What happened on election day 2016?

What’s Going On?

I’ve never been more saddened and ashamed of an election result than I was two weeks ago.  It didn’t make any sense to me how someone, let alone millions of people, could support such a candidate.  We heard explanations from all sides about how nobody saw this coming and how this actually ended up happening.  We’ve seen analysis blaming Fox News, liberal millennials, the democratic party, the KKK, the Alt-Right and many more.  But I posit that we ALL need to take a look in the mirror and see what’s really happening in our communities, country and world.  We need to take a look back into history and see that the assumptions that we make about human nature itself are flawed and even toxic to a way forward from this calamitous election.  Finally, I think we missed an opportunity.  Yes, Fox News and other corporate media is to blame.  Yes the democrats are to blame.  Yes our arrogance and comfort are to be blamed, but ultimately I will argue that this is an inevitable result of history and culture coming together.

If it wasn’t the star of the Apprentice in this recent election it would’ve been another.  Populism is quickly gaining ground, capitalism’s failings are being felt through democracy all over the world, but what is the solution?

I would propose that the solution is instilling a true sense of compassion, empathy, justice and love in all of us.  We’ve missed that.  Our society is shamefully individualistic and there are those that propose more of that is the solution, but that would actually only separate us more.  We can’t be a “United” States when we are all our own mini-state.  We are no longer “united” in any true sense of the word and I propose that our separation of society into political parties, economics, sports, arts, sciences and other entities indeed is what is killing our society.  We need to foster an appreciation for being human and what that means.  Our culture today divides us into nationalities, races, religions and other labels that only make it too easy to vilify one of these groups that ironically do the same in return.  

We have a President-Elect who offers fear.  He offers who is to be blamed for the problems that many in this land face, when the fact of the matter is we need a collective and critical look in the mirror in order to solve the collective cultural problem that engulfs our world today.  I will give many explanations and culprits, and even a few proposals... but ultimately we need to figure out what we want this world to be.

So how did this happen?  How could he possibly have been elected in the United States?  Here we go…  

Part 1 > The System

Culprit #1 - Everyone’s favorite guilty party > The Media

Don’t blame the poor journalists.  I feel bad for them, I really do.  It’s not their fault, it really isn’t.  I’m giving the benefit of the doubt here to most journalists that they are stuck within a system of profit and not actual news delivery for public good.  The fact that the media has massive corporate ownership whose main interest is making a profit is the major problem.  In and of itself, making a profit isn’t bad, but it certainly is when there is a larger responsibility to deliver critical and relevant news to the public.  So long as the media has its corporate owners they will deliver only “news” and programs that will generate viewership, thus profit.  Therefore, if you follow the logic of the system, the journalists who are supposed to be the experts on challenging power and delivering fact based analysis to inform the public will only be allowed to air “news reports” that will obtain viewers.  This has been calamitous as people no longer choose which analysis of the facts to watch or inform them, but now the facts themselves are up for debate.  Facts are no longer facts and analysis is too predictable.  Breaking News flashes across the screen constantly and when a pop star puts on too much weight or gets a tattoo on their neck a panel of 4 “experts” is put together to discuss whether or not this was a good choice.  

The media will undoubtedly fail if they are corporate owned and if the newscasts are 24/7. There is not always breaking news.  But so long as they need viewers they will manufacture “news” to be watched.  It has gotten to the point where many have their own preferred cable news networks, not based upon the analysis, but the distortion of the facts.  There’s no doubt that Fox News has made this into an art and succeeded.  Study after study shows that Fox News watchers are actually less informed than people who don’t watch any news!

This study conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University from 2012 actually reveals that you would know more about the domestic policy if did nothing rather than watched Fox News.  Unsurprisingly, NPR and the Sunday morning programs created the most informed, but Sunday morning show ratings are sadly much lower than nightly news programs on Fox.  

When it came to foreign policy Fox didn’t do any better.  The lefty version of Fox, MSNBC now actually joined Fox as having their viewers less educated than those who didn’t watch any news.  Here, the Daily Show was actually in 2nd place behind NPR.   

NPR was recently rated as the 2nd most trusted news source in the USA according to Pew, but only 53% of respondents had ever heard of it.  All 3 major corporate owned outlets (CNN, MSNBC and Fox) were heard of by well over 90% of respondents.  A television version of NPR could be greatly advantageous to the public good, but it’s much easier to get funding donations for a radio channel than a national news network.  And thus the rub, those that can make money and do, actually make our national discussion worse.  

Solutions?

So what do we do? There seems to be no public outrage or political will to change anything in the media.  Any action has to be taken very carefully in the order to protect freedom of the press, but there are many ideas and solutions that could be useful.  

First, limiting corporate ownership of media is one option that the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has done.  The problem is that their “regulations” have been more catering to the corporate ownership than actually limiting massive corporations from owning media outlets all over the country.  Fewer than 1% of the renewal petitions for licensing are not immediately granted.  The FCC, an independent government agency, has sadly become a bit of a rubber stamp of former board members of corporations involved in the media market.  In 1980, 90% of media were owned by 50 different companies, today that number has shrunk to 6.  There are only 6 companies that own 90% of the media outlets in this country.  Those 6 massive companies are Comcast, Disney, Fox, Time Warner, CBS and Viacom.  There is virtually nothing aired on television that is not owned by one of these 6 massive conglomerates.  This dramatically limits the “marketplace of ideas” and replaces that with the pure profit motivation.  Therefore, the History Channel in no way reflects actual history that a proper historian would teach, but reality television that has no relation to the teaching and learning of history now dominates the station with “Ice Road Truckers” and show of the like.  Breaking up these 6 and having the FCC make more stringent restrictions on media ownership would go a long way, but wouldn’t in itself be enough.  

An even better solution would be to ban advertising during news programming.  Therefore you could take away the profit motive behind airing the news.  This would be a difficult task, because you’d have to define “news programming” and you’d have a freedom of speech issue, but good quality news programming is so critical to a functioning Republic that it is worth “limiting” advertising speech during news programming for at least certain times during the evening when people watch news.

Two other worthwhile potential solutions could be mandatory media education classes in schools and exploring the possibility of an American version of the BBC, in other words a publicly funded news channel dedicated to serving the public interest.

Culprit #2 - The Democratic Party

“Why are the democrats so bumfuzzled?” - Danny Kincannon

“If liberals are so fuckin’ smart, why do they lose so goddamn always?” - Will McAvoy

In all honesty I am not a big fan of Hillary Rodham Clinton.  Don’t get me wrong, she would be an infinitely better choice for President than the President-Elect, but she should not have been nominated by the democrats in the first place.  There were so many better candidates, but it always seemed inevitable that she was going to win.  Why was this?  A candidate like Elizabeth Warren or the obvious alternative from the campaign, Bernie Sanders, would’ve appealed to many of the white, non-college educated voters that voted for the President-Elect.  The data is still inconclusive, but it doesn't appear most of them voted for Trump because they loved him or because he was racist, but because he seemed to speak to their experience of life in 21st century America.  Most assuredly, Secretary Clinton did not.  She was a flawed candidate, people simply do not like her.  Fair or unfair, and I think it’s mostly unfair, she should not have been nominated.  But the arrogance of the Democratic National Committee at thinking she’d roll to victory is now biting them, the entire country and world in the butt.  Many saw this coming, why didn’t the DNC?  Oh yea, don’t forget all those corporate donors that propped up her campaign when many of us were feeling the Bern.  Oh, what might have been?

Part 2: “You can’t eat freedom”

Culprit #3 > Rugged Individualism/Ayn Rand/Libertarianism

“The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.” - Kaiser Sose

Herbert Hoover consistently ranks in the bottom 10 of historians “Worst Presidents of all time.”  One of his major tenets was known as “rugged individualism” and it is a cancer that still plagues  our society.  

Life is a team sport.  We need support and help from those around us and to instead isolate ourselves within a society and make it every person for themselves will inevitably destroy a society.  People will start to live in a more and more competitive world and contrary to popular belief it hasn’t always been that way.  Competition is not the natural way of life.  Cooperation is.  Human beings have lived on this planet for 200,000 years mostly as hunters and gatherers and in that sort of culture cooperation is key to survival.  Competition in those days would have led to our early extinction.  Yet a belief persists that it is human nature that we are self interested and competitive.  I would argue that it only appears that way because we live in a culture that brings out the worst in all of us.  Our culture that is based upon consumption and materialism offers us many social ills that our hunter and gatherer ancestors would have never imagined.  Let’s be clear, this IS NOT HUMAN NATURE, it is a product of the society which we have created over the past 10,000 years since the Agricultural Revolution and has only intensified since the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century and the current Technological Revolution that we are living through.   

The embrace of rugged individualism as a “good” thing is what has really corrupted our society.   Once we begin to think that evil things actually don’t exist, or worse, that they are not in fact evil, our society has reached the edge of the cliff.  This is the point we’ve reached with so many in the millennial generation embracing Libertarianism.  I understand the pull of it, I really do.  However, it will only pull us further apart as a society and will not create any sense of unity as we each work only for our own interests.

Culprit #4 > Corporatism & Free Trade

The President Elect greatly appealed to folks in former industrial cities and regions.  These were mostly non-college educated whites whose families had typically worked in the regional or local industry.  However, as the neo-liberal idea of free trade and deregulation grew momentum since the late 1970’s this particular group of former industrial workers have been particularly vulnerable to the “new world economy.”   These ideas gathered even more momentum with the elections of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and the eventual collapse of the USSR.  Even communist China jumped on board with this new version of capitalism that in essence greatly benefitted the massive international corporations and those already with capital and eviscerated the workers in the industrial world.  

Free Trade, like most things, isn’t bad in and of itself.  As with most things it is how the agreement is structured.  The ideas behind free trade are simple: 1.) A country can’t produce everything it wants or needs, so it needs to trade.  2.) If a country has an advantage in producing a certain product, they should focus there and sell it to the world.  Granted, that is oversimplified, but that is the basis of the argument from economists like David Ricardo.  However, Ricardo was also clear that you can’t restrict the mobility of workers if you’re not going to restrict the mobility of jobs and capital.  

Free trade deals such as NAFTA, CAFTA and the proposed TPP allow jobs and capital to move freely, but the modern day borders we have restrict the mobility of the worker.  Problem #1 is that the worker benefits much less than the capital (corporation).  Yes, some poor countries do get better more higher paying jobs, but this is not nearly a unanimous positive effect.  Culture is eroded and replaced by the aforementioned competitive individualism and typically the workers taking the newly created jobs have no protections that workers in industrialized countries enjoy.  This is the main reason that moving jobs to China, Mexico or Bangladesh is so cheap, because their workers typically have no protections or benefits that a worker in the USA or the UK may enjoy.  Therefore, unions are weakened in the industrialized nations and there are typically no workers unions (at least not nearly as strong) in the developing countries that absorb these jobs.  

Ok, deep breath.  Here’s how this has led to the President-Elect.  Former industrial towns and regions in this country are struggling to a significantly large degree.  No jobs replaced the jobs that were lost.  People were forced to leave their roots and move or turn to worse paying jobs and rely on government benefits.  In many communities drug abuse and addiction has skyrocketed and crime has risen.  In short, the people in these communities have been the victims of free trade over the past 30-40 years.  Their quality of life has clearly declined there seems to be no hope in places like Erie, Flint, Youngstown, Detroit, or Grand Rapids.   

In what seemingly was a last-ditch effort these forgotten people of the modern Corporatist economy have turned (understandably) towards populism, and as Donald Trump was the only one speaking to their issues (see Dems, you should have nominated Sanders) they turned not to racism and xenophobia, but any last hope of “making America great again.”  

Sure, the privileged college educated individual might rightly respond, “When was this time that American was so great?”  I’m sure different people supporting the President-Elect would answer different ways, but essentially they’re looking for that time when they could live a comfortable middle class life where their children would get similar opportunities that they had.  However, as those jobs were outsourced in the name of economic freedom and growth they have realized that you indeed can’t eat freedom.  Secretary Clinton didn’t offer much hope to those who were hopeless.  In fact, none of the other Republican nominees did either.  A group that the privileged have over-looked (for the record Bernie Sanders never did) swayed the election hoping beyond hope for some hope.   

Conclusion

There are many more culprits including our education system, the rise of social media and the new en vogue denial of science on both ends of the spectrum; however, these four culprits are some of the main reasons that I see that explain the rise and election of the President-Elect.  In my view, we need wholesale change in our culture.  People need to work less and love more.  We need to actively work to create equality, not more competition between our world’s citizens.  We need to rethink the idea of the state and how it divides our world.  Most importantly, we need to correctly identify the biggest problems in our world and actively act to solve them.  Most of us are too busy to do such a thing, but we can’t let the immediate drown out the important.  

Open Letter to Republican Presidential Candidates

Dear Republican Presidential Candidates (except Gov. Kasich),

I am a middle school social studies teacher, and you are making my job harder than ever.  In schools across the world teachers are trying to teach their students to be decent human beings to each other and value education.  You are making that job harder.  You are daily on the news acting like children, showing no value for facts, bullying each other, and plainly acting worse than little children I see on the playground.  How has this happened?  I know that recent political elections and debates haven’t lived up to the Lincoln-Douglas debate by any means, but there was always some sense of decency amongst the candidates.  Now, however, you have stooped to the lowest level I have seen in my lifetime, and it is hard to educate children while you are dominating the national consciousness.  

I know the biggest problem, we all do if we’re honest with ourselves.  None of you are blameless, but you, Mr. Trump, are the most to blame.  You have treated facts as jokes.  You have riled up your supporters behind blatantly racist ideas calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, when in fact the FACT is that a lower percentage of  Mexican immigrants commit crimes than do white American born people.  You have called for the banning of Muslim immigrants to our shores and mentioned that you thought it was a good idea to force Muslim-Americans to have identification cards.  I thought for sure when you said this, that your numbers would tumble and you would shamefully remove yourself from the race with an apology.

Astonishingly, the opposite happened, you refused to apologize and this shockingly emboldened your supporters and amazingly your poll numbers went up.  How? Why?  These are a few of the many questions that I struggle with on a daily basis.  How has such a large number of citizens from my beautiful home country supported such an openly xenophobic and racist candidate?  How can I possibly educate the youth of America and the world while we watch you being so outwardly rude, disrespectful, racist and hateful?  How can we encourage and inspire the youth of America to be the best that they can be when you represent the worst that America has to offer?  Mr. Trump you are a disgrace to America and what she stands for, but you clearly have not done this alone.  

Senator Rubio and Senator Cruz, you had and still have an opportunity.  You have mostly squandered it by playing the silly game that Mr. Trump started.  You didn’t have to play his game, but you looked at polls and clearly decided that the only way to win was to jump in the same mud pile he was living in and wrestle with the beast.  You could have and still can take the high road.  You have to immediately and unequivocally denounce his racist and xenophobic threats.  You have a chance to redefine the Republican Party and redefine the shape of presidential debates in America, but you have to care about more than just winning.  If all you want to do is get elected (and I understand that motivation) then you, and America will lose.  You can’t out con a conman.  You can’t win if you play by his rules, but America still can.  You have a lot of options available to you, but being President is not one of them.  Your diving into the fight with Mr. Trump makes my job as a teacher infinitely harder.  When the leaders of a country act as you and Mr. Trump are, kids see it and take it to heart.  Where are the role models that I can point my students to within government?  Where are the Lincolns, Roosevelts and Oliver Wendell Holmes in today’s Republican Party?  They’re clearly not running for President.  

Governor Kasich, thank you.  I can often point my students towards you as a reasonable man who genuinely has the best interests of his country in mind.  But often my students say, “but he’s losing?”  I know you are losing the battle, but you’re winning the war.  It may not look like it now, but you are.  

 

Mr. Trump, Sen. Cruz and Sen. Rubio, I end my letter by pleading with you.  Make our job easier.  It is never easy to teach the youth of the world and encourage them to be the best that they can be, but it makes our job all that harder when they see “adults” trying to be the leader of their country being the worst of themselves, and sirs, I’m sorry to say, but that is exactly what you’re doing right now.  

With Hope,

Bryan Rusin

  

I still remember...

I remember it like it was yesterday.  My students weren’t even born.  

I was getting ready to take my first test of my junior year in college and turned on CNN.  What?!?!? A helicopter had flown into the World Trade Center?  Or at least that was the first guess.  Then, it happened.  Live on television the second plane flew into the second tower of the World Trade Center, and fear filled the nation, the world and my heart.  

Nothing like this had ever been imagined.  If you would’ve have wanted to make a Hollywood film about something like this, you’d have been laughed out of the room because it was such a preposterous suggestion.  Yet now, we were all watching it live on television.  It was not a movie, it was real.  

What gives me more sadness then remembering that horrible day is what has happened since.  Fourteen years ago I had never seen more unity in America and the world.  Over 1 million Iranians took the streets in Tehran to voice their support for our country in our time of need.  Everyone rallied behind the United States and there was a sense of brotherhood as I haven’t seen since.  

But fourteen short years later the reality saddens me.  The United States is now more ideologically divided than anytime since the Civil War.  We are still fighting wars that few American citizens seem eager to end.  The American government is still keeping 28 pages of the 9-11 report secret, so survivors, family members and American citizens still don’t have the truth. Furthermore, it has been almost impossible to get the American Congress to pass the now famous “First Responders Bill” made notorious now by Jon Stewart’s activism.  Add to this Congress’s lack of ability to provide body armor and proper healthcare for the veterans returning from the two wars began by the US. And fourteen short years after this horrible tragedy world polling shows that over 70% people in the world think that the USA is the “biggest threat to world peace.”  

How has this happened?  How did we squander this opportunity?  How have we become so divided?

It’s easier than ever to not pay attention to the problems in the world.  Distraction and escapism in the form of reality TV, manufactured news and busyness do a great job of keeping people ignorant about truly significant events.  I hope we can all agree that war and supporting the first responders and veterans is more significant than reality TV and fantasy football… but that’s a hard message to sell to modern America.  

I understand how much easier it is in this world to be ignorant to the reality.  But, it in no way is helpful to only remember tragedy once a year and to forget the daily tragedy so many live in.  To forget the Syrian refugees or half of the world that daily lives in poverty is not helpful, but only continues the trend of apathy and ignorance all too apparent in our world today.

Modern culture has the capability to enable activism or to infantilize us…  We all make our choice.  

Part 2: What was it like when I was my students' age...

Finding Answers… War is Over?

            A few weeks ago my 10^th year as a teacher ended.  I began thinking about my life when I was in 8^th grade, the current age of my students.  I was amazed at how much had changed in twenty years.  AOL was new cutting edge technology.  Now every one of my students has a smart phone, laptop and Ipad.  It boggles my mind; even my 11 year old nephew has an Iphone!  I was still trying to figure out Nintendo at that age.  I can’t imagine what middle school would have been like with that technological access.  In part 1 of this blog I talked about how the movies of Top Gun and Rocky IV were formative to my naïve view of the world as a middle schooler.  I grew up believing many simplistic notions, such as:

·      War did not happen again after WW2

·      America was not only good, but helped the little guy.

·      America = good, Russia = bad

·      Life was good, for everyone.  Everyone had it as easy as me.

·      Racism was something of the past that was now gone.

As a 14 year old, I had so many questions that were awakened in my mind by the beginning of the Gulf War and seeing the film, Forrest Gump.  The first of these was the erroneous symbiotic beliefs that war wouldn’t ever happen again after WW2 and that America always made good moral decisions, or more simply, America = good. 

When the Gulf War began in 1990, it was explained to me that a small defenseless country that I’d never heard of, Kuwait, had been invaded by a greedy, power hungry, dictator next door named Saddam Hussein.  This made sense to my mind.  America was good and helping the little guy from a bully.  The war seemed to be a quick success.  Iraq, led by their “evil dictator” was defeated swiftly and the threat to our friends in the Middle East was ended.  I found that this made me proud as a young American. Here we are being a peace maker and putting the bully in his place.  The one thing that confused me, was the fact that this “evil bully,” Saddam Hussein, was still allowed to be the leader/dictator of Iraq.  I wondered, if he was so bad, why would he be allowed to stay in power?  My mind was taught to be simplistic, but I was starting to ask questions.

Eventually I got to college and revisited this question and what I found out shocked me!  First, Kuwait was actually slant drilling Iraq’s oil.  In other words, they were illegally stealing oil from Iraq.  While it is true that the border is pretty porous between the two countries, this practice understandably infuriated Iraq, as their main income was from oil profits.  Secondly, Kuwait was deliberately flooding the market with oil in order to drive the price down.  This too infuriated Saddam.  While his invasion was fool-hearty at best, his invasion was not totally unjustified, and it was clear that it wasn’t just a bully picking on a little guy.  Kuwait was not being a good neighbor.  Ultimately, the US didn’t get involved to defend the little guy, as I was led to believe, they were primarily concerned with the stability of their oil imports from Kuwait and especially worried about any incursion into Saudi Arabia, one of the largest oil suppliers in the world.

Now, however, more bothersome questions arose.  Why are we supporting and defending a country that was breaking international laws on slant drilling?  Why are we supporting the House of Saud and their dictatorship in Arabia?  Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow women to drive or have any equal rights to men, they allow no freedom of the press and are one of the few countries to not sign the UN Declaration of Human Rights.  Why would we be so cozy with them?  This confused me.  How could we so strongly support a country that was so clearly against the principles we claimed to represent?  The answer really disturbed me, it was one word that I was slowly beginning to realize ran the world.  Money.

Over time I came to the realization through my teenage years that my assumption that war was over was naive and completely wrong.  The Gulf War was just the tip of the iceberg for me.  I began to realize that our military wasn’t on vacation since 1945, but had been deeply involved throughout the world and was stationed in countries all over the globe.  In my formative years (the 1990’s) the United States was involved in conflicts in Somalia, Haiti and The Balkans; yet shockingly absent from even trying to stop the most rapid genocide in history in Rwanda. 

When I was my students’ age, I believed that war ended with WW2 and that America’s actions were always good.  At first, the answers to the questions I asked didn’t make sense to me and I didn’t like them.  But then I realized that no nation or country is more morally superior to any other.  They are all stuck in the Machiavellian world of making decisions based upon survival of the state.  The ultimate goal is to keep power and to expand it, because the belief is; if we don’t, they will.  The “they” is always changing however.  It used to be the Soviets.  Now it is the Chinese or the Islamic fundamentalists, or any of the dozens of other groups mainstream America demonizes.  But there is always a “they.”  And sadly we try to keep this view that “we are better” alive.  I started realizing when I was about my students’ age that this is a myth.  War is a constant in the world and we choose sides not based on morality or Human Rights, but on what will keep us powerful.  It has been a sad realization…

Next time: Racism and race relations….

The election is over... Thank God!

The election is over.  The expected happened.  The sitting President's party typically loses Congress in the last two years of his term.  The American electorate is a bit fickle, but the real issue is the lack of real options to choose from and the lack of a real debate.  Where was the discussion of "climate change" and "immigration" and wars we continue to fight?  Where is the discussion of the issues really affecting people?  Instead we heard the same old negative rhetoric with the same talking points that lack any real nuanced discussion.    

The big issue NEVER discussed that leads such a great country to silliness every two years is “campaign finance reform!”  Very few elected representatives talk about this.  I get it.  The typical thinking on the Hill is that you do what you need to do to get elected and then you can do something.  But the problem then becomes our elections are turned into a “game” of electing representatives, rather than electing the person with the best ideas. 

People are already limited enough by the two-party system.  But now in order to be elected you have to raise hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars to even have a chance.  When will public campaigns without paid advertisements and multiple public forum debates occur?  America is better than this.  And now, we’ve gotten so used to the silliness of our elections and campaigns that the majority of eligible voters do not even vote! 

The system needs to change.  Too many people don’t care and are not given a reason to.  The negative campaigning and lack of real discussion of the issues has continued to make the American election an embarrassment to the world and not what they should be, which is a model of what a Republic could be.   

Trim the Fat

Spending time living in a tiny, flat coral atoll on the other side of the world has really given me a new perspective and eliminated old assumptions I used to hold about humanity.  It has allowed both Janae and I to take an outsiders glimpse at a unique culture and gain a new paradigm on the lives we lived back in America.  We have come to the realization that whenever we do return to America we need to “trim the fat” on our lives a bit.  It is refreshing to live in a culture where little or no stress exists.  That is not to say life is easy here in the Marshalls, quite the contrary for many of the Marshallese people, but the outward ease at which daily life is led is so refreshing.  We also continually witness a value on being outdoors and enjoying what nature has to offer, there is almost no time when you will not see Marshallese people enjoying the beautiful weather the Pacific has to offer.  And finally, we have come to fully see the distractions of life in America that even the keenest of American observers do not notice in the States. 

            For many Marshallese life is not "easy."  It is estimated that the unemployment rate is somewhere just north of 50% and the poverty rate is probably higher.  These are estimates since it is quite difficult to gain accurate statistics in such an isolated country and one with a dramatically different culture in which modern western economic statistics often do not apply.  The real tragedy is that of the positives that modern culture has brought to the Marshalls among them is not the eradication of a subsistence lifestyle.  Since the introduction of a cash economy many people, mostly of the lower ri-jerbal class, have been dislocated from society and in a poor country have sadly been left to languish and introduce new problems of suicide, alcoholism and domestic violence into this beautiful nation.  Despite these economic and social catastrophes that have occurred value for the small moments in life and the here and now has not been lost upon the Marshallese.  True, there are monumental problems facing a new generation of Marshallese, but solutions to the aforementioned issues in a "modernizing" Marshall Islands will need to be found amongst the people of the Marshall Islands and not from the outside agencies (IMF, Asian Development Band and the American government) who claim to have the economic solutions for this tiny country.  The true issue here is the disconnection of a people from their land and a new value upon the almighty dollar.  Although this new Marshallese society is based upon the dollar, people are so eager not to lose their Marshallese identity and zest for the little things in life. 

            This zest transforms well into the children of the Marshall Islands.  As I am writing this it is 7:00 am in the morning and there are children beginning to come out to the field and basketball court here at school and begin their task for the day, which is playing.  It is refreshing to see kids out playing so much here in the Marshalls.  I remember back in the States always seeing so many unused or underused playgrounds and fields having been exchanged for the comforts of modern society.  In either a heated or cooled indoor space kids would be utilizing facebook, video games or television, is where too many children of the modern world spend their days.  In the Marshalls older brothers and sisters are to look after the younger ones and all day long the kids PLAY!  While there is a noticeable lack of adult supervision at almost all times which does lead some kids down dangerous roads, the opposite of helicopter worry warts that are prevalent in modern America is also just as damaging.  Kids have to grow up all too early in the Marshalls, but it may beat the generation of Americans who were so sheltered and spoiled that they never grew up. 

            In America it is so easy to just get rid of something that is broken or to waste things.  Water is free and clean, goods are cheap and productive, but that is not the case here in Majuro.  I never really knew how wasteful I was until I came to a place that simply can't afford to waste.  First off, things are really expensive here, so you can't just "go buy a new one." (On average a box of Cherrios costs over $8.00.)  Secondly, there is one tiny garbage dump on an island of just over 3 square miles with more than 20,000 people.  The dump is continually overflowing into the ocean, but there's really no room or to build another one.  The influx of modern goods with all its cans and wrappers and plastics have really done in the beauty of this once pristine corner of the world.  Our two amazing "fix it" men at Coop School, Walton and Manuel, will fix anything.  When we first got here we had a badly broken futon in our apartment and were hoping they could help us dump it.  Instead, they fixed it.  Then it broke again this year and this time they made a major fix that now has it better than new. 

            A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to fly back to Chicago for my best friends wedding and despite the difficulties that jet lag posed flying both ways, it was a fantastic weekend to see so many friends, family and celebrate a magnificent event.  Living in the Marshall Islands and then taking a 3-day break in Chicago really helped me notice the stark contrast in life and culture here in the Marshalls and in modern America.    For the few days that I was home I felt bombarded by advertisements and businesses, two things I am relatively immune to in Majuro.  At home some company was always trying to convince me that I needed their stuff, and I never really noticed how prevalent it was until I was removed from that situation.  Just the way that news reports, sports highlights and mundane commercials were delivered irked me.  I hadn't been inundated with it lately that I was able to see it as an outsider for what it is, polished well-delivered drivel.  It didn't seem like anyone believed or bought what they were selling, but wanted to sell it for some unknown reason.  From the local news having two well made up minorities delivering "sad" news of murder on the south side that they clearly couldn't care less about to Al Michaels's promo for the "War of 1812" that was taking place between Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck in Indianapolis.  All the glitz and glamour surrounding everything seemed so meaningless and empty it would have been comical if it weren’t so sad. 

            I love the city of Chicago and I have many cherished friends and family there, but what I always notice when I am there is how busy everyone is.  It is difficult to find a simple hour to spend time with some of my closest friends.  That is never the case here in Majuro.  Everyday me and my closest friends make time to check in with each other and see how our days were.  We play basketball, go for runs, play cards, share a meal or a beer and truly spend quality time together in meaningful conversation.  Nothing is rushed and nobody ever says, "I don't have time."  There's always time, nobody is ever in a rush or late.  It is impossible to be late in Majuro.  As much as I am a person who is always on time, I appreciate the laid back and stress free atmosphere that I now live in.  It seems that all too often in modern America people just don't have time for anything... 

            I love the country of my birth and I love the country I currently reside in.  When we go back to America in the future we will take these lessons we have learned.  Living in a 400 sq ft. apartment with no TV and a lousy Internet connection has forced us to spend more time together, to read more book and to be better people.  When we return home we'll have to “trim the fat” of things that just get in the way in America.  The things we now live without aren't a struggle, but in turn make us lead more significant lives.  We know how to get on without cable TV, a car or clean water.  We appreciate more and more the beauty of the world around us and we will spend as much time as possible living in that nature and not in temperature controlled rooms.               

Why I don't want to be successful...

It seems that our society is more stressed out, fearful and polarized than it ought to be.  Let’s be honest, there was no “good ol’ days.”  There was no time that was perfect or even that much better than our current time, but there was a time when it seems people appreciated the little things more and took more time to live.  Businesses used to be closed on Sundays, employers used to leave their employees alone at home and people were able to enjoy time away from work.  Today it seems that so many people are caught in jobs they do not enjoy with not enough time to create positive thriving relationships with those around them.  People are too busy and lose their perspective way too easily.  I know too many people who didn’t know quite what they were getting into when they accepted a job out of college and now they just can’t find a way to really do what they once wanted to. 

I see three main problems in America today.  First, many people are underemployed.  In other words, they take a job out of necessity that they are way over qualified for or can only find part time work when full time is desired.  Second, many people find jobs that pay an exorbitant amount of money and get trapped in a luxurious lifestyle that they can’t escape, despite their apathy toward their job.  Third, some people don’t care what the job is they just want a lot of money.  I know many who have to take a job to make ends meet, that’s not a bad thing, that’s a responsible thing, but when you chase a major in college or a particular career purely for the end of a high salary, that’s a problem. 

All three situations are all too prevalent in modern day America.  I would argue that these issues in our culture stem from 3 major problems in our society.

1.     The corporatization of our society.

2.     The love of money over people.

3.     Rugged individualism.

The corporatization of our society has occurred for several reasons, but the largest reason is that we are an incredibly consumeristic and materialistic society.  This comes from having a capitalist system that puts value on capital.  People implicitly start to value people based on what they’re worth or what they can do for them.  This has eroded the value we place on people intrinsically.  Furthermore, people used to have a blind trust in the government and while that has eroded due to Nixon and Vietnam, people have seemed to turn that blind trust over to corporations.  Consumers often turn a blind eye to who makes their products and under what conditions and focus on a cheap quality product rather than the ethics or morals behind it.  The markets reward corporations with investment without looking at how they provide for their employees.  Our society has turned away from government and social involvement and given our blind obedience to Nike, Starbucks, Gap and Apple.  The only positive in this is that some of these companies have been forced by a minority of consumers to think twice about how they treat their employees, give better benefits and support more altruistic charities. 

The love of money over people can be seen throughout our culture, in many “media” outlets, films, reality shows, certainly on Wall Street and even in too many Churches.  Much of this message is given to people, especially young kids, implicitly and skews our perspective in a way that puts value on things and not people.  In the inspiring book, “The Last Lecture” written by a cancer patient dying of cancer one of Randy Pausch’s dying lessons to his children was to value people over things.  Our culture emphasizes youth and vitality over wisdom and gravitas and therefore we see too much an emphasis on fashion, elective surgery and appearing a certain way.  All of these contribute to putting style over substance and this leads a society down a consumeristic road rather than one focused on those people within it.

Finally, rugged individualism.  Ayn Rand is one of the foremost philosophers on this, the irony is most Americans have never heard of her, but her cultural values are ingrained in our culture.  Study after study shows that amongst the developed nations of the Earth, America works the most hours, is least happy and has the smallest communal attitude.  In most of these studies there is a clear correlation between happiness, less work hours, more family time and a more communal society.  The Economist has run multiple articles on the new “science of happiness” and which countries are the happiest.  I, like many, am quite skeptical about scientifically determining happiness, but The Economists articles are quite convincing and well researched.  They find Scandinavian countries are the happiest and that the USA and ironically China are quite unhappy, despite China’s recent economic boom this has not correlated to happiness.  The problem being that as a society material success has been put ahead of leading a significant life that impacts others for the positive. 

In America today it is popular to make fun of Europeans, their governments and their lifestyle, but it seems to me they are light years ahead of our society that gives fewer holidays and no mandatory parental leave for new parents.  America is lacking on finding a work life balance and while the problems are clear to me, the solutions aren’t.  I laid out three problems above, but what sort of solutions are there?

To me the solutions are also threefold:

1.     Recreate our public education system from K-12.

2.     Emphasize living significant lives rather than successful lives.

3.     Stress a balance between individual rights and community goals. 

Within our education system we have all kinds of great schools and amazing teachers, but we also have unforgiveable inequality and complacency.  These are two major problems facing America today, but there is seeming little political or public will to change these.  First off, inequality.  Jonathon Kozol wrote an eye opening book entitled, Savage Inequalities, in 1991 where he pointed out cases of public schools within the same state that were quite different.  One school was dirty, worn down, crowded classrooms and ancient textbooks; while the other had state of the art technology, amazing cleanliness and plenty of room in class.  He wondered, as do I, how could this be in America today?  The answer of course is the way that we fund schools.  Typically it is done locally via property taxes, which sets up a grossly inequitable system.  The rich areas and neighborhoods have magnificent schools and the poor, well you get it.  We need to rethink the way that we fund schools, but also be willing to embrace dramatic new trends in education.  We have so many antiquated systems in our schools.  The way we grade, assign homework, have kids responding to bells, and more were set up for an agrarian and industrial society where children were either being prepared for the factory or the farm.  This is not the case anymore in modern America.  Our children need to be prepared for a small, global and highly technological world where quick and creative thinking will be valued.  Education funding and design must be rethought if America is to stay a world leader in the 21^st century.

All too often I believe we erroneously encourage our children to pursue success rather than leading significant lives.  This is not semantics.  Success is in pursuit of an individualistic or materialistic measureable goal.  The irony here is that the goal posts of success are always being moved by society and ourselves; therefore, it’s almost unattainable.  There’s never enough for a person driven by success.  There is always a faster car, bigger home or better job.  Significance on the other hand is totally about other people.  It is about using your gifts, talents and riches for the betterment of others.  You can do almost anything in a significant way in fact.  The point is not what you choose to major in or career path you choose, but it’s about why you have chosen that and what you intend to do.  People who chase success never find joy and contentment, but people who find significance are full of jubilation. 

Balance is key to these ideas truly taking hold in our country.  A balance needs to be struck between individual rights and truly valuing those in our community and country.  Our individual rights ought never be given up, but we also need to realize that I am not just an I, we are a we.  It’s not just about me, if it was the rest of you wouldn’t be here.  A fundamental assumption underlying all of this that is very difficult to refute is that we are social beings meant to live with one another.  Anything done alone is not nearly as sweet as sharing it with a loved family member or friend.  Therefore, we need to have value for each and every person and realize that not everyone is like me.  Our understanding of each other is critical for our society to continue this amazing experiment called America that no other people have ever endeavored upon.  America has always changed and will continue to evolve in time, but our society is all too angry, stressed, scared and polarized to keep this experiment alive. 

I think that being aware of the problems in our society is clearly first and foremost before we can solve them.  But every problem also comes with a solution.  They’re not always easy, but then again the things most worth anything in life aren’t easy.