As a young American, I tend to have a strong idealistic streak. Last year, I worked myself to exhaustion to try to help put Barack Obama and the Democrats in power. When Senator Obama handily beat John McCain, I took to the streets of New York City to celebrate with my friends and with thousands of strangers. His historic victory was inspiring and uplifting, and he remains an inspiration in a lot of ways.
I say that to make the point that I'm not an Obama hater - I think he's accomplished a number of very good things. Nonetheless, I look at Washington, at Wall Street, and at the challenges facing the average American, and I wonder if the mechanisms that we have in place have run out their usefulness. I'm a young person losing hope and losing faith, not only in the President, not only in the Democratic party, but in our country.
I'm not sure we have it in us to do what we need to do... is America's form of democracy viable, anymore?
It begins with the massive number of complex and hugely expensive things that need done. We need to get people back to work, we need to deliver healthcare to everyone, we need to rein in the excesses of our business elites, we need to secure, repair, and update our infrastructure. We still have a city to rebuild in New Orleans, a neighborhood to rebuild in Lower Manhattan, a carbon emissions problem to curb, a mortgage crisis to set right, a plate full of international obligations, and a national debt that is growing to staggering proportions.
The solutions to most of these things are sort of obvious. It's not rocket science (although speaking of rocket science - why is NASA going to take longer to return to the moon than it took to get there in the first place? Are we that timid, now?). We just need to grow a backbone and DO WHAT IT TAKES TO GET THESE THINGS DONE! But those in government who would do what it takes are constantly blocked, mocked, outmaneuvered or outnumbered by those who refuse.
Jobs bill? Too expensive! No political will for that. Meanwhile, a generation of people has no opportunities to use its talents and contribute to innovation or growth. And in poorer areas, people are going hungry, children are going without, and parents are reaching points of desperation.
Healthcare? We need a "uniquely American" solution, which to my young eyes appears more and more to mean a solution mired in corporate welfare, full of loopholes, and without a real concern for human consequences to political dithering and grandstanding. Indeed, we seem to be getting a "uniquely American" solution, which means it's hardly a solution at all, merely a punt so that my generation, when we come to power, will have to clean up yet one more mess y'all have made.
Meanwhile, Wall Street has apparently had driver's privileges for decades now, and they responded to that responsibility by getting drunk on profit and driving the car into a ravine. Now, with a historic opportunity to actually rein in the rapacious and dangerous behavior of these self-aggrandizing, self-anointed "titans of finance," we find that we have a President who listens to a gang of insiders who insist there's nothing more to be done. The car is as far out of the ravine as we can get it at this point, and we have to hope that the engine still works so Wall Street can drive it back onto the road. But we haven't even bothered to insist that the drivers sober up, let alone taking away the keys or calling a tow truck. WHERE IS THE GOVERNMENT?! This is your job, Washington! Fix this! Stop this!
Meanwhile, bridges fall, sewers and water mains explode through the road surface, and the nation's mass transit infrastructure crumbles. Rather than investing in a modern-day WPA project, Obama and Congress seem content to funnel money to all the wrong places, all the wrong people, and all the wrong projects. So, unemployment continues to soar and the bridges keep deteriorating.
New Orleans offered an opportunity for a new paradigm of city-building. An elevated light-rail network and concentrated, high-density housing and services could have created both a great deal of public green space in flood-prone areas, as well as vibrant, safe, modern urban neighborhoods in the affected areas. The elevated rail network would have guaranteed a means of escape in the event of any future flooding. Oh, but it costs money to do the right thing. Our "uniquely American" approach to problems means that we can only invest money in the wrong thing.
Meanwhile, we're more than eight years past 9/11 and nothing has risen above the gaping maw that marks the site of the terrorist attacks. In the perfect testament to private industry's vaunted effectiveness, exactly nothing has been finished on those 16 acres at the heart of Ground Zero. Actually, that's false - two things have gotten done - a temporary PATH station for New Jersey Transit, and the subway tunnels that run through the site. Two public projects, funded by their respective states.
Of course, looming over all of it is the reality that our ice caps are melting... but the American government can't do anything about it. Look for watered-down, half-hearted approaches to be proposed at Copenhagen. According to Conventional Wisdom(TM), all of the "political will" Washington has will have been spent on this half-assed plate of healthcare crumbs they're throwing on the floor for the dogs. Meanwhile, inch by inch, the ice is disappearing, and drop by drop the oceans are growing fuller... imperceptibly, the water has already started to rise. Drip, drip, drip, the horror my generation will face as a result of this is slowly beginning. Most businessmen and politicians who have the power to do something will be dead by the time real consequences come along. But I'll be here, and my generation will be saddled with the refugees, the starvation, the wars for fresh water... what will the "uniquely American" solution to that crisis be? Are we wiser than your generation, we who are young? Will we muster the strength to actually act? Or will we pillage what we can from Miami and New York, Venice and Hong Kong? Will we build desalinization plants and build walls to keep out the masses of starving migrants who will try to make it here? Or will we even have the resources, ourselves? Will we be setting off on fools' journeys to China, our financiers, in the hope of a better life on already-crowded foreign shores?
I'm losing hope. Maybe I've lost hope, already. Our government is a creaking, inadequate mess that is bloated in all the worst ways and underfunded in all the important ways. We have all the money in the world to fund killing and destruction, but heaven forbid you try to feed someone, clothe them, employ them or build something for them.
This is the way empires die, isn't it? Drip by drip, paroxysm by paroxysm... "can't" by "can't" by "won't" by "shouldn't" by "impossible" by "impractical" by slogan by platitude by delay by surrender.
I do think that there are things we could do, but we don't have the political will or means to do it.
We should clearly outlaw the Electoral College - direct election of the President is a right of the people, whether or not it's already granted to us by the Constitution.
A President who is directly accountable to the American people, without consideration to state-by-state electoral totals, is more likely to take the wishes of the people into consideration. If Montana and North Dakota didn't have outsized importance, would there even be a discussion about the wildly-popular "public option" in the health care debate? The President would be more politically free to actively work to advocate the will of the majority of the people.
* We should also abolish the Senate, that most undemocratic body ever envisaged by the founders of a "democracy."
The Senate isn't good for anything except to obstruct and delay. It gives enormous power to tiny, backward-thinking portions of the population, at the expense of the vast majority of Americans. Instead, a unicameral legislature with fully proportional representation would enable the ideas and desires of American people to more clearly, efficiently and effectively find their way into law. Again, a handful of small states wield enormous influence over national policy, and a voter in Wyoming counts for SIXTY Californians. The result? Political imbalance and inequity, marked by stalemates and provincialism.
* We must shift to publicly financed elections, to lessen the power of corporate influence on the mechanisms of government.
This has been extensively blogged here at DailyKos and elsewhere, yet I'm not sure this is even in the platform of the Democratic Party. But it's a common-sense solution to a big part of our national paralysis.
So, there are solutions that together could add up to a better government, and one more capable of addressing the challenges we face. But that government doesn't really look like the kind of democracy we've got. Federalism is a solution for the 18th century. It weathered major challenges in the 19th and 20th centuries. But it is creaking under the challenges of the 21st century. Unfortunately, just as our form of democracy is no longer capable of addressing the challenges facing it, I fear that it isn't capable of fixing its own structure to become more effective.
I believe that the Obama administration and the current Congress were probably our last best hope at preserving our status in the world and our standard of living at home. I believe that the stranglehold of business elites and special interests is too strong. Healthcare will be half-fixed, and will remain a major draw on our resources. Income disparity will continue to increase, and vast swaths of our population will be underemployed or unemployed. Innovations will go unmade. Our infrastructure will continue to crumble. Taxes will remain regressive, with work taxed more than wealth. Our power will wane, our society will diminish in greatness, and our standard of living will stagnate for all but the wealthiest among us. My generation will inherit a poverty crisis of almost unparalleled scope, a climate crisis of epic proportions, and a decimated budget that hamstrings us from fixing your generation's mistakes.
I'm losing faith. I don't really know what the point of writing this diary is, except to express that, put my fears into concrete form... and to hope against all reason that somehow our weak-kneed leaders and crippled government will turn it around.
Anyone who disagrees - I'll be overjoyed if you can convince me I'm wrong!
UPDATE:
I've been disappointed by the tenor of the debate that ensued as a result of this diary. There was a level of condescension, and a patronizing, insulting attitude, that I've not encountered on DailyKos before. Granted, I've been away for a while. Maybe I'll stay away. I was hoping that there would be smart, spirited, edifying conversation about this topic. Instead, we got chest-thumping exceptionalism, know-it-allism, and a bunch of posts about how young whippersnappers should just learn that the system sucks and can't improve (or is completely perfect and we shouldn't complain).
That's not to say that there was no smart dialogue. There was. And for those who attempted to actually engage this question without arrogance and swagger, pro or con, thank you.