continued to plow 5% of our GDP into defense spending while our infrastructure crumbled and our education system floundered, or that we insisted on keeping taxes for plutocrats at record lows while we balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the elderly, or that we relied on the private sector to "self-police" while they dumped carcinogens into our lakes and rivers - I believe all of these things will be viewed with much chagrin and as utter insanity as we confront the realities of a vastly different global landscape. It doesn't take very long for these introspections to occur; we are already reeling from the fiscal  and other qualitative effects of the Bush tax cuts and two wars funded, as the article states, by our Chinese credit card. The real challenge is having the intellectual maturity to make these judgements in the moment and not a decade and trillions of dollars in lost opportunities later.