The Dream Is Over

Waiting for the Next Alexander Hamilton

In one of his last creative works, David Bowie spoke about the concept of knowing something to be true. He suggested that “the moment you know, you know, you know.” It’s one of those truisms — once we know and accept something to be the truth, we can no longer un-know it. We can try to avoid or repress knowledge, but in the end, we can’t avoid the fact — it’s inevitable.

On November 7th, 2019, this moment of ‘knowing’ happened for me with immediate clarity. It was the moment when I finally accepted that the once-great United States of America was no longer a respected world leader and that its reign as an often envied global society is over.

Looking back, I realize that we (my wife, our cousin and myself) had been immersed in a torrent of Americana that night. We were three Canadians celebrating my wife’s birthday, visiting with family and taking in the central event of the week, Hamilton (The Musical) at the glorious Victoria Palace Theater in London. This Broadway show deserves all of the superlatives you have heard. Hamilton is spectacular, exciting, dramatic, unforgettable and, for me, highly emotional.

When your surname is Hamilton, it can be more than a bit unsettling hearing the cast saying/singing your name every few minutes. From the start, I was pulled into a reflective mood. As the Hamilton plot-line unravels, Alexander Hamilton reveals his societal climb and the hardships he overcomes just to survive, along with his pivotal role in framing the US constitution. His story uncovered memories from my childhood and the relatively smaller battles I fought to be able to sit in this theater seat on this night. Then there was Alexander’s wife Eliza — a name shared with my mother Eliza Connie Hamilton, a descendant of the great Conn families of Northern Ireland, who died April 1st of this year. I was swept up with emotion as I thought about how my mother would have been thrilled to take in even a single Broadway show in her life. Our Eliza would have been so excited to hear about this night through us if only she were still a phone call away.

The scene where Alexander and Eliza lose their firstborn son jarred more memories loose, and Eliza’s act of forgiveness left me weak in the knees. When they sing ‘The Room Where It Happens,’ they utter what may be the first American use of the term ‘quid pro quo,’ and the irony of that phrase snapped me right back to 2019. One cannot walk away from Hamilton without understanding the great sacrifices made to make America — sacrifices that so many seem to take for granted today.

We left the theater buzzing. As we careened toward the Westminster station to catch the Jubilee Line home, we took turns reviewing our favorite parts, standout performances and various story lines. All agreed the musical and entire evening would be unforgettable.

Yet there, swimming in the musical soup of red, white, blue, stars, stripes and floating maple leaves, I began to think about the state of American society. It’s not like these thoughts had not been front of mind for years now. One would need to have been living under a rock, not to have been hit by the constant barrage of US controversy over the last 24 plus months. Bobbing along on the train, I was distracted, contrasting the hopes for the US in the beginning and the US we see making news today. There were so many questions. Is the American societal decline we were witnessing today too far along to stop? Had everything that Alexander Hamilton fought for come to its zenith and were we now seeing (in real-time) the kind of decline that has historically sunk many great societies? Was the enviable lure of ‘the American Dream’ for all intents and purposes, over?

By ‘over,’ I mean in the throes of collapse, the way Jared Diamond might describe it. If you’ve not read the American author Jared Diamond’s Pultizer Prize winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, you should, it should be required reading for everyone. Diamond details how societies ascend and collapse. He employs academic rigor and context, which only someone of his genius and passion could create. Diamond’s span of expertise includes physiology, biophysics, ornithology, environmentalism, history, ecology, geography, evolutionary biology, and anthropology — a perspective shared by very few. His work uses compelling stories to help readers grapple with the complexity of human societies, teaching us how we have risen to where we are today and what patterns signal a potential societal demise. In his follow-up works Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change, Diamond helps us understand why societies collapse and the choices we need to make if we hope to turn the decline around.

As the train rocked back and forth and through snippets of our group conversation, I was reviewing my top six collapse themes on my mental whiteboard. Little did I know that in just 15 minutes, the unlikeliest of events would mash these thoughts together and galvanize my point of view. My whiteboard shortlisted the following:

1. Catastrophic climate change affecting all citizens;
2. Internal and international hostility impacting peoples lives and freedoms;
3. Failing economic indicators and growing income inequality thwarting a peoples opportunity;
4. Populations experiencing a lack of personal safety and health insecurity;
5. Society suffering from a broken, poorly distributed education system; and
6. Ongoing leadership chaos, coupled with deep cultural and political divides.

What follows is a summary of facts by theme, which I gathered later to support my list. Each topic could be a thesis, so I’ve attempted to reduce the discussion here for illustration purposes.

Let’s first unpack the climate change theme. While this is a global concern, the current American response to the climate change crisis is an example of societal collapse. Diamond’s work shows that historically, the environmental and economic decline of society often serves as the dual triggers for an overall failure. We’ve seen those rising seas, the horrific, ratcheted up, hurricanes, widespread flooding, and whole states on fire due to unprecedented superheating of the planet. The year 2019 proved to be the warmest for our planet on record, and all indicators suggest even more environmental hardship ahead.

Notwithstanding these imminent threats, US government leaders inexplicably deny the reality of obvious and scientifically proven forces. Unmoved by climate change science, the US doubled down on its denial policy withdrawing from participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation. Going even further, the US continues to exacerbate the problem by openly endorsing more fossil fuel investment — a plan many describe as environmental treason. As leading coal, oil and gas companies see their bottom lines rising in step with massive regulatory retreats, CEOs and lobbyists contributed millions of dollars to President Trump’s potential 2020 run. They are betting on more of the same, but at what cost?. If we are serious about slowing a societal decline, we must take climate concerns most seriously — since everything else we do depends on a viable place to inhabit.

Next on my list is the growing internal and international hostility. External to the US, we’ve witnessed what many foreign policy leaders have called a foreign policy apocalypse. The current US administration is making both hostile enemies and disillusioned allies at a record pace. Whether through angry fear-led attacks on immigration, trade or nuclear arms deals, the US has bullied and angered many international players, including; Canada, China, Germany, Denmark, Turkey, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and the UK. President Trump (and indirectly the entire US) was literally laughed at by the majority of the 193 countries of the United Nations and summarily dismissed for suggesting that the US would be interested in purchasing Greenland. Yet this is just the tip of the hostility iceberg. The US has been cited for corruption in Ukraine, abandoning Kurdish allies, commingling with Russian objectives, supporting Syrian adversaries and courting North Korean and Philippine dictators. The international opinion of US foreign policy seems to be at the lowest in many generations. We are not merely talking about a shift in foreign policy thinking here; human lives have been lost and put at risk across the world by what appears to be gross mismanagement.

While international trade partners reduce their business with the US, the internal hostility meter appears to be at an all-time high. With deepening political and ideological divides tearing at the very fabric of the nation, the American dream seems to be teetering on a precipice. Bitter, racist, right-wing, xenophobic rhetoric has become the norm, with the inevitable clashes bringing death and destruction to many American towns and cities. Well-documented atrocities at the Southern US border draw ire both internally and abroad, and the controversial view of the role US immigrants play in society has set back public trust by years. As immigrants, were the original framers of the US Constitution, they would have been outraged by US abuse of existing and future US immigrants.

The basic economics of US life reveals another disappointing story. No matter what your background, ethnicity or political stripe, it is evident that the American dream is far from evenly distributed. Public trust, health and safety are all weakened by the highest level of income inequality among Americans ever recorded. While the US is in the midst of the longest economic expansion in its history (the World Bank current ranks the US as the 12th richest country in the world), nine states saw spikes in inequality and declining incomes from 2017 to 2018, and one in five American children are now born into poverty. This much-debated income equality gap has become a central theme for the 2020 election cycle, with candidates proposing significant ‘wealth tax’ initiatives designed to help level the playing field. The struggling and impoverished across the US far outnumber those wealthy citizens who claim to have achieved the American Dream. There is a deep divide between the nation’s top 0.1 percent and everyone else. Americans at the highest levels of income take in 188 times the income of the bottom 90 percent. For one of the world’s wealthiest countries, these inequality numbers are staggering and headed in the wrong direction. Is this what Alexander Hamilton and the framers of the constitution had in mind for their America?

While struggling to make ends meet has become a way of life for many US citizens, people are also threatened with daily, unprecedented levels of gun violence. No school, no mall, no movie theater, no concert hall, no park, nor private home is safe from a potential shooting rampage. Mass shootings number more than days of the year, (372 shootings in 2019), with 34,512 deaths resulting from gun-related violence. Perhaps as evidence of the helplessness, an increasing number of unhappy people take their own lives with a gun. Over 21,000 US gun-related deaths are suicides, a figure that is increasing every year. In fact, over the past decade, the US firearm suicide rate has increased by 19 percent. This trend has been of particular concern for children and teens, whose firearm suicide rate has increased by 82 percent over the past ten years. Weak attempts at creating legal frameworks to mitigate gun violence seem to have had little or no impact, despite overwhelming popular support for sensible reforms such as expanded background checks. Since the US already has the highest offender incarceration rate in the world (655 per 100,000 population in 2016), it seems that people don’t see existing laws as a deterrent to gun violence.

Most developed countries agree that access to quality and affordable education is a fundamental human right and the cornerstone of a balanced and safe society. Yet the US continues to falter in this area, as access to education remains a significant barrier across the country. Once considered a leader in the measured quality of education and health, the US now ranks 27th in the world. Humanium, a children’s rights watchdog, summaries the US education simply and succinctly as “the most unequal and economically divided of education systems in the developed world.” Friends and coworkers I have spoken to describe access to higher education in the US as hopelessly broken, designed to educate the wealthy at the expense of all others and leave many graduates with crippling student debt they may never retire during their lifetimes. Couple this trend with the declining quality of k-12 public education, suffering from lack of funding and inadequate teacher pay and we find a recipe for disaster.

Unbelievably, these concerns are not the most significant of societal issues in the US. Even if the average US family manages to make a decent income, avoid violence, and get through their education with a manageable debt load, they still need to pay incredible amounts for primary health care. This cost can easily bankrupt an individual or family. According to a recent article in the Guardian, “One out of every six Americans has an unpaid medical bill on their credit report, amounting to $81B in debt nationwide, while about 1 in 12 Americans went without any medical insurance throughout 2018.” It’s no wonder that universal healthcare concerns are a central 2020 election theme. The World Health Organization ranks the US 37th in the world behind developed nations such as France, Singapore, and the UK, but also trailing poorer countries such as Colombia and Chile, while having the highest per capita spending — 20% more than its nearest rival Switzerland. The bitter debate over which political stripe has the best plan to solve this problem continues to delay the inevitable. Without adequate healthcare, education and the means, societies cannot prevail.

For those of us trying to understand or rationalize US healthcare policy, the resistance to universal healthcare for all is counter-intuitive. We, outsiders, are left shaking our collective heads and merely asking Why? How is it that we see a US citizen shouting at the top of their lungs for the right to own and operate the semi-automatic weapon, yet not demand with equal passion the right to affordable health care and education? This absurdity cannot be just explained away as the price of freedom, because countless developed nations have proven over and over that safe, affordable, alternatives are available with equal freedom.

And we are nowhere near the end of significant concerns here. Readers will be creating their lists, which are likely to include other big issues like; a crumbling infrastructure, corrupt voting systems, the need for immigration reform, an enormous debt to GDP ratio, and more. Other developing countries share these concerns, but there is a distinct lack of leadership on many of these issues across America. All of the above concerns place the US leadership in question. When mainstream analysts consistently describe their current administration as corrupt, liars (15,413 false or misleading claims over 1,055 days) and immoral humans, something is amiss. Reform and change voices pop up in various circles, but their views are often squashed by angry mob mentality who sound ‘extremist’ and ‘socialist’ alarm bells. At the same time, the opposing tribe desperate for change, dig in deeper, decrying every idea not aligned to their ethos as right-wing barbarism. It’s a societal impasse.

While political leadership is not a space for the faint of heart, it is truly astounding just how ill-prepared and outright incompetent elected, and appointed leaders can be. Once again, it seems that money buys the US power structure, often with the persuasion of dark money, a strategy that appears to bolster the worst candidates. We only need to consider the current administration’s leadership turnover to understand just how disappointing poorly prepared leaders are. In a New York Times article, The Turnover at the Top of the Trump Administration, the authors describe the abnormal revolving door of the Trump leadership. Whether through dismissal by their narcissistic, often unhinged leader or through the resignation of those unable or unwilling to thrive in this chaos, the Trump administration has seen the highest leadership turnover in history. What example does this set for the coming generation? What does a failing leadership say about our ability to develop and support new leaders? Hope, wishing, and prayer are not a formula to find and appoint new leaders — we need to build them.

As we neared our next stop, I knew we would need to change trains and head south. I told myself to drop this negative narrative rolling around in my head and tune back into the evening at hand. When the train stopped at Canary Wharf, we headed out. It was crisp and late as we walked across on the surface level to board the DLR to Island Gardens. As the train pulled up, we moved toward the north end of the platform, intending to get the view seats for the remainder of the ride. To our surprise and delight, the whole front of the train was unoccupied. What luck! But, as we clamored into the front rows, we noticed a potentially dangerous obstacle. There in the front window corner seat was an unattended and ominous-looking knapsack, leaning against the sidewall of the train. As we all know, unattended luggage is now an internationally recognized threat to life and not to be taken lightly.

As soon as the threat was recognized, we all turned and headed down the train. The other three or four passengers made precisely the same move — observe, turn and head toward us at the back of the first car. Our cousin jumped out, “I’ll go find someone,” she said, her voice trailing off as she ran down the platform. Shortly after that, the doors closed, and we were moving. While we were all trying not to panic, my wife had my arm and was asking if we should get off at the next stop. But what about our wandering cousin and her effort? Surely she’d be right back. In an attempt to break the silence, I openly asked the other passengers if anyone was from London, and if they knew the protocol in this situation. Should we press the emergency alarm button or move through the train farther down?

On my left was a young woman. She was pretty, her curly hair asunder, with a smile that seemed to emanate light. She answered with a quick “no, this is my first trip to London.” From across the aisle, another young woman offered, “No, I’m traveling too,” and as I surveyed the faces of the others, there seemed to be no consensus on the right approach here. With edgy glances going back and forth, we approached the next stop and, therefore, a decision point. I looked at my wife and gave her that side nod of my head, suggesting we ought to get off the train. But, as the doors opened, we could see our cousin and a train security officer running over to jump in. The security guard moved swiftly to the front, surveyed the pack, jiggled it a bit and then, to our surprise, picked it up and started into the pockets. He says, “it happens all the time,” and by the next stop, he was angling off the train, using some restricted key to open an alternative exit. He jumped out with the pack, and there was about a 15-second pause before we were moving (and breathing) again.

In an attempt to break the tension, I looked back at the young woman to my left and said: “so first time in London, this is a little too exciting then?” She smiled back and responded with a stress-relieving, “yeahhhh!” As she went on, her shoulders dropped, her tone grew quieter, and her bright smile became a tight-lipped half grimace. In a hushed voice, she said: “actually, I’m an American (pause), I’m studying in Italy, and I’m just here for the weekend.” I immediately understood that this was a comment that she didn’t want to broadcast and that she was uncomfortable sharing. Studying in Italy isn’t a cause for shame or retreat, but it was a concern for this woman to be seen as an American in this context. And there we have it, the big “you know, you know” moment — that point when you realize that all of the societal collapse themes we’re concerned about are real, and an unfortunately bleak reality for those living in today’s American Dream.

This woman’s tone of resignation was familiar. I’d heard it before while traveling and in business meetings in recent years. Almost the last thing you’ll hear from an American stranger traveling abroad is the admission that they are American. Savvier travelers understand that announcing yourself as American these days comes with an unwelcome layer of angst from all angles. Many, many people at home and abroad are fed up with hearing about today’s America. With its scarcity of leadership, widespread corruption, global bullying, alternative truths and the divided values between those who have a lot and those who have so very little, ‘American’ is becoming a bad word. There is a real sense that people now look toward other nations as their bastions of life and liberty, downranking the US — and for me, that opinion is very depressing. This entire narrative is both sad and depressing, but the naked truth can sometimes have that effect.

As a close US neighbor and its largest trading partner, Canada strives to avoid many of the pitfalls of the US decline, yet our way of life is still at risk. Proximity to the US is more than just a shared border. As of 2016, 66% of Canadians live within 100 kilometres of the Canada–US border. In the imminent future, all of us North Americans may need to get even closer to each other. As parts of the south of the US become challenging to live in, people are going to need to move north and west. Though the US may have gilded ceilings or gold plated toilets in the mansions of the upper 1%, these assets will be of little value when there is limited access to clean water, food or essential services. We will all find ourselves moving toward the center, both physically and ideologically — a trend that is already visible in some areas. A familiar axiom says that nothing brings people together quicker and with more galvanized purpose than finding a common enemy. We have now found that common enemy — and it is all of us. As mother nature begins to take the planet back, we are fighting for our very survival, and no amount of money or American might is going to stop her.

But it is also true that there is an America on the way up. What if we just wiped that mental whiteboard clean and started to frame our next set of rules for America v2.0? Future America will be led by a youthful group of change agents who are confidently planning the next American Dream. This rising generation is ‘done’ with hiding in school closets, training for (or even living through) active shooter situations rather than their math finals. Our future leaders fear for their health and safety, and they are demanding a new deal. This generation will re-frame the rules for the next US society with one basic underlying premise — that the path we are currently on is no longer working for the majority of us. If we can accept that the old dream is over, we have the opportunity to build on everything we have learned — but we need to face this challenge head-on.

I find myself looking both at the end and the beginning of this societal journey. There will inevitably be a societal shift, and like many, I’m more than ready to move forward. Perhaps we need to find the next Alexander or Alexandra Hamilton to take the lead and show us the way out. We can expect this next generation leader/innovator to emerge from the unlikeliest of places. Remember that Hamilton rose from nothing to be a pivotal American hero. As the lyric asks us, “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore (likely not true) and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished, in squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?”

If Alexander Hamilton could make it, another ‘Hamiltonesque’ character might already be among us. I can’t wait to meet him or her and learn that they ‘know that they know’ a way forward. Next stop — the new American Dream.