America is on a Time Out. Check back later.
Two statements.
President Donald Trump said, “We’re going to take some of their (Iran) money (frozen funds)... and we’re going to give them food instead. There is a food shortage in Iran.”
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf responded, “Imagine having forty-something million of your own citizens on food stamps and calling another nation hungry. Our money, our choices. Mind your malnutrition rates and keep your advice to yourself.”
Forget, for a moment, whether either man is right. What struck me wasn’t the politics. It was the shift in posture. For most of my lifetime, America has spoken to the rest of the world from a position of unquestioned moral authority. We have told countries how to govern, how to spend, how to behave, and what values they should embrace. Sometimes we were right. Sometimes we weren’t. But we rarely questioned whether we had earned the right to do the lecturing.
Today, the world is answering back. And what they’re saying isn’t really about Donald Trump. It’s about us.
It is about a country where millions of people rely on food assistance while we tell other nations how to feed their citizens. It is about life expectancy that lags behind much of the developed world despite spending more on healthcare than anyone else. It is about rising maternal mortality, addiction, homelessness, political dysfunction, and a nation that increasingly seems unable to solve its own problems while continuing to prescribe solutions for everyone else’s.
Whether Ghalibaf’s criticism is fair isn’t really the point. The point is that countries now feel comfortable saying these things out loud. For decades they may have thought them. Today they no longer feel the need to whisper because America’s influence isn’t what it once was. We no longer hold all the purse strings, and perhaps that’s not entirely a bad thing.
Yesterday I watched for the millionth time what may be my favorite Instagram video ever. A three-year-old is struggling to buckle herself into her car seat. Her father gently asks several times if she’d like help. Each time she politely says, “No, thank you.” Finally, completely exasperated, she points her tiny finger at him and says, “You worry bout yourself!”
Then I realized that’s exactly what much of the world is now saying to the United States.
You worry bout yourself.
Maybe it’s time we listened.
Maybe America needs to send a different kind of message to the world. Not one of retreat or isolation, but one of humility.
“Dear World: We need to spend some time getting our own house in order. We have neglected too many problems at home while convincing ourselves we were the indispensable nation abroad. Give us a little time. We have work to do.”
I don’t see that as weakness. I see it as maturity. The moral leader of the world isn’t the country that claims the title. It’s the country that earns it every day by confronting its own shortcomings before pointing out everyone else’s.