Imagine for a moment that the immigrants coming to America are leaving their countries not because America is “the shining city on the hill”, but instead that immigrants only come to the U.S. because it is the most convenient option, not because it is their first choice. They only come to America because it is too costly and dangerous to get to 10 countries where the standard of living ranks above the U.S.
If you can imagine this, suddenly America is not “the shining city on the hill” President Reagan fantasized about; it is the runner-up in a global beauty contest, the ugly stepchild of immigration, if you will.
If you want to make Americans insane, tell them that they are not the greatest country in the world. They will deny the fact that empirically 10 countries have a better standard of living than they do. Or that the U.S. does not rank in the top 10 countries considered to have the most freedom. Or that the U.S. ranks 31st in education and is not even in the top 50 countries when it comes to overall health. All these statistics come from the World Population Review.
The World Population Review does not compile these numbers because it hates Americans. They compile these numbers because they are trying to give some empirical evidence of which countries are doing well in each category they measure.
If you believe these statistics, we are no longer “the shining city on the hill.”
Most Americans don’t know these facts, and when confronted with them, will deny them. And herein lies the problem: America has been in denial about its problems and history since its beginnings.
Americans will deny the fact that we stole every square foot of the U.S. from the Native Americans. They don’t know that the Anglo settlers and their government have broken EVERY TREATY made with Native Americans. When confronted by this fact, most Americans will say it is not true without any proof to back up their denial.
Americans will insist that they won the West and the Americas by conquering the Native Americans. They don’t know and will deny the fact that pestilence and diseases brought by Anglos killed 90% of the Native Americans. Wiping out their food source by slaughtering the buffalo was a government and American tactic to subdue the rest.
Americans will deny the fact that we fought the Civil War to end slavery. They don’t know that by ending efforts at Reconstruction and pardoning Confederates and Confederate sympathizers after the Civil War, we allowed Jim Crow, segregation and Black Codes to stymy the development of the South and its people for 150 years and counting. When confronted with this fact, they will deny that it is true, even when you show that the former Southern Slave States rank behind most other states in nearly every category of well-being and prosperity.
If you confront Americans with the fact that slavery and cotton were the engines that created the Industrial Revolution, and a large majority of the wealth created in the U.S. was created by the slavery of Native Americans and Africans, their knee-jerk reaction will be to deny this fact.
America in 2024 re-elected a convicted felon, sexual batterer, traitor and seditionist. In 2020, he denied the election results that he lost by 7 million votes and lost the electoral college by 306 to 232. He claimed voter fraud and election irregularities. He lost all 60 court cases he filed contesting the election results. He denied that he fomented the riot (by saying it wasn’t a riot) that attacked the Capitol while the votes were being certified, which led to several deaths. In a recent poll, only 48% of Americans think the rioters are criminals, and “just over half of respondents believe Trump bears responsibility for the riot, down from 60% in the immediate aftermath.”
Wholesale denial is in the DNA of America. Our current president is the embodiment of our denial. The task for Americans now is to confront the truth, the same way we have been in denial for the last 400 years. It will be difficult. We have a leader and an administration that will lie about everything, even the most juvenile, obvious facts. Hiding the history of people of color and retreating from inclusion because it makes some people uncomfortable is a wholly un-American action. When we can no longer face the truth of our country’s history, we are left with only lies. We are no longer “the shining city on the hill” or a world leader, and the world is showing us they know it. Even our best trading partners and allies, Mexico and Canada, are trying to wake us out of this zombie state of denial and stupidity in which we currently find ourselves.
The task at hand will not be easy. The current administration has released a torrent of insane executive orders, from renaming the Gulf of Mexico, to tariffs on our two biggest trading partners for no apparent economic reasons. We need to stop the current administration from implementing all of its insane policies, but at the same time, not let the country fail. Our success as a nation will depend on our success with this balancing act. We must nullify the current administration long enough to get new elected officials. Most of all, we must stop denying our history, even if it makes us uncomfortable. Until then, America is no longer the “shining city on the hill.” If we believe the statistics, we are not even close.
