The greatest country

The Newsroom (TV Series)

Will McAvoy: And yeah, you... sorority girl. Just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is: There is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world. We're seventh in literacy, twenty-seventh in math, twenty-second in science, forty-ninth in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies. None of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt a member of the WORST-period-GENERATION-period-EVER-period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don't know what the (expletive) you're talking about! Yosemite?

It can indeed.  Is 
objectivity the

first step?

Will McAvoy: [pause] We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons, we passed laws, struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and we cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn't belittle it; it didn't make us feel inferior. We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, and we didn't scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.

Will McAvoy: [to moderator] Enough?

Controversial, of course.  Provocative as well, and the statistics are contestable but reasonably accurate.  Are his comments on who we used to be equally supportable?

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs study on America's reputation internationally support the above rather pointedly.   

See the Stimson Center summary on the issue here.

From the Pew Research Center's report:

• Overwhelming numbers around the world continue to see the U.S as having a big — often bad — influence on their own countries.
• The U.S. was not seen as considering the interests of other countries in the conduct of its foreign policy, expectations about Obama notwithstanding.
• Majorities or pluralities in 20 of 24 publics believe that the U.S economy is hurting their own economies.

We've changed.  Have we lost a part of our character as a nation?

The path ahead will always include change.  Culture changes, ideologies change, politics change.  Issues of national morality will not be invoked either in discussion or policy making unless we make it happen.  True?

It is just a TV show, after all.

Helping others makes you live longer

Community center construction project

in Sao Tome & Principe funded by 

friends overseas.

In a fascinating study, researchers discovered that a helping lifestyle is a lifesaver ... for the helper. The one who is helped is blessed too, of course. Feeding the hungry, healing the sick, coming alongside as a friend and working through hard times, all make a difference.  But doing such things seems to add years to your life!  But we knew that all along.  "It is more blessed to give than to receive." ~Acts 20:35.

The study's relevant categories include personal involvement in helping extended family, friends, neighbors, ... giving our strength and skills and resources.

Interestingly, a genuine personal investment in such things is more satisfying (enjoyable) than just attending to your own pleasures and comfort.

A youth volunteer association; they help families

in need!  I met 3 of them carrying water jugs and 

gave them a ride. We did introductions, swapped 

stories; they'll spend a few weeks restoring and 

planting gardens for the neighborhood.

The critical element seems to be actually caring; the functional path appears to be that helping produces a stress-relief, a buffer against the strain of life.  Who knew?

“When we adjusted for age, baseline health and functioning and key psychosocial variables,” Poulin says, “the Cox proportional hazard models (the most widely used method of survival analysis) for mortality revealed a significant interaction between helping behavior, stressful events, morbidity and mortality.

“Our conclusion,” he says, “is that helping others reduced mortality specifically by buffering the association between stress and mortality.

“These findings go beyond past analyses to indicate that the health benefits of helping behavior derive specifically from stress-buffering processes,” Poulin says, “and provide important guidance for understanding why helping behavior specifically may promote health and, potentially, for how social processes in general may influence health.”  See the source article at the University of Buffalo.

Weekend cleanup project, community folks pitch in

together.  West Africa

Plenty of opportunities to add years to our lives and enjoy the process.

POLARIZATION

"I think I played a role, unfortunately, in helping tear the country apart." ~Glenn Beck. 

America is effectively divided, politically speaking.

The middle ground discussions and collaborations we remember are gone from Congress and the upper-level political arena in general.  To a some degree, the media and the two major political parties are responsible.

The average American until recently was a moderate with both liberal and conservative leanings depending on the issue.  The media and political parties cannot be so.  They deliberately share no discernible common goals, leaving them with just their marketable opposing positions and the mandate to win.  Now the public is following their lead.

Glenn Beck, one of the Fox News conservative spokesmen, has abdicated and apologized for his part. 

In an interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly, Beck reflected on his part, saying there were things he wished he could do over.

"I remember it as an awful lot of fun and that I made an awful lot of mistakes, and I wish I could go back and be more uniting in my language," Beck told Kelly. "I think I played a role, unfortunately, in helping tear the country apart."

"I didn't realize how really fragile the people were," he continued. "I thought we were kind of more in it together."

“I believe that we are in — I think we're a country in civil war.  I just think we're in a cold civil war. Shooting hasn't started, but somebody stupid is going to do something stupid and it will escalate unless we talk to each other.”

–Glenn Beck

Beck said instead of highlighting all the problems in the country he should have looked at more of the "uniting principles."

"Now I look back and I realize if we could have talked about the uniting principles a little bit more instead of the problems," he said. "I think I would look back at it more fondly. But that's only my role." True; he was not the only voice, and Fox News was not the only channel following the same trend.

The progressive polarization was forecast for us in 1969 when internet pioneer Paul Baran saw the emerging stampede of specialized media channels. Instead of 2 TV channels, everyone would have hundreds of sources from which to choose.

"Baran saw the media’s role as a unifying force that contributed to national cohesion; a shared identity and sense of purpose. With more specialized channels at their disposal (political or otherwise) then Americans would have very little overlap in the messages they received. This, Baran believed, would lead to political instability and increased “confrontation” ..."   ~Smithsonian History

The aggregation and specialization of mass media in the United States over the past half a century has undoubtedly led to the stark “differing models of reality” that Baran describes.  Differing models of reality - that's a polite reference to narrow-minded and uninformed. The true believers of any ideology will adhere to the party line and draw strength from their particular team’s media outlets.

Partisan polarization now cripples the nation's government and leaves no place for people of conscience whose best option is the lesser of the great evils. It drives wedges in families, communities, and between friends. It ruins friendly conversations and spoils good intentions.

Perhaps we should spend more time in gracious conversation with folks who disagree with us.  They may know some things we don't.

Thanks and a hat-tip to Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the White House who obligingly enabled and engaged the moneyed media corporations.  News is now a product for profit rather than a service.

The Line

“Don’t think just about where the lines are drawn, think about who draws the lines.”

If I take a hundred dollar bill from the cash register, I will go to jail.  If Goldman Sachs and the rest of Wall Street take billions out of the savings of ordinary people (with purchased government help) then crash the economy, costing thousands of jobs, not one of them will ever be prosecuted. The lines are drawn differently for big money.

The average bonus on Wall Street this
year? $160,000!  That's more than three times
the average household income, just for their bonus.

Our local police have crossed that line. They are soldiers who treat us like terrorists. If Occupy speaks against Wall Street, they will be tear gassed and beaten and handcuffed and caged into “free speech zones” designed to make us forget that the whole country was supposed to be a free speech zone. But now we have free speech only when and where they say you can have it.  Meanwhile, Wall Street can say and do pretty much anything they want, to you or anyone else, and get away with it.

Things have changed.  The way forward is not an easy one for us as a nation or as individuals.  The quest for wealth has replaced the quest for territory, and the weapons are economic.  True?

See The GAP - Part I, Part VI

Thanks and a hat-tip to Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the White House
who obligingly set the stage Wall Street needed.

Things my Father told me

A loving father hopes to inform his child's thinking, not replace it.

Today's rule about fingers on the stove eventually needs to carry the 'why' and 'what else' for future use in similar circumstances.  We want our kids to understand and make good decisions of their own.

My Father offered good insight on many issues; he explained them well and demonstrated them all.

You can have everything you want, or you can enjoy what you have, but not both.

• The things we have are a means but not an end in themselves.  
• This one took awhile.

Helping someone else is more satisfying than helping yourself, especially if it costs you a lot.

• It makes no sense at all, but he's right.
• Nobody believes this one until a ways down the road.

If you care about others, you won't be happy all the time; you'll spend time sharing their load. 

• There's a high price for caring.
• It can take all the years you've got.

Things my Father
told me; enough to
fill a book!

The fact that my Father loved me didn't preclude hardship.  He knew I'd have my share, and he walked through it with me.  I learned a lot along the way.  A lot.


I've cringed when a religiously styled speaker, presuming to speak on behalf of my Father, would tell us things using the magic phrase,  'the Word of God'.  Lots of King James-ish phrasing and stylistic emphasis, but not much useful information.  The religious power-speak seems shaped to narrowly enforce rather than inform, and it doesn't help.

Just things you want your kids to know ...

Some distance down the road, I realised that most things my Father told me were to equip me for a purposeful, meaningful life.  He wanted me to know and understand.  It turns out, he's more a practical realist than I expected, and not particularly religious.

The Dilemma

Republican and Democratic parties are not merely uncomfortable affiliations for people of faith; they are prisons that divide us and prevent our working together for good.

Right vs. Left:  the Right...

The Republican Party portrays itself as the political home for people of faith.  It is also, ostensibly, our pro-life party.  Given the primacy of that issue for many Christians, it has attracted large numbers of evangelicals and conservative Catholic voters.

The Republican Party, however, fails to acknowledge or address social and economic issues within our culture. They aggressively support corporate and wealth interests while describing themselves as conservative.  Instead, as John Gehring puts it, the GOP has embraced an extreme form of "economic libertarianism and [the] tireless defense of struggling millionaires."

That economic view, increasingly dominant in Republican thinking over recent years, poses problems for Christians given our faith's concern for the poor and emphasis on community and justice.  

George Monboit (no friend of religion's role in politics) describes the GOP's position as "a pitiless, one-sided, mechanical view of the world, which elevates the rights of property over everything else, meaning that those who possess the most property end up with great power over others. Dressed up as freedom, it is a formula for oppression and bondage. It does nothing to address inequality, hardship or social exclusion. A transparently self-serving vision, it seeks to justify the greedy and selfish behaviour of those with wealth and power."

~Michael Stafford re Archbishop Charles Chaput, Render Unto Caeser

Is he right?

Right vs. Left:  the Left...

The Democratic Party is the bastion of this left-liberal cultural consensus. Pro-abortion, heavily invested in divisive identity politics, committed to a libertine approach to many moral and social issues under the guise of individual freedom.  

Of particular concern, it is prey to centralizing tendencies, preferring federal authority over allowing states and communities to manage their affairs.  In some ways, it is even overtly hostile to religion itself - this is not an attractive destination.

British theologian and political philosopher Phillip Blond notes that, "the current political consensus" in the United States is "left-liberal in culture and right-liberal in economics. And this is precisely the wrong place to be."   

Is his analysis accurate?

Perhaps this 'consensus' explains why thoughtful believers find themselves torn by political debate, uncomfortable with what's missing, and hard pressed to find an honest way forward. 

In an objective analysis, the Christian vision of social and economic order is perhaps near the opposite of this current consensus.  

 An interesting dilemma, one for which no answer less than a lifetime in length will resolve.