Shall we be brutally honest with ourselves⢠Many successful, mainstream Americans who can still read and think are damned worried about our country. Since the growing list of Bush perfidies has started to attract attention, even some Democrats may be more willing to criticize his record, despite their fear of corporate fund-raising retribution in the next election.
Robert Steinback, in a Miami Herald commentary last month, wonders, "Where did the feisty Americans go?" He then asks why President Bush remains "solidly popular" despite presiding over a stagnating economy, turning a federal surplus of over $5 trillion into a likely deficit of $2 trillion , cutting civil rights, making a pre-emptive strike on a sovereign nation, and generally losing our national reputation as a magnanimous and fair-minded nation with friend and foe alike. Notes Steinback, "Virtually nobody questions Bush -- not the opposition Democrats, not the bulk of the media, and by all reckoning, not the public. There can be only one explanation: Sept. 11. That terrible day in 2001 transformed us in many ways, but the most subtle and insidious change was how it sapped our national confidence."
Guess it took our brains away, too.
Leaving aside whatever political position you may wish to take, where do we want to go now⢠Yes, we are wealthy, but that wealth is poorly divided. What is bright about the future of America⢠In the 2004 elections, people may vote their pocketbooks. But where is there a safe store of property value?
One money manager, Seth Glickenhaus, 89, recently told Barron's Sandra Ward that he "sees the United States becoming another Zimbabwe, or maybe Japan." Kook⢠Well, "He's delivered returns of 17 percent a year, on average, to his clients since 1981." Optimist⢠He says so, but he is worried because his traditional optimism has turned into a feeling of long-term pessimism about the future of the United States.
Few investment areas please him: Blue chips are way overpriced, interest rates unattractively low to foreign holders, and both parties unfocused on our real problems. A believer in strong national defense, he sees us spending far more than any other big power (e.g. U.S., $350 billion vs. Russia, $40 billion, China, $20 billion), basically beggaring ourselves while omitting key investments in housing, education, health and infrastructure.
DREADFUL DECLINE
Glickenhaus sees, as do I, America beginning a dreadful period of decline.
Like England earlier, we are losing power and position just as we think we are the unassailable single world superpower. The Iraqi invasion will cost us our precious reputation for moral authority, many more innocent lives, and U.S. Treasury yet unmeasured. Glickenhaus doesn't mention the engine of this coming debacle -- excess unfed, untended, uneducated billions -- but he does see our own world, as an investor, as one with diminishing upside. Maybe forever, but "16 years" is his positive guess.
And the daily litany of corporate scandals! Remember the famous old-time baseball double-play combo⢠"Tinkers to Evers to Chance." Now its more like "Ebbers tinkers and we investors all take a chance!" Not to mention the poor, innocent bystander employees who lost jobs and pensions by the trainloads.
These two bright commentators are increasingly joined by millions of Americans who have feelings in their guts that all is not well. Most Americans are becoming aware that our open-border immigrant policies siphon off entry-level jobs for their children and for our poorest, least-trained citizens. Furthermore, those better-paying jobs for traditional breadwinners are often headed overseas along with huge gobs of new technologies we once grew here in profusion. Growing new Bill Gateses takes investment in educating our own citizens, not just importing cheaper techies from overseas.
BROKEN CONTRACT
To this dreary scenario add this latest, bad new tax legislation which lards riches onto the already rich. The growing gap between rich and poor has already made dangerous deep inroads into what English philosopher/political scientist John Locke called "the social contract," whereby people willingly support their country and their government and their private institutions because all can have access to a reasonable share of the benefits of so doing.
Adding, as we are on track to do, another 100 million-plus mostly poorly educated immigrants (currently arriving at 1.6 million per year, half illegally) in the next 45 years, that will lead to our continued fall into second-class statehood. Unless we change priorities and fast.
"Remember the Maine" echoes to me like "weapons of mass destruction." Diverting voters with foreign adventures is an old ploy, but one which leads to no good end.
Donald Collins, a free-lance writer in Washington, D.C., often contributes to the Trib on immigration reform.
