It’s pretty obvious America is going to turn into a shithole. It’s already en route. The most ironic part is that America is not an ignorant country nor a totalitarian state. The reason being is the influx of information in which Americans lack the motivation to filter through these sources but would rather rely on confirmation bias, accept news from social media platforms, or simply word by mouth. What I’m saying is that if Americans don’t step up and invest more time into educating themselves on politics and thus finding solutions to fix the problems in America and less time on useless protests and movements, we’ll all lose our rights. It’s already beginning.
When I watched a segment of The Newsroom, Why America Isn’t the Greatest Country, Anymore, Will McAvoy makes the proclamation of the glaring downsides to American society. While I disagree with much of what was stated, it perfectly mirrors our own society – specifically how disillusioned young millennials and Generation Z are. We have absolutely and an utter lack of faith in our democracy and nation. When I ask my peers if they love America and why, their response is in union to McAvoy’s: “there are 207 sovereign states in the world, 180 of them have freedom” (The Newsroom). The gist is, laying out the rankings of other nations and how much better off they are than Americans – while also disregarding other nation’s flaws. I could go on and list out everything he says, but I’ll just give you the link instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPHSXUS0_1c (skip to 3:40 – I highly recommend looking up the facts after watching the video and then maybe look at other nations’ democracies and then come back to why America is still one of the greatest countries in the world).
Before I go on, I want to recap on one of the most convincing arguments made by Volney – the dispersion of information and our accessibility, in regards to the printing press, will supposedly render mankind to be much more educated and thus allow man to better himself: “His obstacle is his ignorance, which misleads him in the means, and deceives him in causes and effects. He will enlighten himself by experience; he will become right by dint of errors; he will grow wise and good because it is his interest so to be. Ideas being communicated through the nation, whole classes will gain instruction; science will become a vulgar possession, and all men will know what are the principles of individual happiness and of public prosperity. They will know the relations they bear to society, their duties and their rights; they will learn to guard against the illusions of the lust of gain” (Volney 19-20).
Unfortunately, by the look of things, I have to lean more with Rousseau on this argument – the fact of the matter is information and ideas have never been more shared than it is now; yet, we still find ourselves in a state of abject ignorance. As Rousseau put it, the more sciences we have, the more knowledge we gain, and the more ideas we spread has resulted in people pigeonholing themselves into different classes, statuses, dispositions, and so forth. For the most part, Rousseau’s argument makes perfect sense, especially if we take into consideration the “diversity” of our nation – not just in terms of race or ethnicity – from education levels, political allegiances, economic strata, and so forth.
The problem is – and bear with me – there is too much information and too little research. Americans are exposed to the widest database of information, but tempered with today’s notion of instant gratification, millennials will grasp at any available document they first see and inhale it like it’s the holy grail – completely ignoring the possible fallacies and misinterpreted analyses that may be embedded in such articles and the fact that news medias tend to slander the truth; in today’s day and age, you’d be hard pressed to find the whole truth in any single article or medium alone. Therefore, we’re now left with a generation of disillusioned people who lack faith in their government; but worse, they lack the will to change this ineffectual state that they’ve entrenched themselves in.
Now let’s take a look at voting. It’s pretty star-spangled awesome how accessible this (may I emphasize) privilege is to American citizens, but also pretty damn scary. We’re looking at a generation of the lowest voter turnout in all of American history. What’s even scarier is the fact that most Americans do not invest their due diligence into researching politicians or their agenda and such policies that shall be implemented if elected. I can guarantee you that if you were to ask a handful of your classmates what our president has done in his first term, the general consensus will be something along the lines of “create a greater divide between Americans and immigrants”. Okay, anything else? I didn’t think so.
Our goal as American citizens – and to any nation-state – is to, of course, look for flaws within our government and see how we can bring about improvements. Unfortunately, my generation is stellar with the former and this thus breeds a monumental wave of apathy towards politics and I would go so far as to say develop amour propre – we compare ourselves to others. I mean we’ve always done this, as individuals or as a collective formation. Hence, Rousseau was right about one thing: society nurtures vanity; we look at others and then we look at ourselves; really it’s become a missing tile syndrome as Dennis Prager put it: we become so fixated on what we lack that we forget the attributes we have.
Take for instance the issue of gun control which correlates to the second amendment. I’m just gonna skip over the fact that most gun control activists blatantly ignore the 2nd amendment, ignore how guns are inanimate objects that need to be activated by humans, and how they can’t even name a semi-automatic weapon. These self-proclaimed activists for life so foolishly use Australia as the model nation for gun control.
Some quick facts: 1) In 1996, the Port Arthur Massacre in Tasmania was a mass shooting with the use of a semi-automatic rifle that left 35 people dead and another 23 injured. This totally transformed gun control legislation in Australia. 2) Today, it’s illegal to own a handgun in Australia without a license. 3) Despite their strict gun laws, handguns still account for 20% of homicides in Australia.
Okay, cool – let’s take it back to the U.S. How would this same legislation be put into effect on American soil? Moreover, what would be the causes and effects? Well, let’s examine the staggering difference in population: California’s 40 million population alone nearly doubles that of Australia’s 24.6 million. The U.S’s population is 325 million and growing. Not only is this proposal extremely unrealistic, it’s also pathetic and impossible to implement. Try presenting these facts to social justice warriors and self-proclaimed pacifists and you’ll be doxxed as a racist, bigot, and/or cold-hearted murderer (they like to get colorful with their branding, but the punchline is, they blacklist you).
I could go on and on about so many of these contemporary movements, but I’d digress. The heart of the problem is that we don’t harness enough sources, enough information to educate ourselves on the effects of our nation whether it’s about healthcare, immigration, gun control, and so forth. In the past, we were able to overcome these obstacles because we were informed. Today, we’re divided and we shout past those with a dissenting viewpoint, we charge others with hate crimes for their religious beliefs, and most of all, we stopped having civil discourses.
If we continue down this road, what will happen to the first amendment rights of free speech, press, and religion, to name a few? Moreover, this divide will inevitably lead to the downfall of our nation.
As McAvoy said in the video, “the first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one: America’s not the greatest country in the world, anymore”.
Now let’s fix that.
Works Cited
Taube, Jeff. YouTube, YouTube, 18 Sept. 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPHSXUS0_1c.
“The Australian Gun Ban Conceit.” The Federalist, 3 Sept. 2015, thefederalist.com/2015/09/03/the-australian-gun-ban-conceit/.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, and Donald A Cress. The Basic Political Writings. W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library, 2013.
Volney, C.-F, and C.-F Volney. The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires ; and the Law of Nature. Bibliobazaar, 2006.
the reason behind the crumbling of a civilization 