Washington Trip 2012

The American Dream...All You Can Eat?

May God continue to bless the United States of America? Why? If the citizens of the US have access to a vast quantity of the Earth’s resources, is it because they have been blessed by a benevolent being? Why have they been singled out for this divine luxury? Furthermore, why would one even worship a God that sees fit to abandon so many of its creations in favour of a select few?

The obvious assumption has to be that the notion of God is, as is so often the case, being used as a diversion to hide the reality which the poor majority of the unblessed world already realises.  While the ingenuity of the US must be recognised, it is also true that it has been the fortunate beneficiary of historical circumstance, its military prowess and its willingness to use that power when seen fit. While those on the left see US military interventions purely as a means for establishing an ever greater hold on the world and its resources, those on the right believe that the US is carrying out its destiny as a shining beacon on top of the hill.

The use of the American war machine and its motives are not, however, the debate I wish to have here. The question I wish to consider is whether the American dream, if even desirable, is practical. By this I mean that the goal of those who wish to pursue this dream is fundamentally to gain access to all the resources one could possibly desire. While this heavenly scenario cannot help but appeal to one’s selfish indulgences, simple economics and the reality of the geo-political realm in which the rules are governed by scarcity and one’s ability to control the world’s resources, logic would suggest that the pursuit of ever greater material wealth can only lead to further conflict, a greater gap between the haves and the have-nots, and the continuing erosion of society, as the pursuit of personal gain can only create a situation in which our neighbours are our competitors and therefore are not to be trusted.

This basic law of the jungle has served humanity as it has had to up to this point in history. But the consequences of this way of thinking are becoming ever clearer, especially to those who are not at the top of the food chain. Why is it that even in the richest nation on Earth, so many are without access to social programmes that are taken for granted in Europe? Why is the notion of sharing the wealth so abhorrent to so many in what is presumably, as a largely Christian country, well versed in the ideals of charity and compassion?

It is because there is an even greater virtue in the US: freedom. As has been made so clear in recent years it is often hard to argue against a voice which expresses its sole concern for the endurance of one’s freedom. But what does freedom actually mean to most Americans? Does it simply mean the pursuit of happiness? If so, it may be important to question why it is that so many believe that greater material possessions would necessarily equate to greater happiness in a world where so many die daily from preventable diseases and starvation.

Even if the American dream was achievable in some imaginary Utopia, where resources were not finite and advancements in technology could perform all the tasks that people would generally not do if it were unnecessary, why would one even want to live in a world in which there was no struggle, and therefore no sense of achievement in anything that one might successfully pursue? What type of person would most of us be if all of our desires were met all day, every day? Paris Hilton comes to mind. Is this really what we should aspire to?

The charge put forward in mainstream politics, that the left is too idealistic and Utopian in its ideology, is a complete reversal of the facts.  The imaginary Utopia described above in which we each have access to everything we could desire is the lie that we have been encouraged to swallow since birth. If only you work hard enough, then there is no limit to what you can potentially achieve and in turn possess in the way of access to resources. But the fact is that the vast majority of people will die in the same social class they were born in to. Stories of rags to riches are actually fairly limited, but given great attention by those who propagate that free-market economics will create a trickledown effect which all people will be the eventual beneficiaries of. More to the point, however, is the reality that resources are finite. With this one simple reality in mind, only an economic system, in which there are limits to one’s own personal wealth, can there ever be a hope of creating a world in which all have access to what should be necessities for a technologically advanced society. While health care may not be a fundamental human right, surely our compassion demands that we strive to ensure that all have access to what we would hope would be available to our loved ones.

Perhaps the truth is that it simply is not an issue if some undernourished waif of a baby somewhere is taking its final breaths due to a lack of food. What is important is that the team I support won last night, possibly due to the fact that enough people were praying so hard for that last-minute goal. Is this really where our passions should be?

Surely what needs to be questioned is this whole sense of belonging and defining oneself through religious affiliations, ethnicity, national identity and/or political ideology, and the way it leads one’s allegiances to be formed.  Why is my compassion restricted to, or at least limited to, the other 60 million or so people who happened to have been born on the same island as myself? Granted these people may share loosely similar character traits to me, but do I genuinely believe that if my back is against the wall that I can rely on them to come to my rescue? To some extent I do feel this to be true. So the question is, if I feel a sense of community towards one extremely large group of strangers, the vast majority of whom I shall never meet, why can this not extend beyond this manmade construct known as the nation state?

A further point I wish to raise is the way in which it seems as though the word freedom has come to mean one’s ability to consume. Freedom could be replaced by the word greed in political speeches given by those in the US. This may prove an interesting exercise next time you have the misfortune to hear the likes of Michele Bachmann pontificate on the importance of homeland security. In this sense I wonder if Bush was correct to claim that the ‘evil doers’ hate us because of our ‘freedom’? In a world where so few have so much, whilst others struggle daily, is it any wonder that such great resentment can be stirred up that some feel compelled to carry out such violent acts in the light of such injustice?

Are we in the West possibly even legitimate targets? In the Middle East, for example, Western-made bombs have been falling for the best part of a century, while people in the West have stood by idly as their democratically elected representatives have callously carried out acts of aggression and domination. If our political leaders are truly our representatives, then it can be argued that we are indeed legitimate targets for those whom the West has wronged. If, however, as I believe, our leaders play on our worst instincts of fear and selfishness in order to justify their policies of subjugation of a people who happen to possess a valuable curse on which we have come to depend upon, then perhaps it is time to demand a new kind of leadership which will not hide behind national security as an excuse to carry out all manner of crimes in ‘our’ interest.

But with our current economic system, in which so few control so many of the world’s resources, it is difficult to see where exactly these leaders might come from given the power of corporations to fund and win elections. It is regrettable that the US has borne the brunt of the criticism in this paper thus far. Many of the criticisms that have been directed at it can just as easily be made of many other nations. However, I have faith that there is a growing movement in the US, as in the rest of the world, which wishes to see a new ‘new world order’.  As it will later be argued, the US should take what chances it has to change this world for the better while it still has the ability to do so and, likewise, some amount of US leadership will be necessary in reshaping the world. The shining city upon the hill can reclaim its reputation once more.