THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA, CONCLUSION

H Street Festival DC 2013. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Author: S Pakhrin from DC, USA.

by Stefan Schindler

To paraphrase George Santayana: Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Not only is America the most militarized and largest debtor country in the world, it remains the only technologically advanced country lacking universal health care and still clinging to the death penalty.

Since 1985, middle class income in Germany has risen five times faster than middle class income in America.  German workers have two months paid vacation per year; guaranteed, taxpayer financed, universal health care; and a higher quality, more egalitarian national education system than America, with generous funding for the arts.

Meanwhile, among the advanced industrial nations of the world, America has one of the highest infant mortality rates, the highest percentage of citizens in prison, and more than 40 million American families deprived of health insurance (a number recently mitigated by Obamacare).

In addition to his militarization and deficit spending, Ronald Reagan’s most profound domestic legacy was the vast expansion of two segments of the American population: billionaires and the homeless.

Instead of being the most militarized, debt ridden, fundamentalist, stupefied, historically illiterate, consumer driven, energy gulping, empire building, sports and celebrity obsessed, advertising drenched, and dangerous nation in the world today, the U.S.A. could, as it once was, be a beacon of hope.

This could easily be accomplished by instituting: a four-day work week, a five-hour work day, universal health care, affordable child care, guaranteed economic security and a living wage, taxpayer-financed life-time educational opportunity, global interfaith dialogue, nuclear disarmament, demilitarization, democratic pluralism with multi-party choice, supremely well-paid full-time teachers across the educational spectrum, a sane and modest teacher-student ratio in classrooms, the teaching of real history instead of mythic mush, the de-monopolization of the media, the “greening” of ecological sustainability, and vastly increased funding for the arts in schools and beyond, with daily street fairs and festivals for everybody and time enough to enjoy them.