Depressed Superpower
From Der Spiegel an article discussing the fairly sour mood of the American electorate headed into the next election cycle. To me it really is amazing to think that a nation that has survived its Revolution, bled itself nearly dry eliminating the scourge of slavery, saved Europe from the scourge of both fascism and communism, and has managed to have the most dynamic economy in the history of the world (and also the largest amount of wealth creation) is wallowing in near self pity.
I talk a lot about the challenges we face and the starkness of some of our choices. I believe these to be quite real, however, I also hope that once these challenges are presented so matter of factly, people will begin to address them. It is a rugged spirit of individualism, entrepreneurship, and faith in a better tomorrow that has moved America always forward. These times are legitimately frightening. We may not face extinction as we did in the Cold War, but we do face the real chance a major city could be rendered uninhabitable for a generation by a terrorist attack. We do face a change in the global balance of power from the "west" to the "east." However, we have survived existential crises before. I suspect we are capable again. We need to get with the program, however, because past success is not, nor ever has been, a guarantor of future success.
Our past triumphs are in the past and can serve as lessons of what we can do, but we cannot assume that we can coast along the fumes of those successes. I have a real concern that we are losing our optimism and I worry that if that happens (as I mentioned in an above post on the world without the west) we could lose our souls and take a lot of the rest of the world with us. That is not the legacy any of us should wish to bequeth to our children or our children's children.
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