Carli Lloyd and Hope Solo: two who still believe.By Neil Earle
Carli Lloyd and Hope Solo: two who still believe.Optimistic? About the United States?
That at least should get readers’ attention.
As this blessed Fourth of July passes safely into history it might be time for a little good news today – to reference an Anne Murray song from the 1980s.
In 2012 ace political advisor to Presidents, David Gergen, introduced these five points in “Parade” magazine.
Here are Parade’s five.
First, breakthroughs in technology are unlocking a vast storehouse of energy in this country. You’ve probably seen ads already touting the USA as the world’s coming energy leader. This means that by 2020 the U.S. could be the new Saudi Arabia of energy. ”With universities such as MIT devoting more time and resources to energy resources to energy research, more breakthroughs are ahead to make us both greener and more energy independent.”
Nowadays the Great Wall of China and the lights from developments in North Dakota are apparently the only things visible from the moon.
How surprisingly this has happened. You see I know North Dakota. My wife and I drove thousands of miles there in the 1970s in the service of parishioner who were scattered from Williston to Bottineau. We had a Bible Study in Bottineau for a couple of years. I loved the wide open spaces and the peace and quiet but some of my supervisors wondered what I was doing.
Lesson? How quickly things can change. This area was called by one social geographer “the empty quarters” but not now.
Energy is still a key to the growth and rise of nations and the US is still a country with abundant resources for the next decades.
Second, flowing a lot from this and into this is the American dominance of higher education. Oh, I know, the public school system is languishing in many areas but when it comes to top-level education the U.S. leads the world, especially the high-tech digitized advances and inventions transforming our world.
Science is making a come-back and just in time – still from The Imitation Game on Alan Turing and the computer.Remember Y2K?
What happened to all the technology invented to deal with the prophesied worldwide computer malfunction? It was sold to India and Indian innovators soon became known as the premier Mr. Fix It/service provider for all of us. But…many of those bright young minds want to come here, to America where they are freer to innovate and take the logical next steps in their careers. “America still sits at the boundary of technological excellence,” says Ramalinga Raju, an aggressive new business leader in India. ”You are, for now, still the best architects we could imagine.”
Raju knows that American banks and venture capitalists – for all their mistakes and perhaps deserved horrific image – are still able to fund the innovation that leads to ever new breakthroughs needed to combat climate change or declining food stocks, for example.
Movies often tap the future and Tomorrowland is a subtle call for youth to apply their brain power to solving the Big Problems.The otherwise disappointing movie “Tomorrow” starring George Clooney hinted at the knowledge breakthroughs that can take place when bright minds pool collaboratively to get things done. It hinted at global warming, nuclear proliferation and environmental deterioration as being placed in the cross hairs of the best and brightest from here and abroad just clamoring to get started. Another movie, “The Imitation Game,” made heroes out of Alan Turing and the small coterie of brilliant geniuses who created the first workable computer. The public hasn’t lost it’s fascination for the white-coated innovators who helped win World War Two and laid the groundwork for the computer age and so much more.
Brains matter, now more than ever.
So be encouraged by this fact: “Since 1970, more than 60% of Noble laureates in medicine, science, and economics have been Americans.”
Fourteen of the top 20 universities are in the United States. It may be a different story in your local high school but American universities have the means to attract the best and brightest to our shores. British terror expert Peter Bergen now works for the Rand Corporation. Of the two fine doctors I have had, one is from Nepal the other from Ethiopia. Some are offered salaries they simply can’t refuse. In many fields this is true. (And, alas, may be one reason for student indebtedness).
At the beginning of the scientific era in the 1600s Francis Bacon said “knowledge is power” and millions of the worlds best and brightest know America is still the best place to deploy creativity and innovation in the country that, for its size, still maintains the world’s most stable infrastructure.
A third reason for optimism flows from points one and two – smarter and more intentional immigration policies. In the media at least, the United States Congress seems hopelessly hung up on anything to do with immigration, but in fact, claims Fareed Zakaria and other commentators, net immigration from Mexico is slowing down as that country begins to enter a new development phase. What wise men are counseling and American political leaders are seeing is the strategic value of “most favored immigrant” policies of Canada and many European countries, that is, of aligning polices so that talented foreigners can find it easier to enter the still-impressive American market-place.
Everyone knows what happens when talented immigrants arrive. They typically start new companies and businesses and see possibilities that native-born don’t often see. While the fall of Vietnam to Communists in 1975 was covered reflectively in the United States recently, we do not have to look too far to see at least some encouraging spinoffs. Anyone driving in the suburbs of Los Angeles (“capital of the Third World”) knows how energetic Vietnamese have set up everything from restaurants to automotive stores. According to “Parade” behind the nasty public rhetoric, both political parties are seeing the need for this “smart track” immigration model.
It’s already here in part, an incoming stream which keeps the U.S. younger than its competitors – Germany, the U.K., China and Japan. This will be an A-level advantage going into the fast-paced future.
Nobody called Franklin Roosevelt "handicapped."Fourth, as a result of these trends synergizing, the United States is still innovating in advances in biology, information, technology, and – yes – even manufacturing. Los Angeles builds everything from caskets to cell phones in spite of press coverage to the contrary. The drills that rescued trapped miners in Chile were made here. Advances in medicine are helping us live longer. American financial streams are funding the Research and Development that spills over into Canadian drug companies which, attractive to many, are selling prescriptions invented and refined in America.
A fifth incentive to positivity is an eager and newly motivated work force. The silver lining from eleven years of wars in the Middle East is the appearance of veterans ready to jump into the job pool. Those who have made the transition are dazzling employers with their gung ho work skills and their ability to buckle down and work together on projects that advance the company product. When you’ve served on an aircraft carrier that holds 5000 men and women, teamwork is learned early. Loyalty and responsibility to others becomes second nature. Some of our injured vets have become very impressive role models.
Iraq Vet Gregory Gadson was a star of "Battleship" and a bilateral above the knee amputee – but don't tell him that!In the movie “Battleship” a soldier on prosthetic limbs fought the bad guy robots hand-to-hand in the crucial scene. This points to a rising cohort of “blade-runners,” (without the bad connotations) – savvy vets with internalized skills who have learned to work around tough problems and who can inspire the next generation much as the polio-stricken Franklin D. Roosevelt inspired his generation.
We must remember after this July 4th that one of the primary earmarks of the American spirit is to effectively innovate with new technology. American footprints still dot the moon, Wal-Mart’s light bulbs point to new dimensions in energy efficiency, Face book and Twitter didn’t exist twelve years ago but now the world logs on.
Experts say the U.S. economy usually reinvents itself every 15 years or so. This is where the slow job market facing our newly educated but debt-laden Millennials could be a blessing in disguise. They are already passing up Wall Street jobs where more of the same means more of a stifling pecking order. They are taking on instead socially responsible careers such as “Teach for America.” Nearly one in five college seniors have applied to teach two years in underprivileged areas for lower pay. This gives fresh life to a program that began in the 1980s with one teenager’s senior thesis and has become an outlet for out-of-work or underemployed best and brightest.
In 1938, nearly 80 years ago, a popular song hit the airwaves that began “As the storm clouds gather/ Far across the sea.” That song with its serious opening was “God Bless America” and clouds there surely were – Hitler and the Axis were on the march and the depression raged on. The Greatest Generation rose to that challenge – and how!
Today’s storm clouds are also real and might seem deadening but, like all storm clouds, nourish the lightning bolts that charge the soil. Millions of young people are now thirsting for action, eager to apply those skills that have cost them so much. This is one reason the Indian-born TV journalist, Fareed Zakaria, author of The Rise of the Rest – a 2008 look at the growth of the nations that seemed so commanding a decade ago (but are now faltering somewhat) – is still optimistic about his adopted country. “America has at least one good chapter yet to write,” he concluded one of his televised economic analyses.
Depend on it – Americans love a challenge and wise far-sighted leadership is already challenging those energies into a brighter future for all. One subtler trend? The last decades have seen renewed interest in American history as evidenced by the public’s response for documentaries and books on policy innovators such as Teddy, Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. The Episcopalian journalist Jon Meacham recently made hay with controversial aggressive President Andrew Jackson whom he called “American Lion.”
“They all like Teddy,” says one history prof of his young charges. “Perhaps he represents the best of both sides of the national life—economic reform at home along with projecting strength and safety abroad.”
This makes the next Presidential election important. Leadership is needed that can mobilize the hidden opportunities of these Locust Years we are passing through. Perhaps the greatest reason for optimism is that military and economic stagnation have made the public eager for action again. Or to use another language, an angel may be riding the storm. Tough times pass but tough people don’t.