Saturday, September 12, 2020

The United States Is Failing

You don't have to take my word for it. See what the academics have to say. The experts have a much better perspective on things that fall within their expertise.


https://spineasytime.blogspot.com/2018/05/americas-flawed-democracy.html


You can start, or finish, by revisiting the above cited post, which describes America's place on the Democracy Index, which is managed by the Economist Intelligence Unit. They list the US as a “flawed democracy.” We didn't even make the “full democracy” section on their list. The Economist's website contains shocking details about America's ranking in various subcategories, such as “free elections.” I got the link from Forbes magazine. Neither of those publications is in any way liberal or progressive.

Now here's some news from this week. Social Progress dot org keeps a Social Progress Index. Here they are more concerned with social issues. That would be things like nutrition, personal safety, upward mobility, personal freedom, the environment, general health, access to a good education, etc.

America is currently at number twenty-eight among the nations of the world, and it has been falling in the rankings for the last ten years.

It brings no joy to my heart to report these failures of my own beloved country. These failures to live up to its great advances in social justice. Those advances, most within the last one hundred years and many within living memory, were all opposed at the time. From the small advances of the unions bringing more equitable labor laws in the early Twentieth Century, to the New Deal under FDR, to the civil rights victories, the Great Society, and advances in rights for women and other minorities, the political opposition was always strong.

Let's be honest, it was mostly Republican opposition. More people should read history; it really is fascinating. It was the Republicans and the wealthy who despised the whole idea of a fair deal for the working people. The wealthy owned most of the big newspapers in a situation that is analogous to today's “Fox Entertainment,” often erroneously called Fox News. The wealthy owned everything, as they still do. Let's face that too. As usual; as always. The Republicans and the wealthy are still fighting tooth and nail against every single advance in social justice ever made, and the unfortunate truth is that they are winning.

Their victory shows in all of the relevant statistics, whether the subject is democracy or social progress. America's scores are falling as many countries around the world achieve and surpass our much bragged about standard of living and our much taken for granted freedoms. While those countries are progressing, the American standard of living is falling, and the freedoms that were taken for granted when I was a young man are now in serious danger of disappearing altogether.

Oh? You think that I'm exaggerating? Well, can you imagine that we had the freedom to talk on the phone without being subject to surveillance? Even for gangsters, the police needed probable cause and a warrant from a judge, and if the boys were talking about what store makes the best capicola, or the Yankees' game, the police had to shut off the machine. For regular folks, they couldn't listen to anything, whether you were on your home phone or talking on a pay phone. We had a right to privacy.

That even applied to our garbage. We had the sacred right to the privacy of our garbage, at least until we took the can out to the curb. If the cans were at the side of your house, it was “hands off” for the police. If you waited until the truck came, and took the can out and turned it over to the sanitation guy, the police were welcome to search the entire contents of the truck if they felt like it. Even if they found something, they couldn't prove that it was yours. (Through the miracle of commingling.)

Of course, criminals abused these privacy rights. That was part of the price that we paid for freedom. Smuggling was rampant. Contraband traveled by road up and down the east coast willy-nilly. You could buy any damn thing south of North Carolina. Tax free cigarettes; guns; boxes of cherry-bombs; starter chemicals for methamphetamine. As long as you didn't do something stupid, like put your spare tire in the back seat to make more room in the trunk, you weren't going to get searched. Not without a warrant, anyway. Hell, you could fly between New York and Phoenix safely with suitcases full of kilo bricks of weed! We had rights.

Not important, you say? You don't break the law? I don't break the law either. Nor, however, do I appreciate being treated like a terrorist every time I fly, enter a Federal building or a courthouse of any kind, drive on an Interstate Highway, or feel like asking a policeman a simple question.

I'm hoping that social justice makes a comeback, although the odds don't look great. I long for an America, and an entire world, full of fair wages, fair and just taxation, strong labor laws, strong privacy laws for anyone who's just minding their own business, strong universal health care and access to a good education. I'd like someone in government to worry about why every time we go on the Internet everyone is stealing our data and selling it, as though it were theirs instead of ours. And why are our in-boxes full of horrible, illegal scams every day? I'd like strong environmental protection, and a return to the days when government regulated business for the benefit of all citizens and funded projects that benefited our entire society. (Like what? Like the TVA, the Hoover Dam, and the interstate highway system. Oh, and some new medicines besides boner pills and anti-anxiety drugs would be nice. Would anyone join me in a desire for some new antibiotics? Some drugs that worked on real medical problems? Even if they're not profitable?)

I'd prefer to live in a world where our governments did not squander all of the money in existence on military spending and further inflating the bank accounts of people who already have much more money than they could ever benefit from in any way, much less spend. I'd prefer to see our governments work together to tackle real-world problems, rather than waste time, effort, and money on creating new generations of nuclear weapons and selling shiny new military hardware to countries that will only misuse it.

I'm sorry to be a cranky old man, howling at the moon from a bunker in an undisclosed location, but I am also sick and tired of waking up every day to some new horror that everyone can see clearly, while no one seems to actually care. As countries fail one after the other, and democracies around the world carelessly piss away their hard won freedoms, we are watching the world as we know it grind to a screeching halt. Anyone born after the year 2000 will definitely have their lives at least made miserable, and perhaps cut short, by these horrors that we are now “learning to live with.” New Normal my bony old white ass. Born after 2000? How many people that you love are in that group? I'll be dead, but they will suffer. Count on it.

I give up. I write this only because I was raised in New York, and we New Yorkers love to complain. It doesn't do any good, but we find it soothing.



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