July 8, 2008

Why Are We So Negative about Our Future?

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman

If you follow most of the popular media today, the U.S. is going to the dogs. We are barraged by reports of poverty, police abuse, global warming, and stupidity of our foreign policy. The housing bubble has burst; medical costs are skyrocketing; and the spotted owl in the north woods is under attack by loggers. Even the summer crop of tomatoes may be tainted.

The young and idealistic in our local universities are egged on to take corrective matters into their own hands, using methods such as tree sitting to prevent a new medical facility from being built. They defend their "democratic rights" by cursing, biting, and hurling bags of urine and feces on arborists hired to remove them from their perches. Other idealists lie down across a main thoroughfare in solidarity with the demands of striking janitors in their university. Still others, urged on by Code Pink, a Marxist front group, demonstrate against ROTC and military recruitment centers. Freedom of speech means only their speech which they use to disrupt public programs to get their point across. "Warmonger" sounds so virtuous when being shouted - and filmed by eager TV photographers.

In the midst of this nonsense comes a new book by Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (2008), which addresses our fears and concerns and provides a wise blueprint for the 21st century to be another "American Century." Zakaria, an American-educated immigrant from India, is a proud American citizen whose clear-eyed vision can see past the 24/7 barrage of the media's disaster du jour. Fortunately for us he is listened to - as an editor of Newsweek magazine and a superb interviewer on CNN and recently on PBS.

He tells us that America is not declining; rather, the former basket cases in the rest of the world are rising - due much to our efforts. In our quest for a world in which order prevails, we have contributed to these enormous changes:

• Financial Growth. In the past two years, 124 countries grew at 4% or more, including 30 in Africa. Twenty-five companies have emerged that will be the world's next great multinationals, four each from Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Taiwan; others from India, China, Argentina, Chile, Malaysia, and South Africa.

• Poverty has plummeted from 40% of the world in 1981 to 18%in 2004 (those living under $1 per day).China alone has lifted 400 million people out of poverty.

• Forecasts all wrong. Despite all the terrible events between 2000 and today, global economy grew fastest in nearly four decades - 3.2% globally.

• Politics and Economy.Politics in the U.S. and Israel are famously dysfunctional, but even the Hezbollah disaster has not stopped Israel's vibrant economy, nor has Iraq stopped ours.

• The Iraq War. Despite this war and angry political predictions, the region is not in turmoil and economies are flourishing, particularly in the Gulf. Despite how it feels, global warfare has decreased by over 60% since the mid 1980s, and is the lowest since 1950.

• Islamist Terrorism. Although ignored before 9/11, these groupsare on the run and have not launched another major attack since the British and Spanish railway attacks. They yet may, but recovery from these attacks has been quicker each time. You can't have terror if people aren't terrified.

If things are so good, why are we so depressed?Could it be the cottage industry of scaremongering that has flourished in the US since 9/11?Furthermore, a competitive media thrives on breaking news - usually negative - around the clock. They are not paid for good news.

Zakaria also provides us with comprehensive chapters on the amazing changes in India and China, who well may be sharing the spotlight with us by the end of this century if they can overcome some very large problems. We need to see them as neither ten feet tall nor insurmountably backward, but as something in between.

He reminds us, as President Roosevelt did, that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.Suck it up, America.

Family Security Matters Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is an historian, lecturer, and author who also writes for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or http://www.globalthink.net/.