Why is America the greatest country in the world?
It is not countries. It is ideals. And something has crept into culture that redefines political entities. America is a continent, a super country make up of smaller entities ruled in their own right. It’s political system is so focused on itself, its steel backbone of fundamentals that strengthen resolve but also provide for criminal elements and the enslavement of others which is why America is so good at screwing itself and the rest of humanity.
It is an easily hijacked one way or the other political system that favours elitism over the plight of the poor. It reduces the role of Government to that of lawmakers who try to keep up with a changing world, finding that things like making health care possible for all is an act of humanity that transcends political views. Providing for pensions and education. Some things a Government simply has to support or there is no progress to greatness. Government has a purpose.
A leader has another. He or she is there to guide and set the people with a philosophy and if America now questions itself accurately and honestly, it may well discover that it is precisely that thing. The affecting of the action of the individual that America cares about, its cultural ideal no longer resonates with the febrile narcissism of a sports hero but now the hedonism of a self righteous coddled experience. Indulgence should not be the strong point, however it is not the indulgence that harms.
What seems most harmful is the impoverishing and immobility of the base of the pyramid. Its capitalism demands that half the country is less successful, that many are living more pointless lives and stuck in a relentless poverty that restricts many to provide for an elite who can indulge themselves like rock star chic out partying all night and being covered in the newspaper. A purile necessity perhaps, but one that is cast in the iron creuset of inescapable cultural cooking. Those locked into inescapable necessity must have its little chuckles at the plight of the very rich.
Should America consider a course of fairness for all tempered by a vital entrepreneurial spirit instead of one driven by consumption? A baseline of at least being alive and educated, to participate, to survive with bubbles of economic success
Economic destiny has become all consuming. It is what we do as a world, as a society and as a local community that matter. The actions of individual matter too. We all do. That is the very point.