Lately, I’ve been studying the climate-change induced melting of glaciers in the Greater Himalaya. Understanding the cascading effects of the slow-motion downsizing of one of the planet’s most magnificent landforms has, to put it politely, left me dispirited. Spending time considering the deleterious downstream effects on the two billion people (from the North China Plain to Afghanistan) who depend on the river systems -- the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Indus, Amu Darya and Tarim -- that arise in these mountains isn’t much of an antidote to malaise either.
If you focus on those Himalayan highlands, a deep sense of loss creeps over you -- the kind that comes from contemplating the possible end of something once imagined as immovable, immutable, eternal, something that has unexpectedly become vulnerable and perishable as it has slipped into irreversible decline. Those magnificent glaciers, known as the Third Pole because they contain the most ice in the world short of the two polar regions, are now wasting away on an overheated planet and no one knows what to do about it.
To stand next to one of those leviathans of ice, those Moby Dicks of the mountains, is to feel in the most poignant form the magnificence of the creator’s work. It’s also to regain an ancient sense, largely lost to us, of our relative smallness on this planet and to be forcibly reminded that we have passed a tipping point. The days when the natural world was demonstrably ascendant over even the quite modest collective strength of humankind are over. The power -- largely to set an agenda of destruction -- has irrevocably shifted from nature to us.
Another tipping point has also been on my mind lately and it’s left me no less melancholy. In this case, the Moby Dick in question is my own country, the United States of America. We Americans, too, seem to have passed a tipping point. Like the glaciers of the high Himalaya, long familiar aspects of our nation are beginning to feel as if they were, in a sense, melting away.
The eight years of George W. Bush’s wrecking ball undeniably helped set our descent in motion. Then came the dawning realization that President Barack Obama, who strode into office billed as a catalyst of sure-fire change, would no more stop the melting down of the planet’s former “sole superpower” than the Copenhagen summit would stop the melting of those glaciers. After all, a predatory and dysfunctional Washington reminds us constantly that we may be approaching the end of the era of American possibility. For Obama’s beguiling aura of promise to be stripped away so unceremoniously has left me feeling as if we, as a country, might have missed the last flight out.
And speaking of last flights out, I’ve been on a lot of those lately. It’s difficult enough to contemplate the decline of one’s country from within, but from abroad? That -- take my word for it -- is an even more painful prospect. Because out there you can’t escape an awareness that what’s working and being built elsewhere is failing and being torn apart here. To travel is to be forced to make endless comparisons which, when it comes to our country, is like being disturbed by unnerving dreams.
In the past few months, as I’ve roamed the world from San Francisco to Copenhagen to Beijing to Dubai, I’ve taken to keeping a double-entry list of what works and what doesn’t, country by country. Unfortunately, it’s largely a list of what works “there” and doesn’t work here. It’s in places like China, South Korea, Sweden, Holland, Switzerland, and (until recently) the United Arab Emirates -- some not even open societies -- that you find people hard at work on the challenges of education, transport, energy, and the environment. It’s there that one feels the sense of possibility, of hopefulness, of can-do optimism so long associated with the U.S.
China, a country I’ve visited more than 100 times since 1975, elicits an especially complicated set of feelings in me. After all, it’s got a Leninist government which was not supposed to succeed; and yet, despite all predictions, it managed to conjure up an economic miracle that, whatever you may think about political transparency, the rule of law, human rights, or democracy, delivers big time. When you’re there, you can feel an unmistakable sense of energy and optimism in the air (along with the often stinging pollution), which, believe me, is bittersweet for an American pondering the missing-in-action regenerative powers of his own country.
As I’ve been traveling from China’s gleamingly efficient airports to our chaotic and all-too-often broken-down versions of the same, or Europe’s high-speed trains to our clunky railroads, I keep that expanding list of mine on hand, my own little version of what works and what doesn’t. Over time, its entries have fallen into one of three categories that I imagine something like this:
1. Robust, full of energy, growing, replete with promise and strength, the envy of the world.
2. Alive and kicking, but in a delicate balance between growth and decline.
3. Irredeemably broken, with little chance of restored health anytime soon.
And here then, as I imagine it, is the shape of America today in terms of what works and what doesn’t, what’s growing and what’s failing:
1. Bio-technology, developing dynamically and delivering much of the world’s most innovative technological research, thinking, and ideas; Silicon Valley, which still has enormous inventiveness, energy, and capital at its disposal; civil society which, despite the collapse of the economy, still seems to be expanding, still luring the best and brightest young people, and still superbly performing the ever more crucial function of being a goad to government and other established institutions; American philanthropy, which is the most evolved, well-funded, and innovative in the world; the U.S. military, the best led, trained, equipped, and maintained on the planet, despite the way it has been repeatedly thrust into hopeless wars by stupid politicians; the fabric of much of small-town American life with its still extant sense of cohesiveness and community spirit; the arts, both high-culture and pop, boasting a still vibrant film industry that remains the globe’s “sole superpower” of visual entertainment, and the requisite networks of symphony orchestras, ballets, theaters, pop music groups, and world-class museums.
2. Higher and secondary-school education, in which America still boasts some of the globe’s preeminent institutions, though the best are increasingly private as jewel-in-the-crown public systems like California’s are driven into the ground thanks to devastating, repeated budget cuts; a national energy system which still delivers, but is terminally strung out on oil and coal, and depends on a grid badly in need of some new “smartness”; environmental protection, which compares favorably with that in other countries, though always under-funded and so, like our extraordinary national park system, ever teetering above the abyss; the court system, overburdened and under-funded, but struggling to deliver justice.
3. The federal government, essentially busted; Congress, increasingly paralyzed and largely incapable of delivering solutions to the country’s most pressing problems; state government, largely broke; the Interstate highway system and our infrastructure of bridges and tunnels, melting away like a block of ice in the sun because maintenance and upgrading is so poor; dikes, water systems, and many other aspects of the national infrastructure which keeps the country going, similarly old and deteriorating; airlines, some of the sorriest in the world with the oldest, dirtiest, and least up-to-date planes and the requisite run-down airports to go with them; ports that are falling behind world standards; a railroad passenger system which, unlike countries from Spain to China, has not one mile of truly high-speed rail; the country’s financial system whose over-paid executives not only ran us off an economic cliff in 2008, but also managed to compromise the whole system itself in the eyes of the world; a broadcast media which -- public broadcasting and aspects of a vital and growing Internet excepted -- is a grossly overly-commercialized, broken-down mess that has gravely let down the country in terms of keeping us informed; newspapers, in a state of free-fall; book publishing, heading in the same direction; elementary education (that is, our future), especially public K-12 schools in big cities, desperately under-funded and near broke in many communities; a food industry which subsidizes sugar and starch, stuffs people with fast-food, and leaves 60% of the population overweight; basic manufacturing, like the automobile industry, evidently headed for oblivion, or China, whichever comes first; the American city, hollowing out and breaking down; the prison system, one of America’s few growth industries but a pit of hopelessness.
As you may have noted, category one is close to a full list, category two, close enough, while category three is just a gesture in the direction of larger-scale decline. Unfortunately, it seems ever expandable. You’ll undoubtedly be tempted to add to it yourself. (I have the same impulse every time I’m elsewhere and see some shiny new industrial or designer toy we don’t make or even have.) When I told a friend about this tallying obsession of mine, he suggested that it might turn out to be a great website. (See the vigorous world of the Internet in category one above.) And so it might -- a kind of electronic stock market Big Board where the world could weigh in and help track all those things people find encouraging or discouraging about the U.S. and other countries.
The initial impulse for my list, however, was self-protective. I was searching for “things that work” here, the better to banish that dispiriting sense of an American decline into the sort of can’t-do-itive-ness that Congress has come to exemplify. Consider my exercise some kind of incantatory ritual -- a talisman -- meant to hold off the bad spirits just as, when I arrive in Beijing in winter and find the mercury near zero (an increasing rarity these last years) or stumble into a snowstorm in New York City, I’m relieved. For me, such manifestations of real winter are signs that nature may not yet have totally surrendered to us, that global warming is still being challenged, and that things may not be as far gone as I sometimes fear.
And yet that list of can-do’s remains so unbearably short and the cant-do’s grows by the trip. I’d love to be convinced otherwise, but like the ice fields of the Greater Himalaya melting before our eyes, American prowess and promise, once seemingly as much a permanent part of the global landscape as glaciers, mountains, and oceans, seems to be melting away by the day.
Orville Schell is the Director of the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations, where he leads a project on climate change and the Tibetan Plateau. He is former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, the author of many books on China, and a frequent traveler in his various journalistic pursuits.
Copyright 2010 Orville Schell
Anis Shivani: The Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2011
Good for women: The oft-prevailing emphasis on youth turns many women against their own natural body's changes. We are getting to the place of no longer being the youngest dynamo on the world block, and we can start to appreciate the refining of our country. The infatuation with being young for its own sake will diminish, and women will benefit from a climate that better appreciates aging.
Good for the maturity of America: Giving 10 years of nation-time for every 1 year of human-time, our 234.5 year old country is just about turning 24. That's a step of real adulthood. We've been the sexy, muscular jock and always bounding with childlike energy in our peak adult body for quite a few decades now. At 24-30, we start to discover more of what life is about. The next generation in the world is starting to rise. As an the adult member of society, we are experienced. What is slightly less in brute strength, is much more of a leader. We marry and settle down in the world. It is so exciting to see America wise. What will our great nation, a phenomenon in its youth, bring the world in our wisdom, watching the nations who grew up looking up to us rise?
Oh, to live to see it!
Most 24 year olds feel broke, as the US is in nation-years. No longer got Papa paying for occupational training or college. No matter what our youthful energy, strength, and great future potential once was, it's nervewracking to face our ability to fail. To use a current media face, for every Peyton Manning, there are thousands of quarterbacks who tried and are now working somewhere without millions of dollars and screaming fans on the world stage.
America got to be the star jock for a long, long time. We defeated our rival in the big game (US-USSR) when we were 21. After that who did we have to school us? If there were wiser nations, we were slow to listen to them. We got lost in it all and now have to face the music. Do the time. Humble ourselves. Pick ourselves up. Get a job. You're never 21 again. That's life. Compared to what I thought I'd be doing now when I was 21, ten years ago, I am living a third world life. Week to week, paycheck to paycheck. Sharing a four bedroom house with six adults. After having finished a four year university in 2001 with a B.S., I'm going back to Community College for a technician's certification to try to have a skill to have a job.
"I don't need you cause I can buy you and bomb you" is not a mature outlook on the world. But paying real pennance for that angstful teenage way will make for a great maturation story. There is going to start to be an actual American culture because the countries with culture - they fell, and rose (multiple times). Our failures so far have been growing pains, not real national humiliating defeats and being "felled." Till now. You are right, our spine itself is falling. We might take up painting. It's one of the best therapies. But it's going to be internet, digital painting. That is an art I enjoy myself, and on this very blog we are doing it right now.
Great piece. I can't figure out why, but seeing people recognize the actual state of things is encouraging to me. Perhaps it's because what I usually see and hear are people who blowing smoke about how great and inspiring everything is, while a few "Cassandra's" focus on the "little" problems.
In the eight words above, you have shown more courage, and done more to address and recognize the "vote warehouse" than most of the Democratic national party has been capable of mustering in, what... Thirty years?
They're so busy AVOIDING fighting the "culture war" (and looking weak in the process) that any mention of associating themselves with urban America sends them running for their cowboy hats, boots, Bibles and beers. In the meantime, they have left us to contend with Corporations, constantly looking to sell us down the river, while they whine about how can't understand why they "look weak."
Since urban centers hold the highest number of humans, they also hold the best chance of turning things around on almost every front... And I have about lost hope in my party doing anything but continue to play the "New Democrat," "New Economy," Neoliberal fiddle, while urban America continues to slowly burn down.
You can list on one hand the nations that have such inherent internal resource potential, It will not be mismanged forever. Although as most of our political institutions are broken we should start asking ourselves if the structures that worked so well in previous centuries should not be adapted to more efficient democratic governing structures.
I keep hoping Obama will FIRE everyone in his staff especially his economic advisers and get out there and do what is right instead of weenieing out everytime El Rushbo or Fakenews or the Thug party gets their panties in a wad about ANYTHING he does.
Thanks
We will fail as a nation only if we allow it to happen. Most intelligent people will agree that Washington is broken and needs to be fixed. IMHO we need true election reform in order to tackle the issues that are dragging down our country. The most visible issue is the hijacking of our government by every form of business interests imaginable. The mere mention of demanding meaningful election reform will cause earthquakes in the capital and make the health care reform battle look like child’s play.
We can roll over and give up, or put up and shut up. “It ain’t over ‘till it’s over”
(http://onemillionstrong-silentone.blogspot.com/)
Perhaps you should sit in an outdoor cafe in one of Chinas industrial cities and write your next piece.
Your horizons can then be broadened by having to seek medical care for a breathing disorder.
AND by the way have you bothered checking out OUR arrest, jailing and sentencing lately?
The U.S. has become one of the most draconian jail systems in the world with an average of two thousand murders in prison per year along with an average of 800 suicides in prison.
We have innocent people put to death hear as well with some of the worst appeals systems you can imagine. Former (and now very happily dead) Justice Rheinquist actually made this statement. "Actual innocence is no bar to execution).
Yeah, and as far as sitting outside and having a cuppa? Go to some of the coal states where moutaintop removal is sanctioned by a bought and paid for State Supreme Court and then sit where they are destroying the natural beauty for obscene profits or better yet go for a swim in one of the coal slurry dumps that are threatening our water supply.
Or politics destroying America for no other reason than one party trying to get into power over the other with the most important part of that power to control the committees which control who gets what money.
Yeah, you very obviously missed the entire point of the post by Mr. Schell.
I get from the above article that America is fading with it's treasury plundered via enormous tax breaks for billionaires leaving the states flat broke. I have ridden Amtrak and driven on I-70 through Missouri. I know also the fourth amendment to the Constitution barely exists anymore.
However Texas accounts for 60% of all U.S. executions leaving all of 16 executions in 2007 for 49 states and D.C. China does that better by 100 to 300 times more. Secret trials. China has the fastest bullet train in the world AND x- thousands of Chinese commuting wearing paper breathing masks.
The above article mentioned "rule of law, human rights" once. Instead: China Daily comments (http://comment.chinadaily.com.cn/articlecmt.shtml?id=9242143&page=1):
"LandofLincoln 2010-01-01 04:43 Amnesty International has joined a chorus of criticism of China over the execution by lethal injection of Akmal Shaikh, a British convicted drug smuggler said by friends and family to have been mentally ill. " (much more)
I suggest you do some very extensive first hand research into whether or not Justice Rheinquist is "very happily dead".
Great definition of American conservatism.
How would you respond the question, "Why was nothing done to prevent him from this wreckless behaviour?"
Your 'creator' surely wants the ice caps and glaciers to melt, he/she is omnipotent after all. I mean, what god wants, god gets - right?
Itchy.
Not enough people are reading history. American decline is practically textbook.
Leaders don't get you into this mess and leaders don't get you out, but leaders come in all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life. Don't believe it? Take a look at the American Revolution. Leaders popped up everywhere in a time of need, driven by circumstance and the willingness to take a stand for the common good. Politicians are not necessarily leaders; more often, they follow others.
If you want change, you work for it. Be a leader, if you can, but work in all ways, every day to make this place better. Complaining and observing are passive.
Act!
America, as a nation, barely survived it's last encounter with the "gilded age". The subsequent stock market crash of 1929 and resultant "great depression" were eventually overcome (decades later) through actions of Presidents like FDR, who at least spoke to, and tried to help the common man. More frighteningly, conventional wisdom seems to indicate that America's financial malaise was cured by our involvement in world war two.
Where is there in American politics today our equivalent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Will world war three be necessary to right our economy? Will life on Earth still exist if it happens?
What this country needs is "change we can believe in" what we are getting is "business as usual".
-Hunter S. Thompson, 2004