The Native Iowan

Hank Bulmash

Toronto

The world is not more complicated. It’s always been complex beyond belief. What’s changed is the relative strength of the US — and with it our declining ability to do as we please based on our power and our ignorance. We are weaker financially (thanks to the deficits of Ronald Reagan and G.W. Bush). We are weaker economically because the way to get rich in this generation has been to ship jobs to Asia rather than investing money in industrial efficiency (thank you Bain Capital and Harvard Business School), and we are weaker socially because our great industries and our upper class have lost their connection to the US. Our industries are now global (definition: chasing cheap labor all over the world) and our wealthy no longer send their sons to fight our wars. None of these changes will be easy to reverse — and to pretend that our greatness is a question of will (which it never was) is the poisonous basis of Republican foreign policy.