Book Club Discussion 3: # 2

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The author feels that the popular belief in the United States's approaching the eve of its destruction because of the disastrous wars, uncontrolled deficits, dependence on foreign oil, shootings at schools and universities, corruption in business and government, etc, etc, is actually the same foreboding that was present during the presidency of Richard Nixon. The author concludes that Americans fear too much and regardless of all the problems about the country, the Unites States will remain the most powerful and prosperous for the next 100 years. How do you think the problems and worries in the 60s are similar or different compared to what America is facing nowadays?

My answer:

Nixon was way before my existence was even a remote concept. But by hearing the mention of Nixon here and there on TV, I think the difference is really the techological advantage that America was having against the rest of the world (except for Russia may be, but I personally don't think Russia was ever close to America in the race of techonology advancement....China of course was not even a likely contenter back then when they barely could make enough bicycles for everybody to ride to work...)

There was the fear but America was having a real upper hand in terms of technology. (which was the foundation that led to the invention of personal computers in the 80s, the breakthroughs in medicine, like heart transplant and hip replacements, and then there was the creation of the internet....in the 90s...) Looking at today though, the technological gap between America and the rest of the world has become much narrower...I don't know what new technologies are already brewing in other countries, but I know that the people's competitiveness and determination in China and India are providing these countries lots of brain power....Will America still be ahead? Or for how long will America still be ahead in terms of technological advancement? The automobile technology, and even the semi-conductor technology were created here in the United States, but nowadays jobs in these two areas are disappearing...

In Nixon's time, my dad told me people could only get bathtubs and toilet bowls manufactured by America, "the American Standard" were found in many homes in Hong Kong... But now, all the home remodeling stuff are made in China. My mother still has an American made blow dryer, which is much older than me, that ancient gadget just lasted forever while I had gone through several blow dryers already since I left home...My mother's blow dryer was made during the Nixon era...

Besides being ahead in technology in the 60s, America had also much stronger manufacturing industries... Americans made a lot of everything to be sold domestically and also to be exported. America was still the big time experter in the world in the 60s.

As fearful as the American people were back then, the United States did have lots of strengths and advantages over other countries to guarantee its propserous future....

But now, other countries produce more scientists, more doctors, more engineers, more computers, and just more of everything than America (except for lawyers and criminals, America is still number #1 in producing the largest number of lawyers and the the most criminals compared to other developed countries....), so much more that they actually make a lot of money by exporting them to the United States. (from the Mary Janes I'm wearing to "José" the janitor who helps keep my office clean...) I believe this wasn't the case in Nixon's time.

Lastly, there are a lot more pepole who are on the government's entitlement programs than in the 60s. The public schools (however, a lot of the major public universities that start with the "University of....", not University of Phoneix..., not the community colleges, so far are still providing very good quality higher education.... thank goodness.) in the U.S. are famous to the world as the easiest and the most relaxed... When I was a kid, I wanted to come here for highschool, cause all my friends who got kicked out of highschools from Hong Kong for being F students, all of a sudden became A students on the Deans' Lists in the U.S. I went on hunger strike against my dad hoping he would let me join my friends in the U.S.... but he said he would rather me starved to death than have me partying and doing drugs in America.... So my dad won, I ended my hunger strike, went back to struggle with my more than 10 different homework assignments that I had to turn in everyday in Hong Kong....

I think these are the differences between the Nixon era and the time we are now in. I agree that the fear are similar, but the overall competitiveness the United States is facing, as well as the domestic burden she is assuming nowadays are very different from Nixon's time.

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