Sorry I wasn't around to argue last night ~ as for your two points of contentiousness, taking them seriatim, my perception is that if you pick and choose areas of achievement, the United States isn't going to finish first in a lot of them. It's taking them in the aggregate where we shine, IMO. Medicine. Education. Government. Housing. Roads. Agriculture. Pure scientific research. Applied scientific research. However, I've never travelled outside the United States, except to Canada and Mexico, and pretty much all I know is what I read in the newspapers and magazines. Maybe Germany or Sweden are more advanced in the aggregate, I don't really know.
As for the corruption, what troubles me is the "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" factor. Let me list a number of "alleged" scandals, and ask if you honestly believe they didn't happen, or that they aren't evidence of corruption:
1. Loral and Hughes gave the Chinese classified technology in order for the Chinese to be able to launch Loral and Hughes satellites from Chinese missiles, with the tacit approval of the Clinton administration.
2. Chinese monks and nuns, who had taken a vow of poverty, were used as conduits to funnel campaign contributions actually made by others to Gore.
3. Cisneros gave money to his mistress to shut her up.
4. Ron Brown accepted bribes.
5. Reagan circumvented the US congress in order to funnel money to the Contras.
6. Nixon tried to cover up the Watergate burglary.
7. Dead people voted for Kennedy in Chicago.
I could go on and on, but why bother? And most people, when they start hearing the list, say, "well, the other side does it, too." Like that's a defense, for Christ's sake. Like that make it *OK*.
Or, they say, "well, that's politics." By which they mean, they accept that corruption exists, but believe it to be inevitable.
As for your supposedly incorrupt civil service, I suggest that the number of civil servants taking bribes and/or conniving with superiors to look the other way when rules are broken, is much higher than you realize. Look at HUD, just as one example. I can think of five HUD scandals off the top of my head. Or military procurement ~ has that all of a sudden become squeaky clean?
Your defense, that we're better than the Soviet Union, is possibly the faintest praise I can imagine. |
