Americans want to do nation-building, says Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times after five months of traveling the country while writing his next book, but “they want to do nation-building in America.”
Why? In a May 4 op-ed piece entitled “Who Will Tell the People?” Friedman says ordinary citizens in the US are becoming aware that the country desperately needs to be rebuilt.
He believes people are realizing that the US is not as strong as it used to be, that city-states like Dubai and Singapore are providing money to shore up American banks, that the war in Iraq has the military pinned down, and that President Bush has been reduced to begging Saudi Arabia for petroleum cost relief.
The post-WW II belief in America as the place where everyone wanted to be is, now, harder to maintain.
Friedman cites two transportation hubs as examples of the impoverishment of American infrastructure relative to that of other nations. One is Berlin’s “luxurious central train station” in comparison to the “grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City.”
Well, of course, Europe beats us on trains, many Americans would say. We know that.
But the second comparison pits a John F. Kennedy Airport terminal against one in Singapore’s Changi Airport. At JFK, Friedman says, he and his wife recently had difficulty finding a place to sit. In Singapore’s airport they found spaciousness, free internet portals, and children’s play zones.
And he doesn’t even mention some of the things that make Singapore’s airport a preferred stop-over point for me and my partner. In one terminal there are luxurious foot-massage machines. These are stress-reducing and they’re free. Not far away there is an indoor garden of huge orchids. There’s even a free, 24-hour movie theater (no popcorn).
Changi also has free toilets, which are harder to find in Europe, and water fountains, absent from some modern US facilities such as a new wing of Logan Airport in Boston that has, not incidentally, I’m sure, lots of stores selling high-priced bottled water.
The differences Friedman experienced — and that Kristi and I have also found — matter less than what they indicate: relative national health. In addition to loaning American institutions money, Singapore has been investing billions into infrastructure while American political leaders who disdain “government spending” on public services have burned trillions on misadventures in other countries, most notably Iraq.
And it’s not just roads, bridges, trains and airports that have suffered, but also fundamental scientific research. Friedman quotes the president of Harvard University, who told a US Senate panel that cutbacks in government research funds have gutted labs in America while “China, India, Singapore … have adopted biomedical research and the building of biotechnology clusters as national goals.”
Suddenly, Drew Faust told Senators, talented American scientists are looking elsewhere in the world for places to work. We know that is true. My own partner left a position in the US for a better-funded one here, and we know of another researcher who has left Washington, D.C., for work in another country.
After Kristi’s work conference in Europe, we met with this bright young woman who, a few years ago, took a public-health job with a key agency of the US government. That, I’d assumed at the time, was a wonderful professional advancement.
Not so. She’s now moved on to a job elsewhere because her US government position, which involved research on American health concerns, provided so few resources. “The Bush administration,” she said, “has left the agency in shreds.”
How much else is in shreds in my home country? “We are not who we think we are,” Friedman writes. “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.”
Our recent trip to Europe reinforced for me the notion that both Australia and America are young countries. Maybe it’s fair to say we’re adolescent countries since we so often boast of our strength and power while showing that we feel anxious about how we measure up and how well we can cope with the lives ahead of us.
A great asset of youth is optimism and the energy it inspires. Aussies celebrate Diggers, young soldiers who, in war, have accomplished inordinate feats in circumstances likely to have overwhelmed most folks. We’re proud, here in Australia, of our give-it-a-go approach.
We’re proud, in America, of our can-do attitude.
Both are grounded in hope, in the belief that positive results come when we work together with courage, intelligence, and effort.
The pride citizens of both countries feel in the power of positive effort can be mobilized for good or evil. Politicians are forever seeking to lull voters into accepting the status quo by asserting, in both countries, “We’re the greatest!”
In American today, as Friedman correctly asserts, somebody needs to be telling the people the truth — that in many vital ways we are no longer the greatest — and that there is hope. With focused energy, America can still do wonders. We can regain our reasons for pride.
Here are two Americans eager to see nation building begin at home.
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