Can life in the United States be free from our exhausting politics? Free from conflict, from meanness and name calling? Ignoring politics may seem like the path to peaceful well-being but if we want things to get better, it’s a dead end. Self-government is possible only when citizens act in good faith. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with a lot of bad-faith political actors who want to game the system and not actually solve collective problems. This is the route of our political fatigue.
Our democracy is not guaranteed: “A republic,” as Benjamin Franklin said, only “if you can keep it.” We know how things are supposed to work: politics leads to legislation, some bills become laws, and then conditions change. Whether the changes are for good or ill depends on who we elect to represent us and what they do when we give them the job.
Sometimes legislation becomes a law that helps people. Before the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990, it was generally impossible for a wheelchair-bound person to take the bus. Few cities had curb cutouts to make it easier to cross an intersection with a toddler in a stroller. Today, we take such public accommodations for granted. Life became easier.
Sometimes legislation becomes a law that harms people. As a consequence of the extreme Texas anti-abortion law, pregnant women with unexpected complications have been denied care. The state threatens doctors with decades in prison and the loss of their medical license for performing any abortion. The “exception” clause in the law is vague; on advice of counsel, treatment is delayed until a woman is at death’s door. Amanda Zurawski is one of the victims and a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging this law. The Texas Tribune reported on her experience:
Her cervix was dilating early, and she had lost the amniotic fluid she needed to maintain her pregnancy. Her doctor told her “miscarriage was inevitable,” she testified Wednesday, but since there was still a fetal heartbeat, they could not induce labor. . . .
She was at home when she started to descend into septic shock. She was shaking, her teeth chattering, so freezing cold despite the August heat in Austin. Her husband rushed her to the hospital, where they pumped her with antibiotics. Finally, her doctor agreed to induce labor. She delivered a deceased daughter.
. . . Zurawski and her husband would still like to have children, but tests have revealed significant scarring and damage to her reproductive organs as a result of the infection.
What was the collective problem that Texas’s anti-abortion law was supposed to solve? The Zurawskis desperately wanted a child and their pregnancy went awry because these things happen. Since about twenty percent of pregnancies end in miscarriages, there will be many more Amandas. Life has become much harder for women in Texas.
Sometimes legislation tries to address a serious problem and is blocked; it doesn’t become law. I had a vague idea that immigration reform might be a good example of blocked legislation, so I started searching online. Google gave me the following suggestions:
Acknowledgment that our immigration system is dysfunctional and out of date is widespread. You’d think that one of these reform bills in 2013 . . . 2018 . . . or 2023 could at least help. But no. Even Republican President George W. Bush’s 2007 “compromise” (i.e., weak) immigration reform legislation was blocked by Senate conservatives. “The crisis at our southern border” is a valuable talking point—and they don’t want to give that up.
When politics is about performance and fundraising, collective problems get worse—they become huge and complex, what public policy experts call “wicked problems.” Take climate change. While everyone is affected by globally rising temperatures, the consequences vary. Phoenix is sizzling, New Orleans is drowning, and Miami is sinking. “Wicked problems” that manifest differently in different locales are difficult to address because the interconnections of the problem are hard to describe. Coordinating action is difficult. Blocking a policy solution is easier than enacting one.
The American Dream is in tatters—but it doesn’t have to be that way. If we drop the “American exceptionalism” attitude for a minute, we could explore alternative solutions already proven to work in peer countries. Let’s look at three areas where managing everyday life is easier for them than for us.
Here, schooling is hard.
Public education was strongly supported in the New England and mid-Atlantic states from the 1700s. The Western territories, to show they were civilized and ready for statehood, enacted compulsory education in the late 1800s.
Southern states, by contrast, enacted compulsory school attendance laws after 1900, and did so reluctantly. A planter class fearful of elevating the educational aspirations of ex-slaves and poor whites, whose labor was critical to an agrarian, plantation economy, effectively resisted the extension of universal public education. For these states, compulsory schooling symbolized the reverse of what it meant to their northern and western counterparts: it signaled a threat to the traditional means of social control, which the planter class sought to maintain in a racially divided form.
Surprise! Resistance to public education had something to do with racism.
The US educational system was always fragmented; it becomes more so as our political system deteriorates. Compulsory and public education has been hollowed out as homeschooling, school pods, and charter schools siphoned off students and funding from public coffers. The burden now is on parents to sort through the options and strategize to (hopefully) find a decent and appropriate school for their kids. This can be a nerve-wracking, time-consuming, and expensive process. And yet, American school children’s academic performance in mathematics, science, and reading, when compared to their peers in other countries, is only average.
Is there an alternative? Yes!
Finland’s educational system is celebrated as one of the world’s best. Their schools consistently rank in the top five in international rankings. How is their approach different from ours? Everything we do—they do the opposite. First, the Finns don’t use standardized testing. Children are evaluated on an individualized basis and the grading system is set by their teacher. Second, teaching is a high-status profession. All teachers have a master’s degree from highly selective graduate teaching programs. Teachers have a great deal of autonomy and are well-paid. Third, Finnish politicians do not interfere with the profession and there is no bureaucratic system of “teacher accountability.” If a teacher isn’t performing up to standards, the school principal is expected to do something about it. Finally, the school setting is more relaxed in Finland than in the US. The school doesn’t start until after 9 a.m. Some schools only have two or three classes a day. Classes are longer but there are substantial breaks in between. Students have the same teacher for five or six years, which provides consistency and stability.
Finnish students do well and their parents are relieved of the kind of stress that afflicts their US counterparts: no struggle to find the right school, no figuring out how to pay for education, no juggling different rules and timetables for different schools, or coping with frequent substitute teachers. In Finland, all the schools are great, everything is paid for through taxes, and all the children go to school.
Here, healthcare is hard.
No background information and citations are needed for this section. Everyone has had direct experience with the expensive US healthcare “system.” (N.b., it’s not a system, it’s an industry.) The power belongs to the insurance companies. Individuals with employer-provided health insurance are at the mercy of companies that switch providers every few years. Yearly “open enrollment” periods are guaranteed to produce stress.
Medicare could be easy. It isn’t. That’s because politicians have responded to pressure from health industry lobbyists. The last thing health insurance companies want is a US national health service that provides guaranteed medical treatment and preventative care funded by universal taxation. Politicians have rewarded their healthcare industry donors by giving them an incursion point called “Medicare Advantage.” Not surprisingly, many of these “Advantage” plans are now facing lawsuits and being investigated for fraud.
I could go on . . . but you probably know most of this from experience. What you may not know is how much easier taking care of your health is in France.
France provides universal healthcare coverage for its residents. Earmarked taxes as well as employer/employee contributions fund healthcare. Unlike in the US, employer/employee contributions are pooled at the national level to support the equitable provision of healthcare. There is a complementary system of voluntary health insurance (supplemental private insurance) to cover co-pays and specialized treatments. Prices are standardized.
There are curious cultural differences in going to the doctor in France. On the plus side, the doctor isn’t in a rush. They’ll spend a half hour going over your medical history and current complaints, then conduct a thorough physical exam. You are not passed from intake tech to nurse to physician’s assistant to doctor. On the minus side, you’ll find that the waiting room is for waiting. One ex-pat gives this advice: Bring a book.
While all human systems are imperfect—and the French one certainly has its aggravations—there is one thing they don’t have: medical bankruptcies.
Here, voting is hard.
Two ways that voting in the US is made more difficult: legislation that restricts voter access, and what political scientists call “friction,” or the personal commitments like childcare or work schedules that prevent a voter from casting a ballot on time.
Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed legislation to restrict voting by removing drop boxes, limiting early or mail-in voting, and not allowing college students to register at their local campus addresses. Now additional legislation aims to interfere with the administration of elections. According to the Brennan Center for Justice,
This year, state lawmakers, who spent 2021 passing laws that made it harder to vote, have focused more intently on election interference, passing nine laws that could lead to tampering with how elections are run and how results are determined.
Election interference laws do two primary things. They open the door to partisan interference in elections, or they threaten the people and processes that make elections work. In many cases, these efforts are being justified as measures to combat baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and a stolen 2020 election.
Despite restrictions on voter access in the 2020 Presidential election, voter turnout was the highest it has ever been since this statistic was recorded: 67%. That’s why extremists in the state legislatures are now targeting the election administration rather than voters.
Voting in US elections requires a personal strategy or small sacrifices. In Germany, by contrast, voting is practically frictionless.
Elections in Germany are held on Sundays. For national (Parliamentary) elections, each ballot offers two choices: a choice of a district candidate to represent the voter in Parliament and a choice of political party to determine the balance of power in Parliament and select the Chancellor).
The voting process is simple. A few weeks before the election, the local electoral office mails each qualified voter a voting card and information on the polling station and its procedures. On election Sunday, voters go to the assigned polling place with their voting card, residential registration (Anmeldung), and ID. (There is a procedure for proxy voting if you can’t make it on election day.)
The average turnout for German Parliamentary elections fluctuates between seventy and eighty percent. Everyone is automatically registered to vote.
Make it easier for all American citizens to vote. Fix that, and other areas of life will get easier, too.
Keep scrolling down (below Notes) to reach the comments, share, and like buttons.
Find me on social media:
Notes:
Angloinfo.com Voting in Germany
Imred Bouchrika, US Students’ Academic Achievements: Performance Still Lags Behind OECD Peers.
Cynthia A. Cave, Compulsory School Attendance.
Erasmus International, 10 Reasons why Finland’s education system is the best in the world.
Connor Friedersdorf, Why Don’t Germans Object to Registering Their Home Addresses with Authorities?
Elaine Kamarck and Christine Stenglein, Can immigration reform happen? A look back.
Eleanor Klibanoff and Rebecca Schneid, Tearfully testifying against Texas’ abortion ban, three women describe medical care delayed.
Melinda Menner Moyer, Pods, Microschools and Tutors: Can Parents Solve the Education Crisis on Their Own? (NYT unlocked article.)
Robert Pear and Carl Hulse, Immigration Bill Fails to Survive Senate Vote. (NYT unlocked article.)
U.S. Access Board, The ADA benefits all people, not just “Americans with Disabilities.”
Wikipedia, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
Oh, the heathcare boondoggle! And, of course, all those legislators passing laws to benefit insurers and the investor-owned, for-profit care centers, have excellent taxpayer- funded health coverage for themselves and their families, often for life!
Great points, great article. It is so sad we let this happen to us as a country. I think this country is suffering from a bad case of low self esteem.