Who do we think we are?

Okay, I hope you all have seen Miami Vice and enjoyed it for the pure escapism it is. Now its back to some serious blogging.

This morning I caught a re-broadcast of PBS' Now, a news magazine show hosted by David Bracaccio. The title of the episode was 'Reporter vs. The White House' and featured an interview with journalist Orville Schell. In a unique way, it reminded me of an interview published in the June 2006 edition of National Geographic with China expert Peter Hessler. The former was dealing with press coverage in this country and the the later with a variety of topics including division of wealth, job opportunities and the environment in China, but both brought an interesting question to mind: What kind of example are we, the last great super power, setting for the rest of the World?

In his interview, Orville Schell recounts how before the War in Iraq the press of this country pretty much gave the current administration the benefit of the doubt on weapons of mass destruction and on the decision to go to war. Think back to the lack of hard questioning regarding the supposed evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Administration officials even quoted articles about the weapons in the later spurned and maligned New York Times on Sunday morning talk shows to support the cry for an invasion of Iraq.

As things have dragged on, the press has finally begun to ask questions about the war, but at each turn it has been labeled by the White House as "unpatriotic" as "destroying morale" as "dangerous to the war effort". Think back to initial remarks about impending civil war, of the initial coverage of the policies towards so-called 'enemy combatants', of questions over no-bid contracts, of calls for body armor, of reports related to investigations of the phone records and bank records, of questions related to the curtailing of civil liberties in our own country. Allies of the administration now refer to the New York Times in words formerly reserved for the likes of Benedict Arnold.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, we are fighting a war at great expense, both in monetary terms and in lives, to bring freedom to the Middle East. Freedom--nice in theory it would seem. Lots of things are nice in theory, but we, as those who would seek to foist the ideal on the rest of the world, better demonstrate that we are willing to live with its reality, not just its theory, before we decide to go out and shove it down the throats of our global neighbors.

And what of the China interview? Well, if you haven't noticed, China is destroying much of its environment to bring its country and its economy into the modern world. Luckily, as Peter Hessler points out, the Chinese are starting to realize that in its zeal to modernize, their government has made some pretty damaging decisions in regards to the country's environment and may need to start tempering its strategies to conserve its resources and keep the air safe to breath. It the United States quite some time to figure this out. How many rivers did we have to poison in the name of progress before the environmental movement in our country began to be seen as midstream and truly effect major policy decisions? We still grapple with it today.

But the interview pointed at something more subtle than that, as well. Something that went beyond the governmental comparisons and to the core of things. Hessler used the example of a newly middle-class family in China, proud of their new found success and also worried about their government's environmental policies. They discussed their concerns in their home under a proud symbol of their new-found monetary accomplishments--"a chandelier that had 32 lights in it". Hessler notes there were a total of "...65 lights in this room. And every single one of them was on." But who are we to tell these people to "slow down"?, he points out. How many of us drive enormous SUVs?

I would add to the point. How many of us live in enormous homes with rooms we don't need on more ground than we need, that consume more energy to heat and cool than we need? How many of us drive when we could walk? How many of us can't walk anywhere, because we don't demand that governments and developers plan residential areas in ways that are conducive to pedestrian traffic or to the use of public transportation?

We are the last big super power. We are the ones setting the example for billions of people in underdeveloped and developing countries to emulate. But we don't want them to have too much, because then what will be left for us. Who do we think we are?

Note: The interview with Peter Hessler in National Geographic is worth reading all the way through. It addresses economic opportunity, education, workers safety and the communist history as it effects the present in addition to touching on the environmental concerns of China. It is a great overview of a number of issues facing this growing nation. It appears to be part of a new feature in the magazine called Voices and it is not listed on the cover, so be on the look-out for more of these interesting and enlightening interviews.