AMERICA IS OVER: The Disease—and a Cure
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don’t want to be a downer. I hate sounding like an alarmist. But there are times when you need to look at facts with a cold eye. This is one of those times. It’s likely that what I’m about to say will take you aback. But hear me out.
America is over.
I know, that sounds soooo dramatic; over the top. So let me start by defining my terms.
In my telling, America in the most vital sense is gone. Of course, the physical things that constitute America will remain--the mountains and the valleys and the oceans white with foam. And so will the people—well, at least most of them.
What I’m talking about here--the key distinction—is the idea of America. What we all pledged allegiance to in school…and the noble intentions we learned about “liberty and justice for all” --that’s what’s gone. Our nation has devolved from global role model to universal punchline. And we deserve it. We did it to ourselves—but we refuse to see it. So now, it’s time to change.
In order to believe me, I need to do two things. First, I’ve got to prove my case. And second, it would be helpful to suggest some idea on where to head next. So here goes.
Let me propose a construct. Consider everything that happened in the U.S. between the Declaration of Independence and the final years of the 20th century as “America 1.0.” Yes, that’s a long time. And yes, it was often flawed and discriminatory and brutal. But at the same time, we accomplished great things. We made progress. We won a Civil War, ended slavery and saved the republic. We gave women and minorities the vote. We helped win World War II, which secured the free world. We invented airplanes and electric lights and the polio vaccine. To repeat, there’s no question there were stumbles and struggles and times of shame. But somehow, we seemed to hang together when it mattered. We made it through—together.
Today there are people old enough to vote who’ve never lived this American definition of “together.” For them, our country has always been hopelessly divided. Look what we’ve taught them—or more accurately, what we haven’t.
Our tenuous unity began to fully unravel in 2000. In that year, the U.S. Supreme Court—which has no role in deciding state elections—declared a premature end to the recount of Presidential ballots in Florida. Consequently, the court declared that the candidate with fewer popular votes nationally would win. That was a call to arms for the minority party in America: you don’t need more votes, you just need more leverage.
The next year, the Twin Towers fell. Soon, key individual rights disappeared. And our Vice President introduced the original Big Lie to explain the attack—he invented a fiction about “weapons of mass destruction” buried somewhere in the Arabian desert. So, in 2003, we invaded a country which had nothing to do with 9/11—and killed 100,000 Iraqis. No weapons were ever found. The minority party watched and learned again—lies can work. And with that, the centuries-old era of America 1.0 was over.
What followed was “America 2.0”, a time of unrelenting attacks on everything we thought 1.0 was about. The smears, the sneers, and the iron fist were all amplified by the Internet. The national motto of E Pluribus Unum gave way to, “who’s gonna stop me?” And here we are.
kay, on to our current reality. I’ll build my case in five major areas, and try to do that briefly. (Books have been written about subsets in each of these categories.) This isn’t meant to be comprehensive. For our purposes, I’ll just skim the surface. You can read, and then begin to consider joining me in calling for “America 3.0”.
1. Truth and Lies. It may seem impossible to identify the single most outrageous and dangerous thing Donald Trump ever said, but I think it’s easy. Near the close of his 2020 reelection campaign, he declared, “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
With that single sentence, the seeds were sown for the January 6th terrorist attack on the Capitol. That was the day our current Big Lie was born. Yale professor Timothy Snyder is an expert on the rise of modern dictatorships, and he famously said, “post-truth is pre-fascism.”
America says hello.
2. Balance of Power
A. Three branches:
First, the Judicial branch. The arc of history in American law is largely defined by the expansion of individual rights. The Founding Fathers drafted the original Constitution virtually devoid of personal rights. Only under duress did they agree to add the Bill of Rights. How far we’ve fallen. Our current Supreme Court is now in the business of removing rights.
Radical right apologists insist this is OK because many current “rights” were not specifically spelled out in the original Constitution. But by that standard, it can be said that the following things also were not part of the 1789 document, and thus open to reversal: the end of slavery; the right to vote for women, minorities and people aged 18 to 21; same-sex marriage; and election of U.S. Senators by popular voters rather than state legislators. Still, the high court “originalists” are already poised to cripple abortion rights and turn their backs on the idea of free and universal voting rights—because they don’t see those things mentioned in the original yellowed document. It’s like the ensuing 233 years never happened.
Next, consider the Executive branch. The last two Republican Presidents (George W. Bush and Trump) were first elected with less than 50% of the popular vote. The structural absurdity of the electoral college defies the “will of the people.’ Currently, that has no chance of being changed.
And then, Congress. It is currently possible for Senators representing just 17% of the total U.S. population to control the Senate. Beyond that, it takes 60% in the Senate to pass most anything, thanks to the arcane filibuster rule (also not proscribed by the Founding Fathers). And in 2010, the Supreme Court effectively opened the floodgates on campaign contributions. Consequently, all seats in the House of Representatives are up for sale. Predictably, “the people’s house” began filling with the wrong kind of people.
B. Two-party system: This is a failed notion. Yes, it worked for a while. At times, there were more than two parties to argue things. But we no longer live in a two-party democracy. Today we have one political party and one cult. “Republicans” began trading democracy for power decades ago, and now that bargain is complete.
It’s said that every cult needs a leader, and Trump certainly filled that role. But his cult may already have moved on. While his ascendency gave permission to the mob, his lasting contribution may not be leadership, but instead a template. The mob doesn’t need him anymore, and some on the right are saying so. His “movement” has morphed from cult to fully formed regime. Which is worse, because after Trump, there will still be Trumpism.
3. Order and Force.
If you see the January 6 assault simply as a momentary outrage, you’ll need to look wider. It was much more than that—it was a dress rehearsal. Imagine that same event—next time with guns. Some American citizens are already saying—literally and publicly--“when do we get to start shooting?” Mobs proverbially carry torches and pitchforks. Think about them with AK-47’s. That nightmare leads directly to the question of force and counterforce in our society. Who will be protecting whom? How? And when?
A. Police. There are one million full and part-time police officers in America. POLICE is a magazine and online resource for those officers. It’s hard to tell if there’s a political bias here—recent cover stories have included Crime Scene Preservation Tips, and Motorcycles and Traffic Patrol. So, it comes across as pretty neutral. In any case, in the runup to the 2016 election, they sent emails to 60,000 subscribers asking who they supported for president. The result: 84% for Donald Trump, and 8% for Hillary Clinton. That’s beyond landslide. It’s an activist avalanche. And remember, this was before the George Floyd murder and subsequent protests, before the “defund” fallacy, and before the stresses of COVID.
Why is this important now? You may recall that during the Jan. 6 assault, some Capitol Police offered aid and support to the attackers. Some opened access points for them. Some urged them on. Whose side were they on? What laws were they enforcing? More directly, what happens when people with guns attempt to disrupt your local school board meeting…or a session in your state capitol? Can you trust a police force that may have once supported Trumpism 10-to-1?
B. Military: There’s some reason for hope here. In advance of the 2016 election, Military Times reported that Trump was favored over Clinton by 40.5% to 34.3%. But four years later, with the incumbent running against the father of an actual war hero, Trump trailed Biden in the same poll by 41.3% to 37.4%. So, the military may be more thoughtful and flexible in prioritizing the law over the mob. We can hope.
But military forces are not first responders on U.S. soil. That’s for state and local police. Control of the National Guard is a confusing issue. Troops may be dispatched quickly by a President in “support” roles (e.g., disaster relief). But if “law enforcement” is required, state governors are empowered to make the call. Circumstance and politics typically affect their decisions. In other words, local law enforcement will always be the first to define the “good guys” and the “bad guys”—and they do that in real time. As we’ve seen, frequently those decisions have been tragic.
C. Civilian. This may be the most troubling aspect of all. Consider this: what if the people we employ to defend our laws and maintain order…just decide not to?
In Kenosha, a pathetic kid with a military-grade automatic weapon decided to assign himself the job of protecting property in a state where he didn’t even live. Police there welcomed his presence. He shot and killed two people—and was found not guilty.
In Georgia, three clueless rednecks hopped in a pickup truck, chased down a black kid guilty only of jogging, and killed him. They said they were just protecting their neighborhood. Before they acted, none bothered to contact the actual police. All were convicted.
Vigilantism may seem dangerously wrong. But nevertheless, in Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants to escalate. He’s asking the legislature for several million dollars to fund a personal civilian military force, to be deployed whenever and however he chooses.
And to be fair, politically this issue can cut both ways. In Seattle in 2020, protestors outraged by the George Floyd murder chased away an entire police precinct, then declared four square city blocks an “autonomous zone” under their control. They refused access to all city services, as well as some of its residents. Not surprisingly, rape and murder in their “zone” soon sapped their passions, and the police returned.
As we march away from established order to vigilantism, no one really seems to care.
4. Money
A. Income inequality. It’s likely that you’ve read statistics about how the rich and poor are soaring further apart. Simply put, since the 1980’s, virtually all income growth has gone to the very wealthy. But use of “income” in connection to this inequality hides a much larger truth. “Income” is what someone reports “making” in a single year. Jeff Bezos’ salary in 2020 was less than $82,000. But his net worth is $193 billion. Elon Musk got $150 billion richer during the pandemic. His salary is less than $24,000. As Elizabeth Warren has been saying for years, the remedial adjective should be “wealth,” not “income.”
B. Inheritance tax. This is the moat that protects all that castled wealth. Currently, the first $11.7m in inheritance is exempt from any inheritance taxation. Seems like a pretty good deal for the recipients. But the rich want to remove all limits—they’ll pay whatever’s necessary to tax lawyers and lobbyists to pass along everything. As a result, we’re left with worthless humans, both in real life (the scions of Donald Trump), and in fiction (the similar spawn of Logan Roy). In both cases, we see people who do nothing have everything.
C. Corporate taxes. For American corporations, the tax dodge of choice is moving profits (on paper) to offshore havens, where little or no corporate tax is assessed. This cheat is used routinely by both old-line companies (IBM, General Electric) and modern darlings (Apple, Google). To its credit, the Biden administration has joined with most of the developed world in demanding a minimum 15% payment from all of the corporate dodgers. We’ll see how that works out.
D. Corporate purpose. During the recent “earnings season”, companies routinely complained about being forced to pay higher wages to workers. But somehow, collectively they managed to amass their biggest jump in profits since 1950. This is the real heart of inequality: if you’re not a shareholder, you simply don’t matter. The Wall Street mechanism dictates that it’s better to punish employees than reward them.
E. Crypto. I throw this one in just because I don’t understand it. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. To me, this seems like financial make-believe. Crypto seems so wrong it can’t be right. Can it?
5. Propaganda
For lies to work, they need to be repeated. For this, we have Fox News, vast mountains of right wing political porn on the Internet, and all those helpful reposts from your “friends” on social media.
From this poisoned ground spring the conspiracy theories. Thus, some people truly believe that Italian space lasers helped rig ballots against Trump…that all birds are drones…and that the Kardashians really matter.
Suspicious minds are trap doors.
All this brings us back around to the “truth and lies” section above. Again, from Snyder: “you submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear, and what is actually the case.” Right now, too many want to hear and believe lies.
ven though this list is long, it’s woefully incomplete. I haven’t even mentioned racism or identity discrimination. Or our perverted gun fetish. Or climate collapse. Or the blinders of mainstream media. Or the obscenity of our military budget.
But have I budged you to believe that America—the ideal—is over?
We are corroding in so many ways. We are disappearing right before our very eyes.
The Roman Empire lasted for 500 years. We’re struggling to make it to half that. The Romans did not suddenly wake up one morning, look around and say, “Oh, damn—we have fallen!” It took centuries of overreach and corruption…indifference and resignation. It was a death by a thousand cuts…spilling millions of drops of blood on the marble floors of the Forum. All roads led to ruin.
Today, this story feels too familiar.
t the start, I promised proposed steps to right the ship…to sail eventually to a restabilized “America 3.0”. In fact, I have too many proposals for one article. I’ll be laying them out over time. But I do want to finish with one overriding thought.
“America 3.0” isn’t an update. It’s a total rebuild. And the thing that needs to be rebuilt is the U.S. Constitution—the same foundation we were always told we could rely on.
I know this sounds radical. But that original document doesn’t have to be shredded altogether—in fact, it should be our template. Unquestionably, it contains a lot of truly essential ideas, not the least of which is democracy itself. But by today’s standards, it’s fatally flawed.
Every section requires review. For some, that means a serious rewrite. For others, outright deletion. It is folly to believe that any document can remain fully relevant after 200+ years. Or alternatively, to think that all of the edits made during the centuries (amendments and court rulings) can simply be nullified by judicial whim. Some things should stay…and some must go.
In general, rights once granted should remain granted. However, all rights need to be adjusted for historical context. For example, if you want the right to carry a gun, that has to be weighed against the right to life for a school full of kids in Sandy Hook or Parkland. If you claim the right to refuse COVID vaccination, that assertion needs to consider the rights of others not to be infected by you.
And most importantly, these human rights must be national rights—they can’t be jiggered or evaded or banished outright by individual states. That’s how civil wars start.
Let me conclude with an analogy. Let’s say you just bought a cutting-edge laptop—you’re convinced it was worth the money. But as you start setting it up, you run into problems. What to do? You reach into the back of a desk drawer and pull out an old User’s Guide for an Apple LC or a Compaq Presario your dad bought back in the 90’s. Guess what? That’s not going to help. It’s ridiculously outdated—it’s yesterday’s solution for today’s problem. Of course you need a computer, but one that comes with a relevant set of instructions and software and apps.
The same goes for our Constitution. We definitely need one. And it can be an evolution of what came before. But it’s no good if it’s hopelessly outdated. Ours has been maimed with manufactured lies that transformed into indefensible court decisions. Its time is up.
If they did a rewrite on the Bible (New Testament) we can update the Constitution.
e need to get busy now on America 3.0. We’re wasting time trying to fix the past. We need to stop spending all our effort and passion on rearguard actions. We need something to fight for—not against. America 3.0 is that thing. We need something that contains a modern vision of what America can and should be. Something that unifies the sentiments of the clear majority of we citizens, no matter what party they belong to.
Consensus needs to be served. The rule of law is corrupted. It requires reforms to reflect the will of the people. But in order for that to happen, we’ve got to recognize one essential truth: America is over.
Time to build a better one.
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