After 9/11 America is a Different Place

On September 11th 2001 I was making a presentation to the Economic Club of Milan, Italy when a member of our office's admin staff entered and said in Italian "they blew up New York". My wife was at that time working in Mid-town Manhattan and so I was of course worried amid all the other pain. I can remember driving from Milan to Verona listening to Italian news radio with the world "Crollato" or crushed repeated over and over again. The night of September 11th I was in Verona for a business dinner and the owner of the Trattoria picked up the tab for his "Bresciano-American" friend (that would be me).

The next six months were dreadful. We lived in Princeton, NJ so our train station was covered with those printed signs "lost my husband, lost my wife". It was a time of great sadness and great loss. Americans reacted sometimes well and sometimes not but the nation was changed mostly for the worst.

America pre 9/11 was astride the world as a super power America after 9/11 was something else. In 2011 America remains engulfed in an economic and mental depression. I think that once a nation has been in economic collapse for three years it is safe to call it a Depression. We are in this collapse because like empires before us we spent our riches on global adventures and bread an circuses for our people to keep them mollified in the face of pain and despair.

In the end America is a different place.

Conservatives like to hearken back to Ronald Reagan, Liberals to JFK and FDR but both of those Americas no longer exist. The America of FDR and JFK was young vibrant place where anything was possible and where a generation- the greatest one- made sacrifices to do great things like Medicare, Civil Rights and putting a man on the moon. Reagan's America too no longer exists. The factory towns of the Midwest are now empty. The sunbelt was built on false money and false prosperity and the reserve of good will and frugality that existed in Reagan's time has been spent.

So what are we to do?

I recently was in Sao Paulo Brazil and I saw something. In that vibrant city there are many cafe's as their are in Italy but now smoking is not permitted. So a man stood outside the cafe with a Formica board around his neck with two ashtrays. He flipped up the board and invited the men drinking coffee to come and have a cigarette with their coffee on his board- he then asked for a Real tip. I thought- what a great idea- the fact is that America needs to do the same.

We as a nation need to realize that our ideas matter. We need to also understand that unless we change the conversation and subvert the rules (the way the man in Sao Paulo did with his board) we are doomed to stasis and weakness. The future seems to have moved to Beijing and Sao Paulo but are their ideas better?

It is time to forget 9/11 and to remember why July 4th 1776 is a holiday and September 11th 2001 is not.

The Problem with President Obama

I write this blog post as a continued supporter of the President. The problem with the president is that he really does not understand that what has been called for during the past three years has been someone to channel the rage that now fills the United States. The rage that has been captured by the "tea party" and the rest has been channeled instead by others who have used it to destroy this presidency.

Lets be honest from the moment President Obama was attacked and demonized by the Fox News/Michelle Malkin/Rush Limbaugh/Bill O'Reilly/Laura Ingraham wing of the right. they wanted him to fail and they used their power and money to do that. Since they were the only ones screaming and yelling they got listened to and they financed the Tea Party with their corporate friends to channel legitimate rage to their own ends.

In contrast to Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Ronald Reagan President Obama let his opponents define him and demonize him and while America continues to live under despair he slowly became irrelevant. So instead of attacking the problems the way Roosevelt, Truman and Reagan did and speaking directly to the American people rallying the country to move towards change.

President Obama tried to be calm and reasonable while millions of people were losing their homes and retirements. He tried to be an "adult" while we watched our whole economy collapse and when he tried to empathize it came across like the pat on the head from a Priest or Teacher rather than a fighter for us.

The result is that the rage in America, and this rage is real, has been taken by the Right Wing and made into their rallying cry. This has happened before in history in the 1920's in Germany. America and Germany in the same period are often contrasted but today America is more like Germany in the 1920's a damaged power. Do not delude yourself America is a country where a pandora's box has opened and do not be surprised if what happened in England last week does not come here to America soon. Two whole generations, X and Millennials are being crushed by this Recession and they are angry.

President Obama could have avoided this fate. If he had just gone out to the country and rallied the nation to change that would have dealt with the China challenge and the obvious decline of the nation.

If he had just demanded that Americans work together to deal with our problems and fought for those who have lost everything his photo would be in every house the way FDR's was in the 1930's.

Even if he had salved Americans the way Reagan did that would have been an improvement but instead he did not bring passion to the nation and he gave those who hate him a cudgel that they are now using against him.

We are looking at President Rick Perry to manage our decline.

If President Obama had just listened to everyone in the Grant Park it might have been different. We wanted to be inspired and told we could do anything and instead we got despair.