America is a small country.
That’s the truth, though the doctrine of America’s greatness is so woven into the collective psyche of Americans that most Americans don’t even think to question it. America is exceptional, so exceptional in fact that we scarcely need to say it out loud, much less treat the statement as anything less than an axiom.
It’s important here to define my terms. I am not saying America isn’t powerful; clearly, it is, both economically and militarily, and also measured by the scope of its cultural influence. I’m also not saying America isn’t wealthy; clearly, it is, with enormous amounts of not only money, but land, food, natural resources, infrastructure, and technology, to a degree that, possibly, the world has never seen.
America has so much, that America really could be a great nation. And it could be legitimately said that, at various points in America’s history, that it has been, certainly measured relative to other nations in the same period.
And yet, despite all these advantages, and all the opportunities provided by them, the hard truth is that in the 21st century, America is small. The worst part of acknowledging that is recognizing the reason why:
America is small because Americans choose it.
Consistently, repeatedly, Americans choose to be small.
America has the resources to ensure no American lacks a roof over their head or food for the day. Yet Americans choose to not use those resources, citing “big government” and “discouraging people from work” and the nebulous paean to “freedom.”
America has the resources to ensure any American who wishes can afford a college education, which would in turn add to America’s resources. Yet Americans choose otherwise, deciding it would be too expensive, and instead choose paths that leave large numbers of young Americans with a college degree and enough debt to rival a home loan, crippling them economically just as they are starting out in adulthood, and leaving millions more without the option to seek higher education at all.
America has the resources to build the world’s greatest public transportation system, joining bus, light rail, and high-speed rail to save fuel, reduce the need for automobiles, save thousands of lives from accidents, make travel between cities far less expensive, and of course dramatically reduce pollution. Yet Americans choose to be married to their cars, with their expense, pollution and danger taken not as problems that desperately need solving but as immutable facts of life.
America has the resources to build an infrastructure that ensures every American has access to clean water, safe roads and bridges, and reliable high-speed Internet (which is becoming more and more a necessity as time goes by). But Americans turn away, finding the problems too complex, too enormous, requiring more of their precious tax dollars. And roads and bridges crumble, access to the resources of the Web becomes more and more tied to the wealth of neighborhoods, and water quality is so poor that we are literally poisoning the minds of our children, crippling their ability to grow, learn, and develop.
America has the ability to make moral choices about the limits of power and authority, ensuring those entrusted with power have the duty to use it responsibly, and that those who abuse it are held accountable. Yet Americans as often as not see even passive noncompliance with authority as justification for the use of even deadly violence by authority. Americans do not want to deal with the messy, complex issues of liberty and justice. They are more comfortable with authority and compliance — at least, when it involves other people.
There are enormous problems facing the world; climate change perhaps chief among them. America could choose to harness the powerful engine of scientific innovation to find solutions to this looming threat, and with it, to a host of other problems, like energy production, water availability, food production, even transportation. It would also in many ways help to stabilize volatile regions of the world. But Americans can’t even agree that climate change exists or that human beings have a hand in its progress nor have the power to slow or stop it. The problem is simply so enormous and intimidating that we choose to turn the other way, instead embracing the fossil fuels that are the primary source of the problem and even abusing human beings who stand in the way of those fuels’ progress. We lie to our coal miners, reassuring them their industry is not moribund and we will supplement them while they work the coal mines that are becoming technologically obsolete.
America could choose to use its strength to lead, especially by example, the world toward a more prosperous, peaceful future for all. We could do so much more to oppose autocracy, promote civil liberty, encourage worker safety and financial security, all without so much as flexing a military muscle. But instead, while we do make token and sometimes more than token efforts to do more for those in need around the world, we usually see the world based on their utility to us (most commonly, our business interests) and leap toward using political, economic, and especially military force to impose our will. We embrace some of the world’s most oppressive regimes because of the energy they can provide us, while we reject or ignore struggling or nascent democracies if they have nothing to offer us economically or strategically. That’s smallness in the very same way the bully who pushed you around in grade school was small.
America could utilize its economic might to truly lead the way in an increasingly interconnected, global economy (and yes, America is not and will never be an island; our world is interconnected and interdependent whether we like it or not) but we choose, repeatedly, to turn our focus inward, rejecting the messy work of establishing trade agreements that benefit our people and the people of our trading partners, of demanding fair trade, instead embracing protectionism and nationalism that allows other nations to set the rules in our absence, or sitting on our hands and doing nothing because we would rather bicker among ourselves than lead.
Yes, America is small. And it is small by choice.
And oh, no, I don’t simply mean the current regime in power, though its “America First” short-sighted nationalism is particularly maddening in its choice to be small, wanting to build walls instead of bridges, wanting to use bombs instead of diplomats, wanting to build oil pipelines instead of water pipelines, wanting to build prisons instead of schools, all while promising these actions will “Make America Great Again.” Our friends sporting a D by their names choose to be small too. And while we argue and attack each other about who’s pragmatic or principled, who’s a sellout and who’s a purity troll, who failed in the last cycle and who would have succeeded if only the other guys got in line, while we Monday morning quarterback for the next two years than do the hard work of actually making America great, or even preventing the promise of America from falling to the dustbin of history, those people sporting a D by their names reassure us that America is the greatest nation in the history of the world.
And our elected officials want so much to carry on as if everything is business-as-usual, as if the informal rules of decorum and conduct apply, because it’s scary and risky to step out and scream that “This is not fine!” and that could backfire. Instead, let’s talk about 45’s latest outrageous tweet. That’s safer, and it carries the illusion of doing something useful, while actually doing anything but.
No, my friends — we are small. We have chosen, and continue to choose, to be small. We have everything we need — technology, wealth, cultural influence, strength — to be great. Everything, that is, except for will.
Our will to greatness is gone. We’ve become convinced that the world outside is both too frightening to face and too unworthy of our support. We’ve been told that the power of our collective will being given form through government is oppression, but barely eking out a living from whatever our employers choose for our remuneration because our wages are shrinking over time is freedom, and we choose to believe it. We are skeptical of a nearly unanimous scientific community but credulous of our favorite corporate media figures. We choose the easy, inconsequential, short-term battles rather than the difficult, critical, multi-generational ones. And we have become blind to the privilege that allows us to ignore all these things without visible consequence.
America is small. And we choose, with each passing election cycle and legislative session, to be even smaller, all while believing in our greatness. Sometimes I think Americans no longer understand what “greatness” really means.
And as Aaron Sorkin wrote and Jeff Daniels expressed in The Newsroom, the first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. And while I think Sorkin’s thesis that America used to be the greatest country in the world is up for debate, it is long past time we recognized America’s choice to be small.
And then, perhaps, we need to decide whether or not we really want to do the hard work of becoming as great as we’ve always imagined ourselves to be, or if we’re content being small and passing our role in world leadership to other, worthier nations.