These days, it’s hard to be an optimist. Century USA is almost over. The years ahead call for restraint, discipline, and moderation, qualities now in short supply.
Mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation have gone missing and been replaced by bickering, distrust, distortion, and opportunism, the “four horsemen” of a new apocalypse.
When the out-of-power party’s principal goal is the failure of the party in power, the destructive effect on both governance and civility is devastating, and likely more damaging to our national security than threats from abroad.
More attention need be paid to the damage we do to ourselves than external threats that frequently divert our attention from the real enemy at home – our inability to develop coherent, bipartisan policies that will address the many fiscal and policy IEDs that litter the landscape.
The greatest threat to the United States is not another terrorist attack but our reaction to it. When you consider the devastating consequences of 9/11, you have got to look beyond the destruction of the twin towers and the loss of life on that tragic day.
That attack prompted this country to spend trillions to improve security at home and initiate two wars in far distant countries that have taken the lives of thousands of young Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans.
The enormous consequences of those conflicts will extend far into the future. In his wildest dreams, Osama Bin Laden could never have imagined that the ongoing effects of that attack would have extended so far beyond its immediate consequences.
The attack caused us to turn our attention from serious problems at home and instead to invest blood and treasure in foreign lands while an exploding deficit here at home sapped our strength.
Had we not been consumed by the terrorist threat, would we have been able to anticipate, or at least better deal with, the sub-prime crisis and its consequences? Would we have been able to deal with the looming Social Security deficit or develop a fiscally sound health care program? Could we have fixed the immigration problem, developed a sound energy policy, or improved our crumbling infrastructure?
We’ll never know, but history teaches us that previous great powers, after being weakened by foreign adventures, are slowly debilitated from within. Unable to sustain their power, they either collapse or lose much of their influence as they struggle to survive.
Based on the current situation, there is no reason to think we can avoid the same fate. On the contrary, discontent is rampant and the “balance” is missing in our system of checks and balances.
Having financed our wars on borrowed money, we cannot balance our books, and our financial security is in the hands of China, to whom we owe an estimated $1 trillion. This profligacy cannot continue, but do we have the leadership and the will to make the difficult choices necessary to confront such problems?
The public does not want to hear bad news, and politicians are unwilling to confront the truth and acknowledge the need for sacrifice, restraint, and limits.
If wisdom is the sound application of knowledge to reality, the problem is not so much lack of knowledge or even understanding of reality, but the more difficult challenge of soundly applying the former to the latter.
The translation of knowledge into prudent policy is what addresses real problems that we are failing to resolve; yet another example of our fundamentally flawed human nature.
James W. Dolan is a former Dorchester District Court judge who now practices law. e-mail: jdolan@dolanconnly.com.
