What makes America the greatest country in the world?
In 2012, HBO’s The Newsroom opened with the iconic question, and Jeff Daniels delivered one of the most powerful monologues of all time, spouting off a massive list of things that are wrong with society in his tirade:
“There is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re seventh in literacy, twenty-seventh in math, twenty-second in science, forty-ninth in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies.
He wasn’t wrong.
America’s gloat, “We’re number one,” after being brainwashed with an oversized sense of American exceptionalism from childhood.
Fixing American Society
But the speech wasn’t all negative. He highlighted that at one time; America was the greatest country on Earth. We helped people, stood up for what was right, supported science and innovation, and cared about the world.
And we can achieve that again. Daniels finishes by saying:
“The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one—America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.”
But we can be.
Recognizing the Problem – Things that are Wrong with Society
As Daniels said, the first step to solving a problem is recognizing we have one. To do that, we’re highlighting some of the major things that are wrong with society.
We don’t claim to have all the solutions (though we’ll offer ideas when we have them – and hope that you do the same in the comments).
The goal is to get us all thinking about America’s problems and creative ways to get us back on track so that when we shout “We’re number one!” we’ll be right.
Here’s what’s wrong with society.
Celebrating Ignorance
Back when America really was the greatest country, we celebrated intelligence and innovation. The entire country backed the space program. We all celebrated vaccine innovations that wiped out childhood illnesses.
Our heroes were astronauts, teachers, physicists, and doctors, and we encouraged all our children to seek higher education.
At some point, the celebration of knowledge gave way to an intense backlash of anti-intellectualism. We no longer trust experts, believe watching a YouTube video counts as “doing research,” and give uninformed opinions just as much weight as peer-reviewed research.
Fixing a Culture of Ignorance
The wave of anti-intellectualism is a multifaceted problem with no simple solutions.
However, much of it stems from a belief that education is elitist. I believe that attitude developed due to school funding issues and the exorbitant cost of college education.
Poor students go to poor schools, where they receive subpar education, which limits their ability to go to college. Even if they rise to the challenge, they can’t afford the best universities.
We need to revamp our entire public education system to ensure every child has access. We also need to reduce the cost of college so that anyone with the aptitude can attend, regardless of their family’s financial situation.
Social Media
We can’t talk about the things that are wrong with society without discussing social media’s massive role in our downfall.
Although America was on the decline well before Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram hit the scene, it got exponentially worse after they appeared, and in more ways than one. It negatively impacts our mental health, harms our social development, decreases self-esteem, and makes it easier for nefarious characters to access victims.
However, the worst impact of social media is deliberate. Once algorithms hit the scene, social media companies learned what sells most: Rage.
Content designed to make you angry rose to the top of the feed, bombarding users with a constant barrage of resentment and hate. It worked as intended, keeping people glued to the platform and lining the company’s pockets with millions of dollars.
It also made society as a whole more hateful, angry, and fearful.
Can We Stop Social Media?
I don’t think we can put the social media genie back into the bottle. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything.
Governments should regulate social media. These companies shouldn’t be allowed to brainwash us with hatred and rage. In addition, parents need to educate their children on the dangers of social media use and limit their access.
But a lot of the problems with social media can be solved by fixing education. If we bring critical thinking back, people will be less susceptible to false narratives pushed by social media. They’ll read the article rather than sharing something based on a sensational headline. They’ll think about the content posted before reacting emotionally.
Corporate Influence on Government Policies
In recent decades, the government that was supposed to be of the people, by the people, and for the people morphed into one of big money, by big money, for big money at the expense of everyone else.
Lobbyists infiltrated every aspect of policy. They guide the law so it benefits them, caring little about the harm they cause to people as long as they can make a buck.
Some examples include Intuit’s corporate lobbying to prevent the IRS from producing free tax filing software, insurance companies lobbying against universal healthcare, and social media companies fighting to prevent any regulation that would save society by reducing their profits.
Our politicians sell out to the highest bidder, making life worse for all of us.
Ending Corporate Influence on Government
I don’t understand why corporate lobbying was ever legal. Why should a giant company that can afford a lobbyist have more influence on my representative than I do?
Though that’s been a problem for a while, the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling put one of the final nails in the coffin. The justices found that money equates speech, and it’s unconstitutional to put spending limits on privately funded political speech.
After the ruling, we saw a massive rise in “anonymous” Political Action Committees that could accept unlimited donations to push their message.
When money is speech, the people lose their voice. We need to rethink that ruling and find ways to prevent big money from taking over politics.
Opinions Masquerading as News
When a channel that calls itself a News channel wins a court case by claiming no reasonable viewer would take its host seriously, we have a problem.
Fox News did that after someone sued the network for slander after beloved host Tucker Carlson said horrible things about her.
The problem with their win is that Carlsen hosted a show on a News network. Millions of people watched his show, believing it was “news”.
But it’s not just Fox. The rise in cable TV gave way to 24-hour news networks, and executives had to fill them with something. Pundits wax poetic on all of these channels, presenting their opinions as fact to viewers who assume they’re actually getting news on a “news network.”
Bring Back Fairness
There’s a fairly simple solution. First, we should bring back the fairness doctrine, which mandated equal airtime to differing political viewpoints.
But we should also regulate news networks. If you’re calling yourself news, you need to broadcast news. If you want to stick with your pundits, call yourself an opinion channel.
General Pollution
We can’t talk about the things that are wrong with society without discussing pollution.
We are killing the planet and poisoning ourselves.
Plastics fill our oceans, killing sea creatures. Pesticides wreak havoc on our bodies and ecosystems. Air pollution is changing our climate – and not for the better.
To be fair, this one isn’t an American problem. It spans the entire industrialized world. In our never-ending quest for better tech, more convenience, luxury, and ever-increasing profits, we inadvertently destroyed the only thing keeping us alive: the planet.
Can We Reverse Course?
Doomers claim it’s too late to completely reverse the damage, but we can slow it down. Although massive corporations are the biggest culprits, they do what they do because we let them.
As consumers, we can decide not to support businesses that destroy the environment. We can eat less meat to reduce demand for cattle rangeland, which would help stop deforestation. We can choose paper over plastic and stop using energy-intensive technologies.
As a society, we can regulate air, water, and land pollution, and hold companies accountable for destroying the planet.
Religion in Politics
The Founding Fathers insisted on a separation between church and state, and for good reason. Religion restricts personal freedom, and when religious institutions gain power, they start to oppress those who don’t believe exactly what they want you to believe.
Today, we’re letting them. Religious groups are trying their hardest to turn our secular government into a theocracy, and pious voters are gleefully voting these folks into office.
What they don’t realize is that it won’t stop with the one or two religious laws they support. It starts with restricting one right and subjugating one group, but before long, everyone will be forced to go to church for 2 hours a day to listen to a “leader” claim his politics are godly while anyone who disagrees will face execution.
Yes, that’s hyperbole, but that’s the reason we have a separation of church and state in the first place. It’s a slippery slope that only leads to oppression.
Get Religion Out of Politics
Religion does not belong in politics. The First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees all people the freedom to believe as they wish, and we need to keep it that way.
We the People have the power to do it. I implore you to stop voting for politicians who want to impose their religious views on the rest of us.
I get it, you agree with their values, but stop for a moment and consider why that means everyone else should. Think for a moment how you would feel if a different religious group came into power and tried to impose its structure on you.
People Having Kids Who Shouldn’t
America’s birth rate is steadily falling, and pundits would have you believe that’s a bad thing.
It’s not.
Society’s insistence that everyone should parent leads to horrible parents who abuse their kids. These kids grow up with trauma and perpetuate the cycle of abuse.
Not everyone should have kids. If we stopped pushing parenthood on people who shouldn’t be parents, we’d have a happier, healthier populace.
The Toxic Work Culture
America’s profits-before-people-work culture is one of the biggest things wrong with society.
We toil for over 40 hours per week for paltry pay with few benefits and little protection. We can’t even get sick without risking our livelihoods.
The toxic work culture keeps people stressed out, poor, unhealthy, hopeless, and angry. It’s also one of the reasons people don’t want to have kids – they don’t have any time or money!
Yet instead of blaming the corporations that created this awful structure, we blame ourselves. We’ve been brainwashed to believe it’s our own fault we don’t make enough money to survive, or our neighbors’ fault we can’t get ahead.
Work Culture Shifts
To improve society, we must improve our work culture. A people-first system that encourages personal growth, wellness, work-life balance, and fair wages would work wonders.
And it can be done. In Europe, people don’t live to work. They work to live, getting upwards of 30 paid vacation days per month and unlimited time off when they’re sick. Nobody there has to choose between going to work with the flu (getting worse and spreading germs everywhere in the process) or staying home and recovering. They simply stay home because they won’t be punished for it.
There are lots of ways to improve our work culture, from implementing a 4-day workweek, reducing daily work hours, increasing minimum wage, mandating paid time off, and preventing companies from firing workers without cause.
We need to deprogram the “money is right” brainwashing to implement these policies.
Fearfulness
PeopleImages.com – Yuri A via Shutterstock.com.
America is a fearful society.
I bet you’re shocked at that statement. How can the country that went to the moon, fought for freedom, and defined innovation be fearful?
People with money aren’t fearful because they have something they can fall back on. But the vast majority of us are terrified of losing it all.
We fear failure because if we try something and fail, we risk falling into poverty. We fear diversity because our scarcity mindsets make us think there’s not enough to go around. We fear making a mistake at work because we might get fired, fear trying something new because we might get ridiculed, fear, fear, fear.
These fears manifest themselves in all sorts of ways. Our country bursts with xenophobia and misogyny. We build up massive egos to prevent our insecurities from showing. We play it safe, refusing to innovate or try new things.
From Fear to Confidence
We’re fearful because the powers that be like it that way. It keeps us fighting amongst ourselves for scraps and toiling away without complaint.
Shifting to a confident society wouldn’t make all these problems go away, but they would reduce them.
Doing so would take a massive cultural shift, and I’m not entirely sure how to achieve it other than by providing social safety nets to folks who take risks.
Toxic Masculinity and the Rise of “Men’s Rights”
Toxic masculinity and the Men’s Rights Movement are quickly rising as some of the top things that are wrong with society.
These ideas harm both men and women.
Toxic masculinity claims that there’s one (toxic) way to be a man, and anyone who doesn’t meet the standard is ridiculed as weak, lesser, or (gasp!) feminine. The ideas push boys into boxes, preventing them from experiencing the true breadth of human experience and forcing them to reject anything deemed “girly,” like having emotions, nurturing friendships, or showing empathy.
The Men’s Rights movement is a misnomer. I’m all for men’s rights, but the loose group of men’s rights advocates isn’t. Their only goal seems to be limiting the hard-fought gains women have made in the last few decades.
Men’s Rights groups seek to restrict women’s rights. The online echo chambers teach that women aren’t as capable as men, are only good for “one thing,” and should stay at home to raise children. Some even want to take away women’s right to vote.
Why the Backlash Against Women’s Rights?
To stop the backlash against women’s rights, we need to understand it.
Toxic masculinity plays a major role. It told men they must be “providers,” so when women were able to provide for themselves, the men who bought into their role were lost.
But the economic crisis we’re facing also plays a major, though less discussed, role. Historically, we tend to see a backlash against progressive policies during tough economic times.
To fix it, we need to fix the economy so it works for everyone.
All the Propaganda
Propaganda surrounds us. It attempts to sway our thinking in both mundane and critical ways.
And it works.
Propaganda made people think immigrants were eating pets, that women are happier when trapped in a marriage, that a 4-week-old pregnancy looks like a miniature infant, that Amazon is a great company, and that we invaded Iraq due to weapons.
The invasive messaging surrounds us, infiltrating nearly every aspect of our lives. Sometimes we’re not even aware it’s happening, but it’s working on our subconscious minds, slowly brainwashing us to believe the message of the day.
Can We Hope to Fix the Problems with Society?
Although I offered ideas to fix some of the things that are wrong with society, I’m at a loss for others.
And obviously, I can’t fix them alone.
But together, we can.
We can demand change. We can decide that we want a society that works for everyone, that we don’t want to be poisoned, that we deserve an equal say.
America may not be the best country in the world anymore, but if we fix some of these problems, it can be again.
What say you?