What do we mean by “success?” The term often hides expectations. Success means happiness to some. To others it means having a master’s degree, a house on a two acre lot with a picket fence, and 2.5 kids. For me, “success” means setting a goal and reaching it.. nothing more.
Depending on your perspective, America may have seen the last days of her “success” ..or her best days may be just around the corner. Either way, her short-lived age of global trend-setting is over.. and I’m not so sure it’s a bad thing.
Do we really want more eggs in the face? “The longest blade of grass gets cut first,” and, “The early worm is for the birds.” Would Al Qaeda have been as obsessed with destroying our buildings if Australia held the reputation as the “world’s cop” instead of us?
I’m not suggesting that America did anything especially deserving of ill treatment. The world treated us just like they treated every global superpower. They wanted to be like us.. and everything was our fault. We reacted the same as super powers before us. We were “too big to fail,” hooked on entertainment, and didn’t even do research before pretentiously spreading our so-called “compassion” of Christian missions in the mid 1900′s and African “aid mission” 50 years later. And, no, it wasn’t Obama’s fault, or Bush or Clinton. Any leader we’ve had could only hasten or delay the inevitable. Let’s face it: we got lazy, we relaxed our game, and others are now taking the lime light.
In the shift ahead, Asia Pacific and India will be substantial leaders. If India’s the sleeping giant then China is the quiet elephant that sneaks up on you. While we’ve been watching football and gaming our XBOX’s, Asia hasn’t been messing around. They’ve been learning and mastering the entertainment and manufacturing excellence that America downsized to raise bottom lines. More accurately, we auctioned our principles, razed our revenues, and flat-lined. Asian industries haven’t caught up with us.. yet, but they are traveling faster while we are letting off the gas.
When it all happens—when the market realizes what some of us have already foreseen—that’s when we’ll rise to the occasion and realize our potential which lies outside of the lime light. We weren’t meant to be the shining star, we were meant for quiet excellence. With someone else out in front to take the glamour, and the tomatoes from the crowd, that’s when we’ll get our game back. The corporate bureaucrats won’t have “our past success” to compensate their spite for creativity and the drama queen politicians won’t have so loud a bullhorn to fight over. The shallow sex and circus entertainment base will sober-up to reality: when reproduction is reduced to recreation, society faces extinction. The gay pride crowd will realize that they’ll save more in taxes by supporting the Fair Tax than a Gay Marriage honeymoon could ever dream to deliver. Success will be redefined because it will finally have enough workspace.