A Tipping Point with Ominous Implications is Fast Approaching!

Note to the reader: This article is an updated version of one that was posted shortly after my blog “Education, Hope, and the American Dream” was created and at a time when the blog’s readership was minimal.
Because I believe it is even more timely now than it was then, it is being re-posted with modifications.

As you read these words, it is vital that you realize that the United States of America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, is fast approaching a tipping point that will irrevocably alter the reality in which we live.

As a result of decisions we have made as a nation, since the end of World War II, a society of second class citizens has emerged. These Americans are not full participants in the American dream. Many of these men and women have effectively become disenfranchised and why should we be surprised by this.

These are Americans who have not been well-served by our systems of public education; have little or no access to quality healthcare for their families, Obamacare notwithstanding; and, if they are employed at all, they have low paying jobs with no eligibility for healthcare benefits and no opportunities for advancement. These are Americans who have given up on the American Dream for themselves and their families. They have succumbed to a self-perpetuating cycle of powerlessness and hopelessness.

Although the demographics of this group spans the full spectrum of the American population, African-American, Hispanic-American and other minorities are over-represented. For blacks and other minorities, the sense of disenfranchisement is compounded by their lack of faith that the American justice system will treat them justly.

Mainstream Americans resent the dependency of this segment of our population every bit as much as these men, women, and children resent their lack of access to the American Dream. For a huge portion of this population the American Dream is nothing more than a failed promise.

The bitterness and resentment on both sides of the invisible barriers that separate us as a people are enhanced by the racism and discrimination that permeate our society. How ironic is it that the election of our nation’s first African-American president has proven that racism in America is alive and well.

That there is an equally large and fast-growing population of retirees who are checking out of the game at an age from which they are likely to live another quarter of a century, adds greatly to this burden. It does not matter that these retiring men and women have worked hard for their entire lives to earn their Social Security, Medicare and pensions. These facts do not change the economic dynamics that make this population a burden to the Americans in the middle who must work harder to pay the bills.

Fortunately, many of these men and women have invested well and their money is working for us even if they are not. We are only beginning to understand, however, how this aging population will begin to overwhelm an already inadequate healthcare system over the next two decades.

Add the weight of the disenfranchised and the burden is fast approaching a tipping point after which our national misfortune will accelerate and we will all begin to feel both hopeless and powerless.

The Republican Party, driven by the strong conservative dogma of the tea party movement, is choosing to ignore the needs of Mitt Romney’s imfamous “47 percent” and focus only on the needs of the middle class and, even more so, the corporate elite. These political leaders believe they can turn back the clock to a time when the white man ruled the roost and when values seemed clearer.

The Democratic Party continues to pursue its traditional liberal agenda that has become equally ineffectual.

In the meantime, China, Europe, Japan, India, and other developing nations are challenging our supremacy in the international marketplace; Al Qaeda and ISIS are seeking to spread terror to weaken “the evil empire;” and, Mother Nature is meting out the consequences of global warning.

We cannot continue to trudge down the dry and dusty paths of 20th Century political dogma, conventional wisdom, or business as usual. Somehow we must pull the disenfranchised back into the game as full and equal citizens, as believers in the American dream, and as partners in rising to the challenges of this new century. We need to do this not out of altruism, however compelling the argument, rather because we desperately need the committed participation of every single able-bodied American.

We must demand that our elected representatives cease their paralyzing bickering and begin working together in what is a conflict of historical proportions in which the very survival of our nation and way of life are at an unprecedented level risk.

We desperately need new leadership with fresh ideas to respond to these extraordinary challenges of this young Twenty-First Century and we do not have so much as a single nanosecond to spare.

I invite you to follow this blog, “Education, Hope, and the American Dream,” in which I offer innovative solutions to the problems we face as a society.

I also invite you to read my four books.

1. The Difference Is You: Power Through Positive Leadership, in which I offer the reader powerful principles that enable individual men and women to change the world around them;

2. Radical Surgery: Reconstructing the American Health Care System, that offers a way to provide universal healthcare and prescription drugs to the American people without socialized medicine;

3. Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America, in which I offer a blueprint for reinventing the educational process to one that focuses on teachers and students working toward success, absent the risk of failure; and

4. Light and Transient Causes, a novel that tells a story of what could happen if we lose faith in the principles of democracy and with one another.

Racial Violence and Police Brutality Have a Similar Genesis!

The rioting taking place in Baltimore over the past couple of days is not the first nor will it be the last incidence of young blacks, mostly men, acting out in anger in central cities throughout the U.S. Unlike those who engage in thoughtful protest, violence is all many of these young people know.

They are part of a growing population of young people, a large percentage of which are black, who are disconnected from mainstream society. They have been chewed up a spit out by a flawed educational process, have access to minimal health care, feel targeted by the criminal justice system, and feel imprisoned in their own communities. Do these factors justify such behavior? Certainly not, but we are not seeking justification.

What we are seeking, what we must seek, is understanding. Until we understand the forces that drive such behavior we can only react to it and reaction only prompts a chain reaction. We need understanding if we are to have any hope of a meaningful resolution.

That being said, is the rioting in the streets in Baltimore any different than a group of cops losing control and beating a black suspect in the streets? History is full of examples in which seemingly peaceful groups of people can, when conditions are ripe, morph into a violent mob to which they seem compelled to relinquish their self-control.

That human beings have a propensity to surrender to the mob is a given and it is a powerful force of human nature. What concerns us are the factors that trigger such behavior.

In the case of white cops and young black men in urban America, the dynamics that trigger such violence are remarkably and ironically similar. In both instances, the triggering emotion is a heightened sense of frustration born of powerlessness in the face of forces that affect their daily lives. Let us remind ourselves that the overwhelming majority of African-Americans do not engage in senseless rioting in the streets of any neighborhood, let alone their own, and the overwhelming majority of police officers do not engage in the senseless beating of suspects of any demographic.

Young people living in poverty, hopelessness, and powerlessness are reacting to a world that does not seem to care about them and from which they see no escape. While this group includes people of all races, creeds, and ethnic heritage, African-Americans are disproportionately represented and possess a unique sensitivity to discrimination. This burgeoning population of Americans live in a world that is separate and apart from what is perceived to be mainstream society and the chasm that separates them is widening, relentlessly.

When these young people take to the streets, it is almost always begins as a reaction to what they believe to be police brutality or other forms of institutional racism.

The police officers who respond with violence are reacting to their own sense of frustration over their inability—their sense of powerlessness—to bring perpetrators of a virtual avalanche of criminal activity to justice in an environment in which they believe the courts to be ineffectual. Imagine how any of us would feel about a job in which the problems that keep us from doing our job are overwhelming and where our employer seems incapable of doing anything about it. None of this excuses this type of behavior but it does help us understand.

The reality that we face as members of a democratic form of government is that the world is changing faster than ever and the tools we have at our disposal are becoming obsolete. No matter how much some people might wish it, we cannot turn back the clock to a time when the white man ruled the roost and values were simpler and clearer. This is true whether you are viewing the scenario as a conservative or liberal, republican or democrat, tea-party member or socialist.

The combination of conservative and liberal policies employed by our leadership over the last 65 years are what brought us to this point in history. These policies did not work then and they have even less chance of working in a world in which the gaps that separate us as a people seem impassable; where the population is growing steadily more diverse; and, in which our elected legislators seem incapable of working together.

There are tens of millions of young people who feel disconnected from mainstream society and the number grows, daily. Somehow we must find a way to pull them into the mainstream, not shut them off from it. We need new ideas, new solutions; we need to think exponentially.

These new approaches must begin in our public schools where public school teachers are presently under attack by educational reformers who do not understand the challenges of public education; who think that simplistic, jingoistic solutions can solve complex problems; and, who are oblivious to the damage they do!

We must call upon professional educators to acknowledge that the way we have been teaching kids for decades no longer works. We need them to come together as a profession and seek new educational processes that are focused on the meeting the real needs each and every child and to create the necessary structure to support that effort.

To paraphrase Zig Ziglar, “if we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we’ll keep getting what we’ve been getting.”

The reader is invited to explore my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America, where I offer a blueprint for action.