"Who Will Tell the People?"

Who Will Tell the People?

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: May 4, 2008, www.nytimes.com

Traveling the country these past five months while writing a book, I've had my own opportunity to take the pulse, far from the campaign crowds. My own totally unscientific polling has left me feeling that if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it's this: People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America.

They are not only tired of nation-building in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with so little to show for it. They sense something deeper — that we're just not that strong anymore. We're borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage — as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil.

Our president's latest energy initiative was to go to Saudi Arabia and beg King Abdullah to give us a little relief on gasoline prices. I guess there was some justice in that. When you, the president, after 9/11, tell the country to go shopping instead of buckling down to break our addiction to oil, it ends with you, the president, shopping the world for discount gasoline.

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents' generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: "You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years."

That's why Donald Rumsfeld's infamous defense of why he did not originally send more troops to Iraq is the mantra of our times: "You go to war with the army you have." Hey, you march into the future with the country you have — not the one that you need, not the one you want, not the best you could have.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York's Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.'s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore's ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children's play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin's luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.

How could this be? We are a great power. How could we be borrowing money from Singapore? Maybe it's because Singapore is investing billions of dollars, from its own savings, into infrastructure and scientific research to attract the world's best talent — including Americans.

And us? Harvard's president, Drew Faust, just told a Senate hearing that cutbacks in government research funds were resulting in "downsized labs, layoffs of post docs, slipping morale and more conservative science that shies away from the big research questions." Today, she added, "China, India, Singapore ... have adopted biomedical research and the building of biotechnology clusters as national goals. Suddenly, those who train in America have significant options elsewhere."

Much nonsense has been written about how Hillary Clinton is "toughening up" Barack Obama so he'll be tough enough to withstand Republican attacks. Sorry, we don't need a president who is tough enough to withstand the lies of his opponents. We need a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people. Any one of the candidates can answer the Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom. I'm voting for the one who can talk straight to the American people on national TV — at 8 p.m. — from the White House East Room.

Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.

I don't know if Barack Obama can lead that, but the notion that the idealism he has inspired in so many young people doesn't matter is dead wrong. "Of course, hope alone is not enough," says Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, "but it's not trivial. It's not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else."

It is especially not trivial now, because millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted — enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others. Look at the kids lining up to join Teach for America. They want our country to matter again. They want it to be about building wealth and dignity — big profits and big purposes. When we just do one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, said Shriver, "no one can touch us."

"I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him 'father'. "

The title quote is attributed to Will Rogers.

I don’t really know why the recent secession of Kosovo and the ensuing riotous Serbians have so fully captured my attention more so than the current political carnival occurring in my own backyard has been able to do thus far, yet ever since I awoke on the morning of February 17, 2008 I have been following the story adamantly. Perhaps it is the general excitement of a new country being formed and birthed while I am cognizantly aware of the positive and negative repercussions brought forward from the afterbirth.

In vein with that thought I am on the one hand extremely excited about this development in the world, this fresh blast of revolutionary air that has brought a purpose to many a stranded global soldier idling his days in the bases of Europe. Given a fresh perspective on life in former U.S.S.R. nations and the peoples wants and needs for a better way of life and taking these dreams by the reins and guiding them towards fruition.

On the other, it is a scary thing to witness- the separation of a state from its former country, the segregation and alienation of people who just the day before were countrymen. While seeing the immediate support of the US, the majority of the EU states, and few left-fielders (Turkey and Croatia) excites and intrigues me, the abrupt anger from Russia and lack of recognition from Cyprus, Greece, Spain and others interests me (as well as scares me a little). It is an exciting time we are living in, and I can only thrill that I am old enough, knowledgeable enough, and willing to pay attention to and follow the developments.

When the Cold War ended and the former Soviet Union dissipated I was all of 8 years old and cared only for the residual peace of Eternia and the autocratic government that Lion-O and his gang of feline friends were so ardently trying to establish on Third Earth. Real world politics hardly interested me. As former Yugoslavia fell apart I believe I was only vaguely aware of what was occurring in that far distant land, in countries that had no direct effect on my middle-class suburban upbringing. In 2003, when Yugoslavia officially disappeared from the map, I did not even know- so wrapped up was I in my time at UCI, dating, seeing shows, buying things; in other words, I was busy being twenty years of age.

In my selfish defense, I will say that Montenegro’s split in 2006 was something I was aware of, but not for standard reason of caring about the world. I was aware of it because of our Slavic hausfrau in Frankfurt whose family was currently living in what is now Montenegro. I’ll never forget that day I walked into the kitchen and saw Maria leaning against the kitchen sink, cell-phone in hand, with watery eyes and a distantly shocked smile. In our broken German she was able to tell me what had happened and I was able to understand the momentous occasion. For the first time in my life the goings-on in Eastern Europe affected me directly[1]. I suppose, looking back, that they have effected me all along; my dad being in the Air Force must have flown missions in Eastern Europe. My sisters and I have a sneaking suspicion that he had been to Russia in the 1980s, but this is still something he cannot honestly tell us. It has only come up in rummaging through old boxes and finding the odd Russian souvenir, Cyrillically scrawled notes dated from the early 80s, and one foggy mentioning of a winter’s eve on the streets of Moscow or St. Petersburg. Therefore, much of my childhood must have been directly aligned with the former USSR falling apart; where else would we have gotten those hand-carved and painted matryoshka dolls I so fondly remember stacking inside the other’s delicately crafted shell?

But ANYWAY, I’m wandering as I consider my own (as I’m now realizing) very Western/Eastern European upbringing. My point is, that day in June almost two years ago completely changed the way I look at the world. I had been susceptible to human suffering for sometime, been thinking about America’s effect on the world since I was in high school; but not until I actually lived elsewhere and met people from these fledgling countries clutching on the apron strings of the European Union, did I actually begin to think about them, and as Hannah Arendt said, “thinking itself is dangerous”, dangerously good.

It was in this thinking mode that I had begun to dissect the world as I knew it- pulling bits from all over the globe, places I had been, things I had seen, truths I had learned and fallacies I had realized. I began to weave these together and see, for the first time in my life, the interconnectedness of absolute being. It is a theme touched on by many a philosopher from David Loy to Daniel Altman, Ken Bell to Doctor Who; the idea that the smallest person matters, no matter how big or small[2]. Whether you write the next great American novel, or become president, or lead a revolution the size of Gambia, every single person on this planet is connected and matters in the grand scheme of things. Douglas Adams should essentially be credited as the first person to bring this idea to light in my previously pop-culturally obsessed head when he created the Earth as a massive computer and the humans populating this massive spinning hard-drive as the mere tools, the cogs and gears, working towards that final answer[3].

I once told a high school trigonometry class that we as a country are “overdue for a revolution”; a statement that they took at first to be overtly anarchic and a little atheistic, yet this is a sentiment I firmly believe. I believe that Americans as a people have gotten far too comfortable and therein lies our greatest weakness. We are growing fat off of this contentedness, slothful off of our past successes, weary to the world’s continual struggle as we exist inside this bubble of achievement given to us by a previous generation that is quickly becoming extinct, anaesthetized to the revolutionary fervor that runs through the veins of all mankind. We need a revolution, we need a riot, we need secession, and we need something to give this country life once again, something to which the up and coming class (of which I am a part) can take ownership of and be proud. To light, the closest I have seen to this in my adulthood years are the actions of people of the internet rising Anonymously to subvert the cult-like powers of Scientology. A small revolution when compared to the bravery of our grandfathers and forefathers, but a start, a positive start when taking into account the thousands of people worldwide who have contributed to the cause, nonetheless.

So back to Kosovo, this new nation born unto the world not five days ago, will it last? Will it succeed? Will it be absorbed back into the Slavic shelter of Serbia? Will civil war emerge? Will Russia make good on their threats (for fear of yet another round of post-Cold War separatism) and send Eastern Europe back into the spiraling shadows of struggle and smoke? How long will the UN aid Kosovo? How many more embassies will burn? How long with the EU continue to staff their police forces and government? What will happen? This is a very exciting time be to in, kids. That’s the only answer that currently seems acceptable. To paraphrase a sentiment I have heard many a time yet never fully understood until this past Sunday, “Ours is a very exciting time to be alive” and I could not agree more.

Americans, take note:

“What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”

-Thomas Jefferson

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[1] Maria quickly travelled to see her family and help them build a household in their new country, thus making way for Frau ----, the woman who accused me of stealing from the Langenbucher-Adolff family.

[2] It should be noted that Dr. Seuss will also be included on this list of philosophers who discussed the interconnectedness of being. See: Horton Hears a Who; specifically the line “a person’s a person, no matter how small.”

[3] Coincidentally, this answer is “42”, Sorry to ruin it.