GOP is killing American exceptionalism

America is near the end of its thirty year slide into second-rate status. it is all due to the Republican drive to give most of this country's wealth to the richest one-percent. It began with Republican deregulation of the financial industry that gave Wall Street power to transfer wealth from the middle class into the coffers of the wealthy. Then they hide their money offshore to avoid paying taxes to support the country that made them wealthy.

 

The final blow was the 2008 crash caused by Wall Street's and Big Banks' derivative trading – gambling with mortgage securities. Derivative trading is what caused tens-of-millions of Americans to lose their jobs, bankrupted retirement accounts, and millions of middle class Americans to lose their greatest asset, their homes.

In many citizens’ minds, America is extraordinary, special, and the best place on the planet to live. Among those in the GOP, this perception is based on absolutist ideology and gross lack of knowledge of circumstances in other countries. Yes, there was a time when America was exceptional – over thirty years ago when people had the opportunity to attain the American dream of a middle class income through hard work and perseverance. However, about thirty years ago a b-movie actor ushered in the era of America’s decline when his directors gave him a script to convince ignorant citizens that handing over the nation’s wealth and assets to the rich and their corporations was the key to middle class success.

Trickle down economics is not working. The only thing that has trickled down is hardship. Middle class income has stagnated and even lost ground in many cases. The results have been that America is no longer exceptional and is rapidly deteriorating into an inferior second-rate status compared to the rest of the developed world.

Yes, America is the richest nation on Earth. It is home to the most millionaires and billionaires of any country on the planet. But that is where the exceptionalism ends. In just about every other category, America is very behind the rest of the world. Many Americans are led to believe the country’s “great middle class” is proof positive the nation is exceptional, but according to the “Global Wealth Data Book 2012″ America’s middle class ranks 27^th in wealth – behind poorer nations such as Spain, Ireland, France, and Cyprus. And to top it off, due to thirty years of Republican policies, the American middle class is watching what little they have left transferred to the richest one-percent.

The U.S. has fallen behind the rest of the western world in standard of living. The problem is the weak labor laws that give corporations and big business the ability to pay poverty wages with few benefits. In nearly every other industrialized country, every country provides healthcare, every job provides at least a month of guaranteed paid vacation, and as many paid sick days as one needs to recover from illness or injury. Republicans are now busy passing laws making it illegal to provide paid sick leave. The Republican House of Representative just passed legislation eliminating overtime pay. They are also trying to eliminate worker compensation rules for on-the-job injuries and have said that they would like to abolish the minimum wage. America’s inadequate minimum wage is 13^th among developed nations. Abolishing the minimum wage would put American labor on par with peasants in third-world countries.

ALEC’s Republican right-to-work states have more poverty-level residents than do other states while their corporations haul in record profits. Yet, these states actually get more federal dollars given to them than they pay into the national coffer.

America has the WORST healthcare system among modern nations because few can afford it, and even if they can, this country’s people have the worst health outcomes of all other industrialized countries on Earth. In the event of a serious health issue or injury, Americans are guaranteed to join the poverty ranks making the Republican drive to destroy the Affordable Care Act all the more Draconian. In many Republican states, at the behest of the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity organization, the GOP is desperate to make senior citizens’ Medicare and Social Security a thing of the past regardless of the fact they paid into it their entire working lives.

In nearly every country on Earth a college education is virtually tuition-free and yet in America, Republicans decry spending on any education and are driving college students into life-long unsustainable debt to enrich the banking industry. In most Republican states, ALEC templates are diverting public school funds to private religious schools to enrich corporations and create the next generation of ignorant Americans claiming the nation is exceptional.

America’s social programs and safety nets are among the worst in the world.  Instead of bolstering them to help Americans climb out of poverty, Republicans slash them to provide tax breaks for the rich and corporations. Because of this, nearly a quarter of America’s children are living in poverty with millions of Americans earning insufficient wages to put nutritious food on the table. The idea of ever achieving anything more is being thwarted by Republicans in all areas of government, but particularly in the states. Right to work laws, banning minimum wage, eliminating Medicaid, eliminating Medicare and Social Security, prohibiting paid sick leave, robbing food and housing assistance for seniors and the poor to provide more of the nation’s wealth for the rich and their corporations are all part of the Republicans’ three decade effort to destroy the middle class.

America was once an exceptional nation due to the rise of the great middle class. This rise happened after WWII under Democratic policies. Since Reagan, Republicans’ thirty year effort to destroy the middle class is reaching fruition as we slide into a nation of peasants with a ruling wealthy class.

President Obama said, “…our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing number barely make it. America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship. We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.”

Speaking of American exceptionalism…

In reconciling getting a Nobel Peace Prize just after calling for a military escalation in Afghanistan, President Obama boldly made the case for ‘just wars’ such as the one in Afghanistan. At the same time, he spoke of America’s exceptionalism by lauding the contributions the United States has made in promoting peace when we fought World War II, produced the Marshall Plan, helped with the creation of the U.N., and participate in nuclear disarmament.

Yet the gist of his acceptance speech was reconciling how war is sometimes necessary while at the same time mankind must strive for a better world:

“We do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected,” he said at the end of the speech. “We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place… So let us reach for the world that ought to be -- that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.”

Obama addressed two criticisms from those who did not want him to receive the award:

1. He does not deserve the award:

“Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize -- Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela -- my accomplishments are slight,” he said. “I cannot argue with those who find these men and women -- some known, some obscure to all but those they help -- to be far more deserving of this honor than I.”

2. He is receiving a peace prize as his country fights two wars:

“I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.”

Just as in his Berlin speech during the presidential campaign, Obama also argued how the United States has helped forge world peace:

“Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.”

Yet he also said -- in a swipe at Cheney and Bush -- that the U.S. must adhere to the standards that govern wars:

“America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America’s commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not just when it is easy, but when it is hard.”

Obama then discussed three ways the world can build lasting peace:

1. Enact and enforce tough sanctions and penalties on countries Korea that violate rules and laws:

“But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system…. Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia.”

2. Protect the inherent rights and dignity of all peoples:

“I believe that peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please; choose their own leaders or assemble without fear.”

3. Promote economic security and opportunity:

“It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive.”

You would think that even the most ardent critic of the president's foreign policy would have a hard time picking apart President Obama’s Oslo speech. In fact, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, and Sarah Palin all lauded the speech because Obama went before the Nobel Committee of Peace to reconcile how war is sometimes necessary while, at the same time, mankind must strive for a peaceful world.

But if all that we notice in President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Lecture is a justification of war, we will miss the crux of his thinking – that he called forth the hope of peace. President Obama spoke of a 21st century ‘just peace’, the middle ground between thinking of a ‘just war’ and pacifism – defining what a 'just peace' is and articulating how to go about providing such a peace.

President Obama absolutely believes in American Exceptionalism. It’s just not the perverted neo-con version that Dick Cheney extols.