By Grant Cooke

SOUTH SUDAN’S INDEPENDENCE AND THE WONDERS of the “Arab Spring” are remarkable current events. Both are testaments to the human struggle for freedom and participatory democracy, as well as the power of optimism and accomplishment — qualities sadly lacking today in America’s social and political consciousness.

Once the nation of “can do,” America now can barely do — as we see in the inability of Congress to resolve the current debt ceiling impasse.

A decade later, we are still stained — despite our military successes against al-Qaeda — by the tragedy of 9/11. The residual effects of being attacked on our own soil have tinged America with sadness and an angst that seems unshakable.

Instead of uniting us with common values and goals, it has left us with bitter, divisive politics. Worse yet, we’ve had to endure corruption, dysfunction and gross incompetence from two “dumb as I wanna be” Congresses.

Under President Bush and during one of America’s most trying eras, we had the Tom DeLay Congress and the Jack Abramoff scandal, where corruption reached the epic levels of the Reagan administration. Unfortunately, President Obama has similarly been saddled by Congressional incompetency that rose to the level of the “Weinergate” absurdity and the current debacle, where representatives are too busy posing in front of news cameras to get on with the people’s work.

Despite major presidential failings, it has been the shameful Congress that has driven American politics to new lows since 9/11. Which brings us back to the conservative fringe and its cry of “no new taxes and smaller government.” This is the dogma of the pessimist — the intolerant, the fearful, and the anxious. Underneath this creed is a romantic Norman Rockwell image of a much simpler and homogeneous America. Like a “Leave It to Beaver” episode, there is a childlike quality to this group’s politics and image of America.

Today’s America, like the rest of the world, has real and complex problems. The problems we face as a nation and as a planet are not solvable with small efforts from small governments with chaotic politics. Those days, if they ever existed, are gone. We need to put them away, along with our tie-dyes and bellbottoms.

We live in a world of 7 billion people, all of them desiring what America has. Yet what our nation “has” is being squandered by institutional and political failure. Major social problems like an aging population, inadequate health care, declining literacy, illegal immigration, urban crime, disproportionate wealth, high unemployment, rapacious resource extraction, and an increasingly polluted environment from our carbon-intensive lifestyles desperately need solutions based on a national political consensus, not willful obstructionism and childish denial.

America needs historic action on a massive scale. We need political leadership that envisions a better, more sustainable future — not one that is bogged down in romantic bromides.

The conservative fringe has it absolutely wrong. There is no going back to a simpler America — that train has left the station. We are no longer youthful romantics chasing moonbeams, adrift in a Day-Glo haze. We live on a fragile planet, in a complex, interconnected, multiracial and multicultural world, and we have severe social, economic, and environmental problems that must be solved collectively.

What the world needs once more is American “know how” and leadership. And what we need is better, not smaller, government. It is not a question of “no new taxes,” but taxation that is transparent, equitable, and socially and environmentally responsible. America needs to finally shed the sorrow of 9/11 and return to the robust scientific advances and entrepreneurial spirit that created the technological and international renaissance of the late 20th century.

More than anything, America needs to rid itself of the politics of “don’t, won’t and can’t” and embrace a future that is dynamic, compassionate, tolerant and sustainable. We need a national agenda that is environmentally and citizen friendly, driven by green jobs and powered by renewable energy.

Grant Cooke is a long-time Benicia resident and CEO of Sustainable Energy Associates. He is co-author, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Woodrow Clark, of “Global Energy Innovation: Why America Must Lead,” which will be published this fall by Praeger Press.

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