Fall already, America

There's something wrong with contemporary America. We seem to not only get barely anything done but also tremendously suck at efficiently accomplishing the handful of things we do do. I'm referring, of course, to our government and economic structure and school system and what-have-you. I would elaborate, but I would much rather try to explain the whys of our faults than the whats.

Perhaps we have bureacratized our processes and systems to the paradoxical point of incompetence. To achieve anything, we now need to fill out a shitload of paperwork and a dozen people need to see/read/stamp each form (who each have to approve completely each paper ... you know, each person with his/her own different viewpoint/opinion) before going through the process again at another department. (Tangent: Does this remind anyone of the Vogons from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series?)

Maybe we should look at our developed-nation peers to figure out what the hell we're doing "wrong"? Interestingly enough though, America is arguably the most conservative developed country in the world. A fascinating side note: one of the antonyms of "conservative" is progressive. Incidental coincidence or meaningful correlation? Regardless, one big (pun intended) difference is that America is fucking huge--land-wise and population-wise--so maybe we can't look to our tiny developed-nation peers. We should do something about this overabundance of conservatism though.

Also conceivably at blame is our culture. Granted, "culture" is a very broad, virtually-all-encompassing term, so I'm going to use it to refer to our current generation and its collective (pop) cultural mindset. The (younger) generation in power and the generation growing up today grew up in a world where America was unabashedly number one economically, militaristically, politically (ha!), culturally (think "westernization"), and so forth. People grew up thinking (or at least had some sort of thought resembling), "Hey, I live in a country that is the best in almost everything. I don't need to fucking do anything!" Wrong. Doing nothing does not maintain pack-leader status. Doing nothing causes our infrastructures and top positions to falter. (An easy analogy here is a top-of-the-line computer. Sure, it's awesome initially, but without constant upgrading and upkeep, it will not only wear down but also be beaten by its competitors.)

So what the fuck, Americans? I think a lot of the problem is--and I'll try not to bash conservatives again--that this is an invisible problem. How the hell does one see infrastructures falling apart? (Un)Fortunately, the answer to this (and so many other issues) is education. But the thing is ... we're not educating our population correctly! We put kids through 12-13 years of primary/secondary schooling (the second half of which is just a repetition of the first half) to learn ... nothing. People are graduating high school with little personal (and local/state/national/international) economic know-how, barely any technical skills (skills that are learned on-the-job anyway), and simple-mindedness or lack of regard for larger societal issues (which ARE important because these things will affect their lives!). Our education system is totally failing. It needs an overhaul. In this day and age, four-year college degrees are becoming the new GED; why not change the system so that the High School Diploma reverts back to what it was? We shouldn't need to pay for our education! This is only going to widen the socioeconomic gaps in our society even more (by the way, these inequalities have actually been widening in the past few decades).

Anyway, going back to this blog entry title, I'm not advocating that America should actually collapse and dissolve. I'm just confused as to why something hasn't happened to America. Why haven't we fallen from the "top spot" already? Why do Americans think we're even at the top of anything still? When is America going to fall to number two so that our top officials can finally say, "Hey everybody! We're not number 1 anymore! We need to change things NOW!" so that change can finally occur more quickly and efficiently. Remember during the Cold War when we were bitter rivals with the Soviets and put a man on the moon 8 short years after JFK ambitiously dreamt it on the national stage? We had the wonderful warm, fuzzy feeling of being able to beat someone. Maybe we need that again.


Unrelated, but I'm currently listening to British musician Steve Appleton's "Dirty Funk":