America is Failing

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Not everyone will agree, but America is failing and is headed toward irrelevance. One could argue that the country is actually improving by some standards. If that’s the case, it’s the standards that should be questioned.

There is one website in particular, Citizens Fed Up, that distorts the results of President Obama’s administration. They would say that according to government statistics, or other such data, that he has “doubled the stock market, cut the unemployment rate in half, ended the shrub’s recession, stabilized the housing market, helped bring back American manufacturing, cut the uninsured rate in half, and cut the shrub’s budget deficit, by 2/3rds”. Despite the condescending tone of their rhetoric, there’s a lot of debate on not only the accuracy of these claims but also on the validity of the data.

The point right now, however, is not to go through each claim and fact check or debate them. Let’s, for now, take these claims at face value. We might say that the economy is improving, that more people are employed, and that the country is better off financially than before President Obama took office.

The question really is what is the standard by which we claim America is improving? 

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The Cultural Divide

Everywhere you turn, you can get a sense of the world becoming more divided and hostile. It happens locally, nationally, and globally. Memphis is plagued by violence as demonstrated by its rank as one of the ten most dangerous U.S. cities. Even over the Thanksgiving holiday, a time when people generally stop and reflect on their blessings, Memphis still deals with violent crime as a dozen shootings are reported over the weekend.

There’s the kind of violence that occurs among civilians and then there’s the kind of violence that comes from the police force that is supposedly there to protect and serve. That’s what happened recently in New York City. In trying to arrest a man for selling illegal cigarettes, the police take him down by force where later the man was declared dead at a nearby hospital. Was the takedown by a chokehold responsible for his death? It seems unclear through some reports but it certainly could have been a contributing factor.

Then there’s the much publicized fatal shooting of a man in Ferguson, Missouri by a police officer. By some accounts, which later turned out to be false statements, the man was turning away from the police officer when he held up his hands and yelled, “Don’t shoot.” However, the officer involved was not indicted and was cleared of all charges. That hasn’t changed the overall mood of the country, however, as evidenced by several protests taking place in major cities throughout the U.S.

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