If you want a lesson in humility, try being stuck on a cruise around New York Harbor with a bunch of Europeans the very day the U.S. squad bent over and took one in the Ryder Cup. As we sailed past the Statue of Liberty, the beacon of American hope and prosperity, I endured a relentless stone-busting over the day’s result. Yet as I fumbled for some witty retort to proclaim my nation’s dominance it suddenly dawned on me – I’ve got nothing.
Basketball, hockey, soccer, golf, and the Olympics – nothing. We allegedly cheat at cycling and we can’t even win the baseball World Cup, although with Toronto out it looks like an American team will at least win the World Series. And as the scope broadens beyond sports, it’s also becoming painfully obvious that Americans are quickly becoming the punch line in the world’s joke.
According to Nationmaster.com, the United States ranks among the Top 10 when it comes to murder by firearm, but unfortunately we’re out of that group on the list of most educated. That same site lists us as the seventh richest nation per capita, yet we can’t effectively assist our own countrymen in the event of a natural disaster.
And when it comes to the international perception of contemporary American policies and leadership, you don’t need any statistics to tell you the world is not impressed. Right now we’re involved with two wars and counting. We claim to be fighting terrorism, meanwhile the rest of the world views them as wars of corporate colonialism, where our brave soldiers are fighting so we can put a Taco Bell in Tehran, a Pizza Hut in Palestine, a KFC in Kabul and a T.G.I. Friday’s in Fallujah as American troops make in-roads into “emerging markets.”
And as we deploy our armed forces to one country, we export our jobs into another. Meanwhile at home, people care more about “American Idol” than they do the American president. Our citizens write their local papers to passionately complain about media coverage of local bartending contests, as governments at every level are rife with corruption.
On the weekend following the terror attacks of September 2001, like many, I felt the need to switch off the omnipresent news feed of crumbling towers. I turned the channel to HBO, where I caught the premiere of the miniseries “Band of Brothers.” That series chronicled a time when American men and women stepped up and answered the call when the world faced some of its most direct and threatening challenges. As I watched that program I began to wonder how my generation would react to the similar situation now facing us, and five years later I’m still left wondering.
This is the nation that rose to defeat fascism. After that we defeated communism, and put a man on the moon in the process. But what have we done lately, and what does my generation intend to do other than rest on the laurels of our ancestors?
We could sit and ask who to blame for the current nadir of the American ego – Phil Mickelson, Mike Krzyzewski, Kelly Clarkson, George Bush?
Or instead of pointing fingers like we always do, perhaps we could do something proactive about it. Speak our minds, do our part and right the ship. For the first time in awhile this country has to be the one to pull itself up by the bootstraps, because I’ll be damned if history remembers this as the American generation that dropped the ball, even if we can’t sink a putt.
Christopher M. Halleron, freelance writer/bitter bartender, writes a biweekly humor column for The Hudson Current and websites in the New York Metro area. He spends a lot of his time either in front of or behind the bar in Hoboken, New Jersey where his tolerance for liquor grows stronger as his tolerance for society is eroded on a daily basis. Feel free to drop him a line at c_halleron@yahoo.com.