At the beginning of the speech, he spoke of a "new era of cooperation" between Democrats and Republicans. But from that lip-service phrase, he launched into a declaration of competition. America has to win and everyone else has to lose. “We need to out-innovate, outeducate and outbuild the rest of the world. We have to make America the best place on earth to do business...that’s how our people will prosper." He mentioned that China has the world's largest private solar research facility, and our expected response is: we must build a BIGGER one. They have the fastest supercomputer, we will build a FASTER one. No one questions the Holy American Dogma of being number one.
In this way, America can "win the future," Obama said. "The future is ours to win." Wtf does that mean? The future is not a trophy or a promotion. Usually when you win something, it means everyone else necessarily has to lose. If America wins the future, who loses it? The rhetoric of American competitiveness, although always pervasive in our history, sounded particularly insane to me in this State of the Union. It conjures images of frenzied Americans with bulging eyes ripping apart other nations, somewhat like feeding koi:
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Maybe it's because I just read No Contest: The Case Against Competition by Alfie Kohn. Kohn debunks the idea that competition is the most efficient model to make people prosper, as Obama suggests and most Americans accept. As Americans, we compete in every aspects of our lives. Kohn shows that competition is not the most efficient model to educate, conduct research, play, or work. Obama said we have to "win the race to educate our kids." In context, he's not even comparing our students to Chinese students or anything, it's just a race against...time? Kids growing up? Obama said: "we need to teach our kids that it's not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair." What he clearly means is: only winners should be celebrated, and everyone else who submitted a science fair project is a loser and can't be a scientist. This, of course, reflects the language of Obama's Race to the Top education competition, which pits schools against each other to compete for funding.
I guess this rhetoric shouldn't suddenly surprise me - it's the same cowboy "we're number one" swagger as usual. Sure, educating our kids and doing scientific research and building high-speed rail are great projects. But framing it as "we won't be happy until South Korean kids are dumber than American kids" and "our high-speed rail is faster than yours" just sounds, well, insecure. We're a nation that loves to one-up. Over and over, Obama used the idea of a race, a battle, a war, a contest. Why does the rest of the world have to lose in order for Americans to prosper?
My cousin's thoughts, along similar lines: http://www.thetrainofthought.com/2011/01/what-if-we-lose-future.html.
ReplyDeleteIt's funnysad: the main place where competition would actually be useful and important (keeping monopolistic corporations from screwing us over) is precisely where Obama seemed to lose interest. One example: Most Americans have only one choice for broadband Internet, so the ISPs are free to do whatever they want. But rather than using regulation to encourage competitiveness that would result in better service, he took the opportunity to campaign for deregulation. It's really frustrating!