Adapt or Die

Untitled

Adapt or Die

On December 19, 1998, the House of Representatives approved two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, accusing him of lying to a grand jury and obstructing justice. These articles grew not out of a matter of state, but out of a civil lawsuit filed against a single citizen, who happened to be the president.

On March 20, 2003, U.S.-led forces launched an unprovoked, pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. In the months between 9/11 and the invasion, the administration of George W. Bush bombarded the imagination of the American public with images of an Iraq bursting at the seams with weapons of mass destruction. Three days before the invasion, President Bush insisted there was "no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Today, after victory has been declared, and after this "victory" has disintegrated into a bloody insurgency with no foreseeable end, and after tens of thousands of coalition and Iraqi casualties, including civilians that we don't even bother to count, and after billions of dollars lost, and after a bitterly divided America and a steady erosion of America's credibility in the eyes of the world, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 has been proven.

Yet, not only was George Bush not impeached over the question of whether he lied his way into an unjustified war, but on November 2, 2004, over sixty million Americans voted him to a second term.

Sixty million. Even before the rest of us managed to lift our jaws off the floor, pundits began cranking out talking points to explain the support for the president and his war: Wartime presidents get re-elected . . . Fighting terrorism abroad makes Americans feel safer at home . . . This is a noble war to "spread freedom," and therefore worth the cost in American lives and wealth.

I'd like to add another possibility to the mix - that voting against the president would be admitting that the invasion of Iraq was wrong, and to many, many Americans, such an admission is simply not possible. To these Americans, this brutal, grisly war must be just because the alternative is unthinkable.

America is a great nation. Our passion for freedom and our compassion for human beings everywhere are without equal. Or so we'd like to believe. But this belief in our own greatness is what makes it so difficult for many Americans to admit to great wrongs, such as the current Iraq war, the first Iraq war, the invasions of Panama and Grenada, and Vietnam.

If we can't admit to being wrong, we can never change our direction. We will continue to "stay the course," blundering our way into more Iraqs, more Vietnams, and more horrors.

I've Got Mine

Our wars and the reasons for them are not the only ugly realities that we have difficulty admitting to and therefore doing something about. That 45 million Americans have no health insurance is a shameful reality in a great and wealthy nation. Why don't we fix it?

You don't fix what isn't broken - that's the answer many Americans give. America has the greatest health care system the world has ever seen. Tinkering with it might ruin it for everyone.

America certainly has the most expensive health care system in the world. According to the World Health Organization's World Health Report for 2004, Americans spent more money per capita on health care in 2001 than any other country on earth. In that same year, the U.S. government spent more on health care per-capita than all but two of the 192 governments listed in the report.

But for all the money we spend on health care, the following U.S. rankings cited in the same World Health Report indicate that something is seriously wrong:

26th in life expectancy (2002)
29th in Healthy Life Expectancy, right after Slovenia (2002)
32nd in infant mortality, tied with Cyprus, Cuba, and Croatia (2000)

By the way, Canada - whose single-payer system Americans love to look down on - ranks 9th, 11th, and 13th, respectively.

These are disturbing statistics for the world's greatest and most expensive health care system. An inefficient system such as ours that also excludes 45 million Americans from coverage clearly is broken and needs fixing. But first we must acknowledge that the system is badly flawed, and then we must be willing to change it. Voters have never demonstrated much of a will to do so.

As great a nation as America is, we have flaws that keep us from becoming an even greater one. Some of our most serious flaws are in our political system. Until we are willing to address the flaws in the way we govern ourselves, other flaws, even if we can bring ourselves to acknowledge them, will be difficult or impossible to fix.

The Winner Loses

One flaw became painfully obvious after the presidential election of 2000 - the Electoral College. There is no fairer political principle than One Person, One Vote. Why do we abandon that principle when it comes to electing someone to the highest office in the land?

The Electoral College is an easy fix - abolish it. No one will miss it except those who believe the Electoral College somehow gives their vote an edge over yours and mine. If we don't have the will to implement the eminently fair One Person, One Vote rule in presidential elections, how can we find the will to fix more difficult problems with our political system?

Money and Politics

Such as the influence of money on the political process. Money equals access. The more money you have and are willing to spend on political campaigns and lobbyists, the more access to politicians you are likely to have, and therefore, the more opportunity to convince them that your own self-interests are actually the nation's interests.

As the late Senator Paul Wellstone said, "The people of this country, not special interest big money, should be the source of all political power." Who can imagine that the Founding Fathers intended it to be otherwise? But the reality today is that money fuels political power. As Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia put it:

It is money, money, money! Not ideas, not principles, but money that reigns supreme in American politics.

Remove money from the equation and political power shifts from the wealthy minority back to the people. Remove money from the equation and real change becomes possible.

But we have let ourselves be deceived that buying face time with politicians is a form of free speech, protected by the First Amendment. And what right is more cherished than our right to free speech, which so many Americans have fought and died for?

And so, money remains the driving force in the political process. Although this ugly reality benefits just a small minority of Americans, at great cost to the majority, and although the majority of Americans has the power to change it, we choose not to. Evidently, the art of managing a democracy is in convincing a majority of people to act against their own best interests.

You Decide

Willingness to acknowledge wrongs. Willingness to change. Without these abilities, a society can't grow. It can only stagnate, and ultimately, die.