America's Downward Spiral: A Call for Action

By Jerome G. Manis

Americas Downward Spiral: A Call for Action offers a well-documented explanation and solutions for many contemporary troubles. Some have similar causes and interconnections. The recent collapse of a Minneapolis bridge has links to shortages of American engineers, scientists and teachers. Both are interconnected with serious unfairness in our system of justice.

The book examines Americas failure to adapt to a rapidly changing world. Examples are the many disasters that began the twenty-first century and their causes. Among them were the year 2000 stock market crash, the 9/11 planes that destroyed the World Trade Center killing thousands of Americans, the endless Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and many others.

The roots of those disasters are traceable to long-outdated institutions and practices. Among them is our federal system that has had scant responsibility for our infrastructure such as that Minnesota bridge. Its other outcomes include forty million people without any health insurance. It also is why our schools keep American children within the lowest test score rankings and highest dropout rates in the modern world.

Other serious troubles include our military-industrial complex, about which President Eisenhower warned us, but is far more powerful today than it was over fifty years ago. Another is the failing of our media to inform us of these and other national shortcomings. Nor are we informed about the ongoing massive frauds that are not treated as crimes.

In order to overcome our downward spiral, we must choose political leaders who understand what is needed. They must be knowledgeable and especially to be ready to create new polices for avoiding war, protecting the environment, unifying our national system, and promoting a fairer system of justice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 16, 2008
• ISBN: 9781465330444

Book preview

1     

THE OSSIFICATION OF THE UNITED STATES

In medical diagnosis, ossification refers to the process of hardening of soft tissue into bony structure. Used elsewhere, it refers to the change into a rigid, conventional, sterile, or unimaginative condition (Webster’s Dictionary). That term fits quite well in describing the ongoing transformation of the United States of America. Just as change can slip into chaos, so stability can become ossification.

It has been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same old thing over and over again while expecting a different result. For example, America has the most costly health care system in the world. Yet it has among the worst illness rates and shortest life expectancy in the modern world. Insanity?

Such words, and those to follow, can only begin to describe and explain the harm of a nation’s failure to adapt to a changing world. Still we can learn from others. The United States has not been alone in its ossification. Only recently have nations in Europe emerged from centuries of warfare. Devastation of two world wars led them to form the European Union.

Begun in 1957 as the six-member Treaty on European Union, it continues to expand its unification. Although it had failed to adopt a constitution in 2005, its fifteen members agreed on a tentative new treaty in June 2007. They are expected to sign a final treaty draft in October 2007 at Lisbon. Most importantly, war appears to be an unlikely prospect for them.

In A Country Made by War, Geoffrey Perret described America’s rise to power. Written before our Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars, he describes war as an integral feature of the nation. It is a factor as important as geography, immigration, the growth of business, the separation of powers, the inventiveness of our people, or anything else that contributes strongly to its unique identity among the nations of the earth.

Little known is that between 1800 and 1934, U.S. Marines staged 180 landings abroad. The army and navy added a few small-scale engagements of their own. Those words are from the preface of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power by Max Boot.

Today, we are well prepared for wars. In 2005, our defense spending was nearly $500 billion, just under half of the entire global total (the Economist 5/5/07). It was five times as much as was spent by China and nearly ten times as much as was spent by Russia, France, or Great Britain. We have had the will for war, we have the means for war, and we can expect more wars.

For Americans to overcome their nation’s ossification, it will require understanding of what needs to be remedied and what needs to be conserved. That will require self-understanding and the understanding of others. For that, we can learn much from Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Published in 1759, that book is a forerunner of modern social sciences. Largely ignored by economists, it describes the nature of human understanding of each other. This quality is based on empathy, the basis of all human groups from families to nations. Within large populations, empathy is very important and often difficult to achieve and perceive.

The United States began as a small rural society before it became a large, urban, and industrialized nation. As a world power and, often leader, it has greatly influenced the modern world. For all of its recent changes, America now is stagnating. Many of the serious disasters of the recent past can be understood as the outcome of ossification—becoming rigid, conventional, sterile, and unimaginative.

Linked to those characteristics is a widespread ignorance of our ignorance. They were used by the editor of Daughter of Persia by Sattareh Farman Farmaian. Her book described the American policies that overthrew Iran’s elected leader, installed Iran’s corrupt monarchs, exploited its oil, destroyed its well-being, and aroused its people against us. Yet few Americans are aware of those disastrous actions—and of many other ongoing and even worsening conditions caused by our ossification and by the downward spiral of our media.

That book is in agreement with much of what I had learned in my training and research as a sociologist. In my 1984 book Serious Social Problems (Allyn & Bacon), I described conditions that have gotten ever more worrisome rather than better. The evidence of war’s problems in that earlier book’s chapter 2 on that topic has turned worse instead of improving. Since then, the United States has engaged in three more wars.

Chapters 4 and 5 in that book on the environment and concentration of power similarly show deterioration. Global warming is far more damaging today when compared with only decades ago. Both wealth and power are more centralized than ever before. Plutocracy seems to be replacing democracy.

Moreover, there are new problems that have emerged. Especially notable is the decreasing quality of the national media—newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. Information is decreasing and being replaced by entertainment and reports of shocking events and bad news. In Tentacles of Rage: The Republican propaganda mill, a brief history (Harper’s Magazine 9/04), its editor Lewis Lapham described the massive buyout of the media by America’s wealthy conservatives during the past four decades.

Wealth has great influence in American politics. Presidential and congressional candidates require huge contributions, much from wealthy individuals and enterprises. Campaigns depend on hundreds of millions of dollars often raised by lobbyists. Elected officials are expected to abide by power-broker demands.

When looking backward from early 2007, however, it may seem that the new century began with much bad luck for the United States. After closing at an all-time high of 11,722.98 on January 14, 2000, the Dow Jones Industrial Average began falling to a low of 7.286.27 on October 9, 2002. During that period, scandals erupted about Enron, WorldCom, and other massive corporative managerial and accounting corruption. Billions of dollars were lost by investors, employees, and the public.

Less publicized but also very bad financial news was the rapid decline from a governmental surplus of about 236 billion dollars in 2000 (Statistical Abstract of the U.S. 2006). The surplus had become a 2006 national deficit of over 520 billion dollars. That was a 756 billion dollar loss for Americans in just over five years. At the current (if not greater) rate of increase, the loss will rise to about a trillion dollars around 2008.

Many of the harmful occurrences in the early years of the twenty-first century were the outcome of past economic, political, and social policies of the United States. The closing decades of the twentieth century had other serious trends. One of the most critical has been rapidly increasing inequality, a widening gap between the very rich and the rest of the population.

For the current generation, these facts are hardly signs of good fortune. Sadly, there is considerable evidence that they are outcomes of long-term inaction and error. They are signs of ossification, a downward spiral of the nation’s ability to deal with its problems. Many of the long-term conditions and institutions of the United States are ill suited for the contemporary world.

A source of many serious American troubles is our federal system of American government unable to face and cope with its challenges. The most long-standing feature of the United States is its somewhat unique federalist system created by the Constitution and its amendments. Among the most harmful federalist outcomes have been the deadly Civil War, decades of massive segregation, and inability to provide adequate health care and education for many millions of its citizens.

Closely linked to federalism are two separate systems of unequal justice—a strict one for individuals and a very lenient one for corporations and even more favored newer enterprises, such as private equity groups. Inequality was not designed or planned for, but it has become a rock-solid aspect of America.

These seemingly unchangeable structures are bolstered by practitioners of economics. Largely based on distortions and omissions from its founders, economics guides the country’s decision makers. Its benefits clearly go to the most affluent members while lesser beings are facing ever more difficult conditions. Among the gainers are the billionaire-dominated private equity enterprises, secretive and powerful.

The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few is more severe than during the long-ago period of the robber barons. Today, increasing inequality threatens the foundations of the American democracy.

The growing indebtedness of the American government and its citizens is affected greatly by the nation’s involvement in wars for much of the past century. Beginning with World Wars I and II, the enemies were Germany and Japan. Soon thereafter came the costly cold war with the Soviet Union. The domino theory was said to explain America’s role in the Korea and Vietnam wars. Now we are involved in Islamic conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and possibly Iran.

Are all these wars symptoms of a culture of war? Debates in the 2008 presidential campaign often focused on the willingness of candidates to retaliate against attacks or terrorism. There is little mention of peace or desire for a culture of peace.

Oil has been thought to have been a factor in the Vietnam conflict. Offshore oil was feared to be gained by Russia if not deterred by Americans. Even more clearly linked to oil has been the war with Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait, as well as the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the ensuing civil war there. While nuclear weapons was the government illusion for opposing Iraq, the enormous oil reserves of Iraq may have drawn us into war with that nation. And next in Iran.

The wars waged by the United States have been too frequent and too costly in lives and money. Their occurrence may be due to the emergence of a military-industrial complex emphasized in the farewell address of Pres. Dwight Eisenhower.

There is considerable evidence available to predict even more hazardous prospects for the United States. Unfortunately, the media do not discuss needed information. Only when disasters occur, such as the August 2007 Minnesota bridge tragedy, do they receive attention. Of seventy-five thousand infrastructure shortcomings, only the disasters are reported by the media.

These aspects of ossification may seem unlikely in the nation with the highest Gross National Product (GNP) in the world. Based on the value of all goods and service produced in a given year, it does not deal with poverty, inequality, disappearing pensions, inadequate medical care, deteriorating public schools, and inferior community services. Nor does it deal with alcoholism, drug abuse, or homelessness, adequacy of our highways, airports, tunnels, bridges, tunnels, or waste disposal.

For economists, the GNP dominates all other data, including that about business and jobs migrating to China and India. Currently, China‘s total of exports and imports make up 70 percent of its GNP while the United States’s is only about 25 percent.

That gap is due, in part, to American manufacturers’ greed and shortsightedness. As will be noted later, the planned obsolescence over a period of decades by carmakers allowed the Japanese industry to become dominant. More currently, the home printer industry is ignoring the needs of the American public and soon will be replaced by China.

These interconnected aspects of ossification have become a downward spiral for the United States. Such interconnectivity needs to be sought out, examined, and interpreted. From quantum physics to symbolic interactionism, much evidence is available about interconnectivity. It is evidenced in the recurrence of data in a variety of diverse contexts. Some actions, policies, or laws have a greater variety of connections than do others. Federalism, especially, has led to many powerful linkages. While interconnectivity is related to our downward spiral, hopefully it can be applied to its reversal.

Links between federalism and segregation already have been cited. So too have many decades of segregation been followed by contemporary racial conflicts and injustice. Each of these can be linked to other social damage and costs. Every society consists of numerous interacting components, which require careful attention and understanding.

America’s disregard and distortion of the contributions of Adam Smith and Friedrich List is another evidence of interconnectivity. Their contributions to the United States in the past are only exceeded by their disregard in the recent past and the present. Such linkages will be noted wherever appropriate.

The importance of societal linkages was described in 1899 by Thorsten Veblen: Institutions must change with changing circumstances, since they are of the nature of an habitual method of responding to the stimuli which those changing circumstances afford. The development of those institutions is the development of society. Today, what is needed most are new ones, especially for peace, the environment, a more unitary government, and a fairer justice system.

Especially important must be the limiting of presidential efforts to ignore congressional legislation. That is from Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy. Its author Charlie Savage has described the destructive outcome of such actions by Pres. Harry Truman and, more notably, by George W. Bush.

Likewise important is that abolishing the estate tax—as is now required by existing law in 2010—will convert our plutocracy into a hereditary ruling class. History shows that such systems do not have a stable or lengthy existence

2     

WAS IT BAD LUCK?

Soon after the stock market crash and corporate disasters of the very early twenty-first century were a number of other saddening events. On September 11, 2001, two hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, one into the Pentagon building in Washington DC, and a fourth into a field in Pennsylvania. Thousands of people were reported dead, and destruction estimated in billions of dollars.

Deciding that the 9/11 disaster was initiated from Afghanistan by Al-Qaeda forces led by Osama bin Laden, the United States began its attack against them in October. Aided by NATO members, the response aimed also to defeat the Taliban who were aiding Al-Qaeda. Yet the fighting goes on six years later.

In September 2002, Pres. George W. Bush addressed the United Nations General Assembly contending that Iraq had violated many UN resolutions, most notably on weapons of mass destruction. The UN did order new inspections of such weapons on November 19, 2002. However, the United States Congress had authorized the use of military force against Iraq on October 10, 2002, without UN agreement or support.

The invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003 with 98 percent of the troops supplied by the United States and England. Predictions were that American troops would be welcomed and that the war would be a cakewalk. Mission Accomplished was announced on an aircraft carrier by the president on May 2, 2003. None was correct, and civil war has been the outcome. Moreover, no evidence has since been found of weapons of mass destruction. American war dead in Iraq during 2007 rose to over three thousand.

In terms of both number of destructive events and insured losses, 2004 was one of the worst years on record for natural catastrophes in the United States. That report was made by insurer American Re’s Annual Review of North American Catastrophes 2004. Hurricanes were the largest in history. Only a year later was an enormous hurricane disaster.

On August 23, 2005, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded struck America’s Gulf Coast. Most serious were the catastrophic effects on the city of New Orleans. The storm killed over 1,800 people and cost over $80 billion in destruction. Government failures to limit or deal with the damage resulted in a congressional inquiry and the dismissal of its chief overseer.

The August 2, 2007, collapse of an interstate bridge near downtown Minneapolis is another example of federal and state neglect of the nation’s decaying infrastructure. Despite over a decade of warnings, this bridge, like more than seventy-five thousand other defective and