America, would you rather just hang up your boots?

Dear America, For a long while now, I and many others like me have watched in horror at the three-ring circus that’s been going on in the name of politics in Washington. Leaders of your two principal parties have been wrangling about how to bring down your monstrous debt levels, but even with the risk of a potential default on your debt so near at hand, they’ve both been bickering endlessly. Economists and analysts have warned of an Armageddon, an apocalypse and several other cataclysmic outcomes for the American economy, if a deal isn’t reached by the 2 August deadline. Others say the deadline can be stretched for a week longer without actually defaulting on debts. My interest in this debate happening so far away isn’t merely academic, since the rest of the world, including I, won’t be immune if anything so ruinous should happen to the American economy. Right after the 2008 crisis, for instance, when Lehman Brothers collapsed in a heap, triggering a downturn in the global economy, many of my friends lost their jobs. Some of them did get back to gainful employment after a while, but they still walk around with a vacuous look in their eyes, shattered by the fragility of their work lives. I myself had to take a pay cut. It hurt badly, but I counted myself lucky. So, you see, what happens in Washington can make or break the lives of people in Worli and Warangal as well. That three-ring circus you’re running in Washington has the power to devastate lives around the world. [caption id=“attachment_50276” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“US President Barack Obama (R) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) sit during a meeting about the debt limit at the White House in Washington July 23, 2011. Reuters”]  [/caption] Which is why all of us are very nervous when we watch your parties conduct themselves so irresponsibly as to risk potential default, with just days to go for the default deadline. We wonder if you’ll wreck your own economy – and take down the rest of us with you. We’re seriously worried. At other levels too, it’s more than an academic debate for us. We’ve admired the innovative capacity of the American economy – and the soft power it projected around the world. I myself grew up with an addiction for (among others) Billy Wilder movies and John Updike novels. And in Madras, where I grew up in the thick of Dravidian politics, many of my buddies who wanted to break free dreamt the American Dream – and made the crossing. Many of them went on to build successful careers in America, and did get to live their dreams – until the nightmare of 2008 interrupted that. Graph showing US Federal Debt  It’s not for me to be judgmental: after all, I come from a flawed democracy myself, where we have political leaders who would sell even their mothers if they could strike a good price. On occasion, some of us have yearned for a political system such as yours, where an executive President is directly elected by the people, as an alternative to the busted parliamentary democracy that we have. In many ways, we wanted to be more like you. We too dreamt the American Dream, from far away. But now all we see is a political class that has collectively sold its soul to Corporate America, even if it means selling their own country’s larger interests. What I don’t understand is this: in many ways you are still the world’s greatest economic power, and the most innovative economy. I don’t particularly care for the military muscle you flex around the world, but I understand that we don’t live in a perfect world. But there’s still the hope that if you can sort out your mess in the short term, you can still be the engine of innovation for the world. So, with all those good thing going for you, why are you hell-bent on committing suicide? Why is it that you have Washington politicians actively advocating that America should default on its debts? Why do you live so dangerously as to court the risk of default or (even if you avert that) the risk of seeing your sovereign rating downgraded? I can’t say we in India are very good at managing our public finances, and god knows we’ve been on the brink of bankruptcy in the past. (But, hey, we were a third world tinpot democracy then.) But here’s the thing: at a personal level, we feel great shame associated with going bankrupt , and we’ll do whatever it takes to avert it. Why then don’t you feel the shame of seeing your once-great country on the threshold of default? Have you lost the will to live honourably? Has being the sole remaining superpower drained you of everything that was good about you? Would you rather just curl up and die? Were we wrong to have envied you? Yours in befuddlement An Indian