Once more America is a Shining Example of What Not To Do

Is it me, or does the rest of the world look at America and ask, "Why are Americans so hypocritical?" This is a major problem for a country that is trying its hardest to remain a world leader in the interests of maintaining national security. Its generally understood that we're fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to make America safer--at least, that's the rhetoric. Thomas Friedman recently wrote that cities around the globe are modernizing at such a pace that they are at risk of becoming American--in the sense that they consume vast quantities of energy without much thought to the way it affects the environment.

American foreign policy in the last decade must be written with the intention of making ourselves look foolish. How else can one look at it? We trapse all over the world stating that freedom and democracy must be promoted at any cost, when, at home, our democracy is in the process of strangling the world with greenhouse gases caused by consumer-driven policies. Yes, this country was founded on freedom, and that ideal is the well-deserved basis of American pride. However, should we be free to do anything? Literally anything? Do we have the freedom to ignore rationality and common sense? We as a country know of the impact our domestic policies are having on world ecology and, furthermore, human survivability; yet we do little to change it.

This is the most frustrating and unforgivable aspect of our democracy. Is the constituency being represented correctly? Is the problem that U.S. citizens all want a radical energy policy shift but are not being adequately represented in Congress? No, of course not. For some reason, we Americans enjoy leaving the wool over our eyes. This phenomena is as difficult to understand as it is to understand why, after major medical advancements in oncology and public health education, teenagers are still lighting up cigarettes. Common sense takes a back seat here and the most difficult question isn't "how do we change our energy policies?" it's "how do we change our attitude?"

As in most cases, there's no simple answer here. I'd like to believe that Americans simply need more education on the issues to realize the severity of the energy crisis in this country. However, it's hard to imagine that with the information coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change we still turn our backs on the evidence. Like Hamlet, we believe that there's a better time to act and, like Hamlet, it may lead to our ruin.

Flattening the World

One of the greatest things our technology allows us to do is communicate with a world-wide audience. My students are currently expressing their views on a blog that I run. However, due to the unknowns of the Web, the blog is private, which, admittedly, I feel is somewhat counter intuitive. I've been brainstorming a way to allow students to safely speak with the larger Web community. Even though our connectivity allows us to share our experiences and thoughts worldly, safety is a foremost concern. Ironically, safety has become the foremost concern outside of the Web too.

Blogs and other technomedia are the neopolitical forms of the Greek polis. Students, teachers, and world learners all need to embrace this technology but at the same time provide uniform and reliable security measures. Once we accomplish this, my hope is that our newfound technology will allow us to not only bridge the gap between geographic and political differences, but also bridge the gap between ideologic and philosophic differences as well.

Testing the waters

If you really want to feel gut-wrentching horror concerning what we're turning this world into, read Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and Quinn's Ishmael, The Story of B, and My Ishmael. If we've ever needed to be poised and ready to change our destructive habits, now is the time.