Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein

10/11/2010 @ 12:45PM

The United States Of Anger

We were sitting in one of the Olive Gardens that populate Florida’s strip malls. I could barely believe we were eating an early bird dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon to save one dollar. After all, as I complained to my grandmother the entire drive over in her ancient Ford, making money was easy.

The year was 1985. Madonna had just become famous for her Like a Virgin album. We were at the height of the Cold War. Mikhail Gorbachev had recently been sworn in as the leader of the Soviet Union, and the Soviets were bogged down in a war in Afghanistan for the sixth year. Coca-Cola released New Coke, and the Apple board fired Steve Jobs.

My Great Uncle Alan looked at me with a glint in his eye, “Whatever you want to be, if you work hard enough, you can be it, even president of the U.S.!” He grinned at me so earnestly and with such obvious warmth that he truly made me feel as if I could be anything. I never forgot his smile and his belief in me, and they still motivate me to carry on when I face difficulties.

As I got older and traveled to more states in our union, more and more fellow Americans encouraged me, from my Little League coaches who said I could be the next Nolan Ryan to my teachers who thought I could find a cure for cancer. What I found was that no matter what state I visited, what political belief people had, whether they were born in the U.S. or had immigrated here to find a better life, there was a tie that bound every American I met–an optimistic can-do attitude that propelled America to be a beacon of light for the oppressed the world over.

But that has all changed since Sept. 11, 2001. Since the tragedy that day, and especially during the Great Recession, I have been dismayed to see our country lose its way, lose the core ideals that make America great. I cannot believe there is a national debate now about whether or not the president can order assassinations of fellow Americans, or allow for torture. Whatever happened to due process and the Constitution, which elevated a system of checks and balances over the opinions of individual men? I cannot believe there is a move against freedom of religion. Nothing is more core to the Constitution and to the American way than freedom of religion. Nothing.

As I talk to fellow Americans now, I no longer feel that can-do attitude. Many commentators say that the country, our country, has never been so polarized and that we have little in common anymore. But they are wrong. We have a new tie that binds us together: anger. We are no longer the United States of America but the United States of Anger. Everyone is blaming everyone else for the problems we are stuck in, and offering no solutions.

We now have people on the right like Glenn Beck, Dinesh D’Souza and Sarah Palin hijacking our founding fathers’ images to spew hate. And people on the left, too, are to blame. Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman believes all Republicans are morons, and his fellow columnist at The New York Times Frank Rich calls the Republican National Committee’s chairman, Michael Steele, an idiot.

How can we come together and defeat the very real and serious challenges we face when our policy makers and commentators are part of the problem rather than part of the solution?

Empires rise and decline. It happened to the Romans, and it happened to the British. I don’t want it to happen to the U.S. I have lived almost half of my life abroad, everywhere from a socialist Canada to a democratic Philippines and a Communist China.

Let me tell you something: There is no greater country and way of life than America’s.

Empires collapse when political leaders fight for their own interests rather than for the people. Our leaders are bankrupting us financially and trying to bankrupt us morally as they fight for their political parties rather than all of us. Empires collapse when the people get fat and lazy and no longer want to work hard and strive for a better way of life. That happens when more entrepreneurial and hardworking countries rise.

Many are predicting America’s imminent collapse and the rise of China. I have lived in China most of my adult life, and I love it there. There is a can-do optimism and electricity that pulses through the country. There are millions of Great Uncle Alans encouraging younger people there.

But the reality is that America should share superpower status with China rather than lose it to China. It is healthy to have two superpowers.

When I talk to Americans, I see most of them willing to work hard still. They just need to be given opportunities. Our political class needs to make sure they get them. A hundred years from now I want our descendants to look at the Great Recession not as the time when America declined but as a time when we faced hardship and defeated it.

Shaun Rein is the founder and managing director of the China Market Research Group, a strategic market intelligence firm. He writes for Forbes on leadership, marketing and China. Follow him on Twitter @shaunrein.

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