Americans Are Recognizing The U.S. is Falling Behind its Peers

I have been a long time critic of the concept of American exceptionalism - something that is far more myth than reality.  In fact, when America is measured by its peers across the rest of the developed, industrialized world, it comes up short.  If America is exceptional, it is a negative way.  America has some of the highest levels of childhood poverty, a crumbling infrastructure, insane levels of gun violence, millions who lack access to quality health care, a declining life expectancy, declining opportunities for upward social mobility - a number of European nations have better options for upward mobility - and a pathetic social safety net.  As a column in the Washington Post notes, one positive aspect of the Covid - 19 pandemic is that Americans are increasingly willing to open their eyes and face the fact that America is falling behind much of the rest of the developed world. The piece also suggest part of the problem: the obstruction of the Republican Party which remains focused on benefiting the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.  Possibilities for change and improvement exist, but they begin with the need for political change.  Here are excerpts:

Americans’ belief in American exceptionalism is declining — and that could be a good thing. National narcissism has rendered us complacent, even impotent, in the face of multiple crises.

On our biggest societal problems, the United States seems to have given up. Not because we can’t do better — but because many political leaders, particularly Republicans, apparently don’t think we need to. Their faith that America is already Living Its Best Life means there’s no need to learn from peer countries, or even gauge our relative performance. Consider:

Most of the rest of the developed world has managed to get covid-19′s spread under control. New cases across the European Union have plummeted; in New Zealand, the virus has been virtually wiped out. These and other places that have successfully mitigated the spread have enabled more citizens to safely return to their pre-covid-19 lifestyles, including even attending athletic events with packed crowds.

Meanwhile, here in the United States, the bodies pile up. New confirmed cases are again surging, especially across Sun Belt states. And political leaders seem to have no plan, nor even a plan to make a plan, for beating back the pandemic. Instead, they simply declare the virus vanquished, even as it claims more lives.

How did a country once known for our get-up-and-go come to shrug off mass death, particularly when other countries’ records suggest many U.S. covid-19 deaths were preventable?

Faith in American exceptionalism has curdled into resigned acceptance. We got so accustomed to resting on our laurels that we fell asleep.

This is of a piece with our supine responses to other national challenges that are unusually (sometimes uniquely) American. Much as they gave up on coronavirus containment, U.S. political leaders previously gave up on solving our epidemic of gun violence. And on our high numbers of police-perpetrated killings. Also our high rates of child poverty, uninsurance and carbon emissions.

On these and other metrics, the United States fares worse than most if not all other industrialized countries. Yet U.S. officials — from one party in particular — treat these crises as imaginary or unsolvable.

On the occasions political leaders do acknowledge that we’re not measuring up to peers, they excuse the failing as a trade-off necessary to pursue some other, supposedly superior American ideal. America can’t protect schoolchildren as other countries do, because we must prioritize unfettered access to firearms. America can’t save its grandparents from covid-19, because the Dow takes precedence. America can’t guarantee everyone health care, because [something something] liberty.

But there may be a ray of hope: Recent crises — involving health, the economy and police brutality — seem to have caused more Americans to question their country’s track record.

So suggests the COVID-19 Social Change Survey, a daily, nationally representative survey about the pandemic run by Northwestern University social scientists since mid-March. Some survey questions asked whether the United States is better, worse or about the same as other nations across about a dozen topics (economy, health care, criminal justice system, military, education, etc.).

On nearly every metric, the share of Americans rating the United States as “better” than other countries has declined since the pandemic began.

Other questions, from this survey and longer-term polling by Gallup, show declines in broader measures of national pride and confidence in U.S. institutions.

Normally, of course, reduced patriotism or institutional trust would not be positive developments. These declines can be constructive only if they spur the public — and elected officials — to create conditions that would inspire more patriotism and trust.

Maybe a more realistic assessment of our flaws — a crack in the national narcissism — will motivate change, at least if politicians ever catch up with their constituents.

America Is Failing Its Children and Youth

We hear incessant bloviating (lies is a better term) from the White House about "making America great again." yet Trump's trade war is inflicting serious harm on both American manufacturing and farmers are being decimated financially. Yes, many of these individuals/businesses back Trump and arguably deserve whatever befalls them.  What is less covered by the media and far too many politicians is the reality that statistics increasingly show that America, now more than ever, is failing its children and youth.  "Old Europe" - so much maligned by the far right and Republicans - now affords significantly more upward social/economic mobility to its citizens than America now offers to its citizens.  Infant mortality continues to be far higher in America - the United States ranks 37th in terms of child well-being - and the costs are astronomical both in terms of cost and lost lives and lost potential.  With Democrat presidential candidates debating as I write this blog, let's hope that some part of the debate focuses on America's youth.  A column in the New York Times looks at this pressing problem.  Here are excerpts:

[I]gnoring the welfare of our young is a day-to-day problem in America, where our children are falling behind those in other wealthy countries.

On Thursday, 10 Democratic presidential candidates will debate. It would be a natural opportunity to provoke a national conversation on the subject. But a question about child poverty hasn’t been asked at a presidential debate in 20 years, not since a Republican primary debate in 1999, according to the Children’s Defense Fund.

UNICEF says America ranks No. 37 among countries in well-being of children, and Save the Children puts the United States at No. 36. European countries dominate the top places.

American infants at last count were 76 percent more likely to die in their first year than children in other advanced countries, according to an article last year in the journal Health Affairs. We would save the lives of 20,000 American children each year if we could just achieve the same child mortality rates as the rest of the rich world.

Half a million American kids also suffer lead poisoning each year, and the youth suicide rate is at its highest level on record.

These problems have been magnified under President Trump, though American policy has shortchanged children as a whole for decades. The Census Bureau reported this week that the number of uninsured children increased by 425,000 last year.

Trump also gave the green light to a pesticide that I call Dow Chemical’s Nerve Gas Pesticide. Formally called chlorpyrifos, it is associated with brain damage among young children. Over the objections of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Trump administration claims it’s safe. So when will we see it sprayed in the White House to handle cockroaches?

James Heckman, a Nobel laureate in economics at the University of Chicago, calculates that investments in early childhood programs for at-risk kids have an astronomical return, because of improved productivity and reduced spending on police forces, courts, jails, special education and health care.

Likewise, one study found that each dollar invested in reducing lead poisoning among children pays for itself at least 17 times over.

Here’s a suggestion for the candidates: Embrace a landmark report this year from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that outlines how to reduce child poverty by half over 10 years. This can be done: Britain under Tony Blair halved child poverty in less than a decade.

The national academies calculate that a combination of job programs and child allowances could cut child poverty in half in the United States at a cost of about $100 billion a year. Yes, that’s a lot of money. But child poverty has an economic cost in crime, lost productivity and other expenses that is at least $800 billion a year, the academies report. The real question isn’t whether we can afford to act, but whether we can afford not to.

We don’t lack the tools to help, or the resources. The challenge is just that in our political system, children don’t count — and never get mentioned in presidential debates.

“Kids don’t vote,” notes Nadine Burke Harris, the surgeon general of California and an expert on the lifelong costs of childhood trauma. “They require us to speak for them.”

One in Three Virginia Children Live in or Near Poverty

Virginia is among the more wealth states in America.  Yet, a new study released by the University of Virginia indicates that 1 in 3 Virginia children either are living in poverty or close to poverty the level.  The response of the Virginia GOP?  Block Medicaid expansion and continue to oppose spending on programs that help the poor and less fortune even as Virginia Republican's cannot prostitute themselves enough to Christofascists by claiming that they revere Christian values.  The hypocrisy is nearly complete, but sadly that is what should expect from both today's Virginia GOP and Virginia Christofascists.  Their agenda is about as far away for the theme of the Gospel message as one can get.  Indeed, as I have noted many times before, they make the Pharisees of the Bible look like wonderful, generous people in comparison.  Here are some highlights from the report's findings:

Child poverty in Virginia is of concern, not only for its current effects, but also for its future consequences. Today’s poor children are likely to have lower educational attainment, lower projected lifetimes earnings, and generally poorer health outcomes as adults—negative outcomes affecting not only these individuals, but also the vitality of the Commonwealth. This report provides a fresh perspective on childhood poverty and family structure in the Commonwealth by using the Virginia Poverty Measure and focusing on three questions:

1. How prevalent is childhood poverty in Virginia?
2. How does family structure relate to childhood poverty?
3. Are current poverty amelioration strategies — particularly those promoting marriage — sufficient given what we know about childhood poverty?

Nearly one in three Virginia children lives in economic distress —  either in poverty or near poverty.   The immediate consequences of poverty, such as inadequate nutrition, persistent anxiety, and impairments to intellectual and emotional development, affect the daily lives of too many children.

Equally troubling, the legacy of poverty follows poor children into adulthood in the form of lower educational attainment, lower projected lifetime earnings,  and higher likelihood of certain health problems, among other negative outcomes.

Because children are dependent on those who raise them, strategies to address child poverty typically begin with families.  In particular, the marital status of parents has been identified and emphasized as significant in ameliorating childhood  poverty.

While  children in single and cohabiting parent families make up one half of all children in and near poverty,  the other one half of all poor and near poor children lives with married parents.

While marriage promotion may play a role in anti-poverty policy, it fails to address the needs of children in poor married parent families.   Initiatives aimed at providing a secure financial foundation for all children should include strategies that  would benefit children in all family structures.  Such proposed strategies include better child support enforcement, childcare subsidies for poor working  parents, and universal pre-kindergarten.

There is more in the study, but the take away is that the Chrisofascist/GOP obsession (here in Virginia, The heinous Family Foundation is a prime example) with promoting marriage as a magic cure all missing roughly half of Virginia's poor and near poor children. Worse yet, the types of programs that would help these children and their families are typically anathema to the Virginia GOP.  

 

The Opiate of American Exceptionalism

I have often complained about the myth of American exceptionalism that plays so well with the Christofascist/Tea Party base of the Republican Party.  What better way to avoid facing reality than to (i) cling to a myth that America outshines every other nation on earth and (ii) refuse to accept objective reality that shows that America has many, many problems and that in numerous categories, America ranks far down the list compared to other nations which the Kool-Aid drinking loons of the GOP love to deride.  Frankly, it's part and parcel with the alternate universe the far right inhabits where facts, science and the truth are ignored and/or denied as much as possible.  It also fits perfectly with the Christianist myth that America was founded as a "Christian nation." A piece in the Sunday Review provides some stark data that underscores the lie of the cult of American exceptionalism.  It's not a pretty picture, but it is based on objective reality.  Here are some excerpts:

What might this mythical candidate talk about on the stump? He might vow to turn around the dismal statistics on child poverty, declaring it an outrage that of the 35 most economically advanced countries, the United States ranks 34th, edging out only Romania. He might take on educational achievement, noting that this country comes in only 28th in the percentage of 4-year-olds enrolled in preschool, and at the other end of the scale, 14th in the percentage of 25-to-34-year-olds with a higher education. He might hammer on infant mortality, where the United States ranks worse than 48 other countries and territories, or point out that, contrary to fervent popular belief, the United States trails most of Europe, Australia and Canada in social mobility. 

The candidate might try to stir up his audience by flipping a familiar campaign trope: America is indeed No. 1, he might declare — in locking its citizens up, with an incarceration rate far higher than that of the likes of Russia, Cuba, Iran or China; in obesity, easily outweighing second-place Mexico and with nearly 10 times the rate of Japan; in energy use per person, with double the consumption of prosperous Germany.

Americans demand constant reassurance that their country, their achievements and their values are extraordinary.  .  .  .  .  .  But during a presidential campaign, it can be deeply dysfunctional, ensuring that many major issues are barely discussed. Problems that cannot be candidly described and vigorously debated are unlikely to be addressed seriously. In a country where citizens think of themselves as practical problem-solvers and realists, this aversion to bad news is a surprising feature of the democratic process.

American exceptionalism has recently been championed by conservatives, who accuse President Obama of paying the notion insufficient respect. But the self-censorship it produces in politicians is bipartisan  .  .  .   Both parties would rather avert their eyes from such difficult challenges — because we, the people, would rather avert our eyes.

“European politicians exercise much greater freedom to address bluntly the uglier social problems,” says Deborah Lea Madsen, professor of American studies at the University of Geneva. An American politician who speaks too candidly about the country’s faults, she went on to say, risks being labeled with that most devastating of epithets: un-American. 

Of course, the reason talking directly about serious American problems is risky is that most voters don’t like it. Mark Rice, who teaches American studies at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y., said students often arrived at his classes steeped in the notion that the United States excelled at everything. .  .  .  .  “Sure, we’re No. 1 in gross domestic product and military expenditures,” Mr. Rice says. “But on a lot of measures of quality of life, the U.S. ranking is far lower. I try to be as accurate as I can and I avoid editorializing. I try to complicate their thinking.” 

Sometimes the most patriotic thing one can do is to speak the truth and expose lies and inconvenient realities.  Sadly, most in the GOP prefer to remain cheer leaders supporting a myth rather than face problems and formulate a solution.  Currently, Mitt Romney is telling every audience he faces what he thinks they want to hear.  That may be popular with the ignorant and uninformed, but it does nothing to fix the nation's problems.  Indeed, one could argue that it is ultimately the cheer leaders who are the most "un-American" because they are leading the nation to more misfortune and a declining position in the world long term.