Has America lost its luster? Is it still the greatest country in the world?
Just the other day, I finished up my last class of this semester. For the final portion of a communications class, we watched a video that was an excerpt from the Newsroom. Most have seen this; it has Jeff Daniels plays Will McAvoy, and he is giving the audience his thoughts on “why America isn’t the greatest country in the world anymore.” Now I have seen the first part of this many times. I will be honest, I have never seen the last part, the entire four minutes and 49 seconds. I have often turned it off on the first part of his rant. I was surprised he offered small pieces of when we were great.
Moving along after we watched the video, the professor asked us to write about what we thought about this. So, I wrote, “if not America, then who?” I thought, who would actually replace us right at this moment as the greatest country in the world? I also thought about how McAvoy’s character picked and chose specific stats for convenience, but what stat do you use for this at the end of the day? Why didn’t he use who has the best economy? The US still has that. Why didn’t he use the stat for the best military? We know where we stand there, and I can be biased, but it’s not even close. But those were not convenient to the conversation. What I found to be more profound were the answers the fellow students in my class gave.
Now my class is comprised of two males, both of us are veterans of the United States Army, and about eight females are all under the age of 23. There are a lot of differences to be explained here. My fellow veteran and I have traveled around the world to multiple countries. Whereas the eight young ladies I do not believe have left the country, some may not even have left the state. Several still live in the comfort of their parent’s house.
The professor went around the room and asked the young ladies what they thought. One replied, “we were never great. How could we be great when we had slavery and what we did to the Native Americans?” Several others echoed the statement, “we were never great.” One even said, “we were never great. When our country does things like take away our rights, such as in Roe v Wade.”
Now I will say my fellow veteran and I were taken back a bit. I have several questions about all this, and I revert back to “if not America, then who?” Do these fellow classmates know their history? Or are they spitting out what the internet has told them? If it is the latter, then we all should be scared. Do they hold that same resentment toward other countries or just the one that they live in? I mean so let’s peel the onion back a bit.
Let’s tackle the slavery issue. Yep, that is part of our history. Our country in the early years destroyed lives for generations after generations on this, and we still suffer today. Last summer, we did a podcast on this, asking, “will America ever escape the shadow of slavery?” Will we learn from it, ensure it never happens again, and create a society that treats everyone equally, or will we, 1000 years from now, make that still the forefront of everything in our country and still turn a blind eye when it is prevalent in the world? Don’t get me wrong on this. It needs to be taught. It needs to be fully grasped. It also needs to be fully understood. Every single bit of it does, from the slave trade from Africa to life on plantations to what happened after the civil war and also including the life of indentured servants from Europe and other places. Every single aspect should be taught. But if we are truly outraged over slavery then why are we not outraged that 46 million people are enslaved today? Did we not learn from our lessons in America over 157 years ago? Do not misunderstand me. My intent is not to ever diminish what happened in our country regarding slavery. Instead, my intent is if we are quick to point that out for something that happened a century and a half ago, I would hope we learned something from it and be mad that there is still slavery in this world. You know in countries like India, China, North Korea, Nigeria, Iran, Indonesia, Congo, Russia, Philippines, and Afghanistan.[1] I am curious if my fellow students are outraged over slavery today or is it just in our past? Are they outraged from other countries for enslaving people, or is it just our country? Or are they simply outraged because that is the current social trend? Those are fundamental questions that deserve an answer.
Then we move on to our country and how our government dealt with Native Americans. We took land that Native Americans owned. That is a fact. I want to dive into that a bit. Our country started out doing some great things, but we also did some bad things. Our policies on “removing” or “redistributing” Native Americans were atrocities. There is no other way to say that, from the Trail of Tears to the Battle of Palo Duro to so many that weren’t even named. We tried to diminish the Native American tribes to have no relevance with government policies and the enforcement of those policies until 1930. Now the young lady who brought this up, I question what she knows about this? Or does she simply know what the internet told her? If we study history, the British, the French, the Spaniards, and others were the first to take the land away from the Native Americans. Do we have the same sentiment towards them? Or is it just America? If so, why is that? Did we not study history and the atrocities, or do we simply turn a blind eye to those we don’t live with? Or is our anger and frustration merely superficial? I think each of these is a valid question.
There is a theme here that I am presenting that is knowing the history. No, don’t know the history portrayed on social media. Instead, crack the books and understand it, then learn from it. Right now, it seems we are quick to judgments without an understanding of the history that went behind it.
As I heard my fellow students explain why America was not the greatest country in the world. I then heard my fellow veteran explain, “that we are lucky to have this viewpoint. We live in a country where we can express it. That isn’t the case worldwide. We also live in a country where we are spoiled, and we don’t realize it.” I agree with that sentiment. Now I wish everyone lived in a country of freedom and experienced the spoils of riches our country has to offer that many in our country take for granted and don’t fully appreciate.
This brings me to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. I know some of my friends will not read an extensive chapter on this, but I suggest punching this in on the internet and watching a short video on it. It is worth it. I would suggest one by Alex Gendler it is about four minutes and 32 seconds long. The video explains Plato’s Allegory. He explains that a group of prisoners who were confined to a cave their whole life sees shadows on the wall. The bottom line is this is all they know, what they can barely see. One day, one of the prisoners is released, and he leaves. Now he can see the world as it is. His eyes are open. But one day, he returns to try to help his friends leave. His eyes can no longer see in the cave, like before. Well, his two friends kill him, thinking he is crazy and almost blind.[2] For his friends could only see what was in the cave and not what was out there. My question is, my fellow students who have never ventured abroad living in the cave? Is most America living in the cave? I will further elaborate on this.
Another aspect when understanding viewpoints is while I was in the military, I had a way of looking at things. I often saw leaders who could only see down and in, they would not progress very far. Once a leader was able to look up and out, they developed and grew quickly. You know, looking outside the confines of Plato’s cave.
My military time allowed me to visit a lot of countries. Some on good terms, and I visited some on not-so-good terms. I think back to Desert Storm when I ran across an Egyptian soldier. We exchanged each other’s money, and as he walked away, he turned back and said, “America is number one and Egypt number two.” Now that is not me saying that. That is someone from another country saying that. I remember thinking I would never say that about another country. I remember being in Liberia on the Ebola response mission with a fellow soldier, and we are walking to an intersection in the road. A motorcycle approaches us with two guys on it as we get there. They stop for a second, and the guy on the back of the cycle says, “I want to go to America and be like you.” I will tell you he was serious about it. I can remember being in Dakar, Senegal. The westernmost city in Africa. We walked to the steps of a giant statue called the African Renaissance Monument. A local gentleman asked, “do you know the meaning of this statue?” I replied that “I do not.” He explained, “the baby which is lifted in the man’s hand is pointing to New York City for hope, while the woman is holding onto the man’s leg to keep him in Africa.” That is powerful. They built a statue that demonstrates the importance of hope and also keeping your traditions. America is that hope. I remember being in Germany, and the local war museum in Stammheim would do a reenactment of Americans arriving in Germany. They would celebrate our arrival and us ending the war.
Another example is when we delivered supplies to a refugee camp west of Tuzla, Bosnia. When orphan kids looked at us and said, “this came from America.” We smiled and said, “yes.” Their eyes immediately enlarged, and they were ecstatic. Then one kid made sure to tell us, “I am going to be Jordan.” Referencing the basketball prowess, he had. These are just viewpoints from various parts of the world. This is how the world sees us, the very beacon of hope.
I must go back to one history point. I think it is fair to say that we proved we were the most influential in the world from 1939 to 1941 before the United States entered the war. We held up Britain and Russia with the lend-lease program. That kept them floating until we could get our army built up. If that program didn’t exist, we would have seen the demise of both of those countries, and who knows who else. That was America right there, putting aside its comfort to ensure the rest of the world received help. That is what America still does today. I think our time in WWII was some of our shiny moments. But we have had others before that and since that. So, when I hear someone say that America was never great, I ask them to go read Freedom’s Forge by Arthur Herman. It explains how America saved the world. As I said previously, we have judgments without a good understanding of the history behind it or not understanding the history itself. Instead, we simply listen to social media’s diluted or colluded version.
So, I don’t bog myself down in one-sided statistics, nor do I bog myself down in the desire to feel bad about my predecessors; instead, I simply listen to the world to find my answer to who is the greatest country in the world. Other countries tell us constantly in a loud voice that we are the greatest country in the world. Maybe it would benefit more Americans to get out of Plato’s cave before making an ill-educated assessment.
To quote Charlie Daniels, “this lady may have stumbled but, she ain’t ever fell,” sums things up pretty good. I think America has our blemishes, and we should never forget or hide them, but she sure is one sexy beast that many other countries aspire to be. Let’s get out of the cave and view her from the standpoint of the rest of the world.
The Vet
Countries that still have slavery 2022. (2022). Retrieved from World Population Review: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-that-still-have-slavery
Gendler, A. (2015, March 17). Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RWOpQXTltA
[1] (Countries that still have slavery 2022, 2022)
[2] (Gendler, 2015)
