Years ago, journalist John Stossel had a special segment on some show, probably 20/20. If you don't remember John Stossel, he was probably best known as the reporter who was slapped to the ground - twice - by a professional wrestler when he questioned whether or not wrestling was real.
When I was a kid growing up, I actually felt bad for Stossel after seeing that clip.
Given who Stossel revealed himself to be over the years, I felt a lot less bad. In fact, sometimes I feel tempted to watch it, just to see Stossel get slapped down to reality. Figuratively, he could use that quite a bit these days.
Well, the report that Stossel promoted was a piece which asked if the United States was really number one. My father and I had seen the promotion, and we both sounded interested. After all, a reporter asking that question, and devoting a whole part of a show to it, might have some insights and answers that might awaken Americans to some harsh truths, right? This guy was a journalist, so surely he had sone some research.
Not so much, as it turns out. Stossel took the lazy way out, not actually challenging the biases of many Americans that they are "number one," but instead revealing his own prejudices and loyalties. He cherrypicked stats and made questionable selections with countries to compare the United States to countries which he knew would not compare favorably to the United States in those categories.
In fact, Stossel, who is a libertarian and eventually moved from ABC to FOX (just to get some background on his politics) seemed fixated on proving, ultimately, that the United States is indeed number one. Sure, our rate of incarceration and violent crimes ranks well above other industrialized countries. But, he says, our rates of nonviolent crimes are slightly lower than most western European countries. So let's pat ourselves on the back and get back to fixating on how great we are? Because beating our chests and saying that we are great will surely make it so?
Stossel also tackles America's traditionally weak environmental policies and overall attitude towards a healthy environment by explaining that we're okay, because it is much worse in some other parts of the world, such as parts of Asia and Africa and parts of Europe. Apparently, because we are not dead last, let's once again pat ourselves in the back and return to the echo chamber of Americentric thinking.
What a visionary that John Stossel is. Surely you agree.
Yes, Stossel confesses, the United States does have problems with racism. But hey, Germany still has skinheads, and they sometimes got outright violent with foreign immigrants. And in Rwanda, Hutus hacked Tutsis to death. And, he goes on to say, one political party in France wants all Arabs kicked out of the country. "But here racial and ethnic violence is at least rare and we're learning to get along."
You know what? I'm not going to comment on that one directly. Perhaps some people out there can judge how whether that boisterous statement by Stossel has aged well or not.
I will say this, however. Yeah, there were and still are violent skinheads in Germany. Yes, there was ethnic violence in Rwanda. And yes, a political party in France had racist leanings. But now, we have seen similar things come to pass right here in the United States, which surely Stossel would have argued we are an exception to back when he made that report. We have tens of millions of Americans pleased that Trump's secret police force is violently taking people off the streets. Blatant racism and hate crimes have spiked since the political rise of MAGA. But time would have proven him a liar, now, wouldn't it?
In fact, while payinbg lip service to the idea that the United States has problems, Stossel glosses over these problems. There are horror stories about people not being able to afford healthcare? These are the stories that make headlines because they are so rare. Funny, but I doubt that there are ten thousand or so news stories about each person who cannot afford healthcare here. In fact, millions upon millions cannot even afford healthcare. And I have seen more Go Fun Me requests to pay medical bills than stories covering them. My guess is that I am not the only one.
Stossel does that with pretty much all of the problems Americans face as a nation. Environmental problems? We're not the worst, it's even worse elsewhere! Poverty? Most of these people have color television and air conditioning, so they are not really poor. Racism? It's worse in other countries. So let's stop complaining, and let's all hail this, the greatest country of all, right?
North Korea, Haiti, Syria, and India. Stossel suggests, with a straight face, that these are the kinds of places that practice government assistance or planning. And, he says, they are the worst places to live. These days, Americans seem to prefer Venezuela as an example.
Perhaps to his credit, Stossel never outright stated that the United States is indeed "number one." Yet all of his talk seems nonetheless to lead to this conclusion. And my guess is that many Americans who watched the report were relieved to hear it. This pretty much covered what they want to believe of themselves.
However, the United States did have problems. Serious problems. And the fact that "reporters" like this gloss over them, or point to places where things are worse, is not actually a solution. It does not fix our problems. It just stalls any action taken to address them by urging everyone to pat themselves on the back for being Americans.
But the funny thing about those who always want to crown the United States as the greatest country in the world is that they always, always are scared to compare themselves with countries which have caught up to the United States, or even surpassed it, in terms of standards of living. Yes, they never seem to compare themselves to countries with a lot more government planning that are doing very well. Exceptionally well, in fact. Better than the United States, back then as well as now. Countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Australia, and Canada, to name a few. Countries where zero people go bankrupt each year because they cannot afford childcare. Countries where new mothers are guaranteed paid maternity leave. Where yes, they get government assistance.
Now, I have a question for all of those hardliners who champion what they would consider American values and other "pull yourself by the bootstrap" ideologies and policies that lead to things like a for profit healthcare or no paid maternity leave. Are you ready to give a good answer, because I have not heard one yet. Here's the question: if the American model of healthcare and pulling yourself by the bootstraps is so great, why haven't any other countries in the industrialized world followed our model?
Perhaps a new question has arisen over the years: why are we now specifically the example that most other industrialized countries want to avoid?
Maybe if Stossel and others had actually taken such questions seriously, and really thought about ways to improve the country, instead of clever ways to rationalize continuing to pat ourselves on the back and be our own loudest cheerleaders, maybe our problems would not be so urgent and so glaringly obvious now, to us and to the rest of the world. It seemed obvious to both my father and myself that Stossel had not really acted like a legitimate reporter in this "special report."
Instead, Stossel cherrypicked his information to give Americans the kind of "news reporting" that they wanted. In short, the conclusions which Stossel inevitably landed on with each supposed investigation affirmed America's superiority to the rest of the world.
How very convenient.
Now, this blog entry is not about John Stossel. Frankly, the more I learned about the guy, the less I wanted to know about him, if you know what I mean. From what I could tell, he is the type of "journalist" who believes certain things, and then finds stories with a certain angle basically to back up his own opinions. So I will not waste any more time on Stossel, specifically.
The larger point here is that for entirely too long, Americans have gone on believing only what they wanted to believe. And through "journalists" like Stossel and many, many others - many can be found on FOX News, for example - many Americans got the confirmation of this good news, time and time and time again. Add to that politicians who also continually feed the people what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear, and you get this impression that Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that their country is and ought to be forever number one.
Seriously, I know some people, personally, who feel that only the United States has freedoms like a free press and free speech and freedom of religion. Not surprisingly, most of them have never been outside of the country. Also, I know some Americans who automatically assumed that the American dollar would forever be the standard economic currency for the world. That also seems to be changing, at least if you are paying attention.
Here's the problem: the United States really no longer even remotely resembles the "shining city on a hill" as President Reagan used to suggest. Many Americans continue to chant "USA # 1" and fly their flags from the back of pickup trucks. Many still claim that this is "God's country" or the "greatest country in the world." Indeed, people who engage in these kinds of things, and recite these meaningless lines, may reinforce and entrench these prejudices here within American borders.
The facts, however, seem to suggest that the United States has been slipping considerably in a number of crucial categories, and has been slipping for quite some time. There was indeed a time when the United States enjoyed the highest standard of living in the world, when it had the top-ranked education system in the world, when the rest of the world largely looked up to Americans with envy. We had helped to liberate many nations during World War II, and seemed to have played almost a heroic role. We had the most powerful military in the world, the most powerful economy in the world, and were the most influential nation in the world politically. Plus, culturally, we also were dominant. Everyone the world over listened to American music and watched American television and movies. American food and clothing were exported to other countries. At that point in time, perhaps, the case could be made that something about the United States truly was exceptional.
All of that, however, feels like a long, long time ago.
Currently, the United States has slipped in so many categories which most Americans would not want it to slip in, that it has become frankly embarrassing. That education system which ranked atop the world back in the "golden age" of the fifties and early sixties? Now we rank close to the bottom among industrialized nations. Healthcare? We have far and away the most expensive healthcare system in the world, to the point that most people from other industrialized nations point to the United States as the example to avoid. We get less bang for the buck than any other industrialized nation in the world in healthcare, and it's not even close. The number of people who go bankrupt because they cannot afford healthcare in other industrialized nations almost always numbers zero. Here in the United States? That number is in the tens of thousands every year.
Those are not the only categories where we are declining, either. Our life expectancy has been steadily declining, which makes us unique in that regard among industrialized nations. The American Dream itself was built on the idea of upward social mobility. But regardless of how desperately Americans still want to believe in the American Dream, we now rank closer to the bottom than the top among industrialized nations when it comes to upward social mobility. Not surprisingly, and not unrelated to all of these things, we rank dead last in income equality. There is greater social and economic inequality here than anywhere else in the industrialized world. We are one of only three countries in the entire world - not just the industrialized world, but the whole world - which does not guarantee women paid maternity leave.
These are embarrassing, compromising statistics. But we would do best to face these things and tackle them head on. Which is why the fact that we are not doing so almost assures that our decline will continue. Will, in fact, likely be hastened.
Not surprisingly, we see that our democracy now seems more fragile than ever before. Freedom of the press and free speech appear to be consistently under attack. Science is increasingly under direct attack in this country, with some people - particularly religious fundamentalists and the prominent politicians who serve their interests - regularly challenging things like evolution and climate change. Speaking of which, our nation's record on action to combat climate change also is rather embarrassing, as we rank 57th in the world.
What's worse: where we do still rank number one in the world are categories which, generally speaking, you do not want to rank number one in the world in. We spend far more on weapons and war than any other country. We are far and away number one in the number of people behind bars, here in the "land of the free." We have more school shootings and mass shootings than any other country in the world, by far. We "lead" the industrialized world in maternity deaths. We also "lead" the world in drug deaths. Our child poverty rates are highest among industrialized nations.
So yeah, you can see a marked decline in the nation's fortunes.
And you know what? I would actually blame people like John Stossel, who wanted to allow Americans to believe what they wanted to believe, that the United States truly is "the greatest," that it is still number one. Probably he wanted to believe it himself.
The problem, as I see it, is that once you get comfortable with the idea of being the best, you seem to lose interest in any criticisms, or even examining aspects of the country which might need to be improved. In fact, you might label anyone who points these out as "enemies" who "hate America." So then the country's problems never get resolved, but the polarizing rhetoric grows worse and worse, until it becomes yet another in the already long but growing list of ills that ailing the country.
It never seems to get better here. It only gets worse and worse.
Of course, when you have collectively elected someone like Donald Trump - twice, now - to fix your country's problems, of course nothing's going to get better. Everything is going to get worse. And Trump's rhetoric might convince his most loyal supporters otherwise, but the reality is increasingly glaringly obvious for all other Americans. Yes, we are a nation in decline.
Worse, we seem to be actively contributing to that decline with our own actions. Frankly, it appears that we cannot help ourselves, collectively. Far too many of us are still patting ourselves in the back on being "the greatest" and "number one" that we never get our heads out of our asses long enough to see just how far and how seriously this decline has gotten.
Personally, I have kind of given up on any notion that Americans, collectively, will pull themselves out of this mess with reason and logic, before things get too bad. For years now, admittedly, I have felt - and still very much feel - that for things to really improve here for real, things are going to have to get much, much worse. Possibly we need to go through another Great Depression or something like it before we stop electing leaders based on entertainment value, and get serious about fixing all of the things that have gone wrong in the country.
Until then?
Well, I hate to say it, but it feels like we will continue to get a steady diet of depressing headlines and statistics which will reveal, more and more, just how serious this decline has become. It already has gotten bad enough that most of us cannot help but see it for what it is. But until we get serious with putting pressure on our leaders to fix it, nothing will change.
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Steve Dennison 27 April at 09:25 · Thedford · — at Northville Estates.
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