Recipe for a Well-Balanced Country
High levels of humanity, characterized by empathy, generosity, neighborliness, cooperation and collective solutions to the problems of their society, are essential to all well-balanced countries. These all-encompassing solutions in first-world countries include controls on political corruption, universal health care, restrictions on predatory capitalism, reasonable judicial procedures, humane prisons, etc. As a result, their indexes of violence are lower than those of the United States and they have fewer serious problems in their societies than the Americans. This wellbeing in countries that look after their citizens isn’t due to coincidence. It’s thanks to longstanding, constant and well-thought-out execution of programs for the common good of all their citizens. That is to say: healthy politics.
Are there remedies for this inhumanity plague in the United States? There may be but, given the well-dug-in opposition there to humane collective solutions, they would be neither quick nor easy to implement. Embedded inhumanity has become a jealously-preserved American tradition.
What about the American Dream?
The American Dream, rags to riches through personal effort, is a lie. In reality, gaining fabulous wealth is more of a game of chance than a meritocracy. You’re more likely to win a lottery than to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Elizabeth Warren has an interesting take on “self-made men.” She withholds that, without the resources the society provides them–free roads, education, police and fire departments, national defense, etc.–they never could have “made themselves.”
The failure of most American young people to achieve that essentially-unachievable
American Dream is a source of frustration and bitterness–and the cause of no little anti-social behavior. The great irony in most of these cases is that a significant part of what these young people are striving for doesn’t go beyond facile low-level, consumer-society objectives. If they’re rich they devote themselves to acquiring pointless bling. If they’re poor they risk their lives trafficking dope or assaulting liquor stores in order to be able to buy happiness, when happiness can’t be bought. Why don’t most American young people strive for something more worthwhile, both for themselves and their society? That’s not easy in a country that lacks both noble ideologies and valid role models for its youth. The reigning objective there is to get rich ASAP and their role models are limited largely to rappers, hedge fund managers and people who are famous for being famous.
Religion and Other Factors in Solving the Problem
The failure of popular religious solutions is also disturbing. The consensus after the Parkland shootings is that “They’re in our hearts and prayers…” is more cynicism than solution. The question is further complicated by racism, hypocrisy at high levels and inequality on all fronts. Add to all this the insecurity brought about by poverty, non-functional families and the lack of a universal health-care program. This pressure cooker of unfairness gives rise to a vast menu of ills in American society, a list that goes far beyond school killings. Mass gun killings account for just a tiny percentage of U.S. gun deaths. Many more people are lost to gun suicides or gang killings. According to British Guardian reporter Gary Younge, toddlers with guns kill more people in the United States than terrorists. Until the root causes are dealt with there will be no hope for combatting these and other manifestations of brutality and insanity in the country. Americans will always be treating the symptoms, not the illness. The gun deaths, like fetid groundwater, will always find their way to the top.
The current gun-control proposals are pathetically inadequate. Even the most stringent regulations proposed today are not enough. Reducing the size of assault rifle magazines from 30 or 40 rounds to six or eight is not serious. Six dead schoolchildren instead of 26 is not a solution. It’s a parody. Even the elimination of assault rifles, which the Parkland students are advocating, falls short of the mark. Are we to overlook the number of school kids that can be killed by an assassin armed with a pair of semi-automatic pistols with standard 17-round magazines? Just for the record, President Barack Obama included a ban on gun magazines with capacities of more than 10 rounds in a list of gun-control laws he asked Congress to enact in January 2013, but the Republican Congress passed on his proposal.
What’s the Latest?
In closing we must thank CNN for this priceless vignette of presidential empathy/opportunism:
President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign used a photo of a survivor of the Parkland, Florida, shooting in an email Saturday that asks its recipients to donate money to the campaign. The email contains a photo of 17-year-old Madeleine Wilford in a hospital bed surrounded by her family, Trump and the first lady. The President visited Wilford on February 16, two days after the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which left 17 dead. Near the end of the message, there’s a link to the campaign’s donations page.
Note: The donations are for Trump’s election campaign, not the anti-gun campaign.
The latest, from Slate.com: How the student activists of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High demonstrate the power of a comprehensive education.
Read more rantings in my ebook, The Turncoat Chronicles.
Thanks for commenting and sharing
Trump and All the Rest 