CLEVELAND -- On television the other day, I saw the lawyer who represented accused sniper John Allen Muhammad in a bitter custody battle. When asked if this is the kind of thing that can make a person snap, he said, "Yes."
At first glance, this may seem absurd. But anyone who has ever had the expense and repeated delays of even a minor lawsuit knows the frustration of a system that's starting to break down. Just ask anyone of Arab descent detained for months since 9/11. Or ask the 17 innocent men who were on death row in Illinois until DNA testing won their release.
America is an angry place because America isn't working so well anymore.
We have the highest per capita homicide rate in the industrialized world. In fact, if you take the next five countries and add their rates together, we're still in the lead. Violence may be the effect of our breakdown, but it's not the cause. The cause is more subtle and pervasive.
Ask anyone who has recently paid his first post-9/11 homeowner's premium.
Ask any older American who can't afford medication.
Ask any of the more than 40 million Americans without health insurance. Or the rest of us who have had a claim or treatment denied.
The recent film John Q. may not have been a cinematic masterpiece, but its premise contains more truth than we'd like to believe. I have two hospital bills from 1999 that still haven't been paid even though they were covered expenses. I've spent over 20 hours on the phone with an insurance plan I had three plans ago. I'm not ready to take hostages like Denzel Washington's character did in the film, but my blood pressure rises every time I get the same bill in the mail.
America is short-circuiting. Ask anyone who was employed by Enron or WorldCom or who invested in those companies. Ask anyone who thought the Securities and Exchange Commission could oversee the accounting profession only to find out that the man they picked for the job headed the audit of a company accused of fraud.
Ask any customer of First Energy, a large Ohio utility company that admitted to falsifying safety records at its Davis-Besse nuclear power plant, which the NRC finally shut down.
They may be liars, but they still send me a bill every month. The last reading of how much electricity I used was the third remote read in a row, and it seemed high. In the past, I would have waited for an actual read, which would adjust my bill. But today, in this malfunctioning, greedy America, I wonder if they ever actually read my meter. And if they do, how do I know that the meter isn't set to measure more kilowatts than I use? Guess who checks the meter if I complain? That's right, the company that falsifies its safety records.
America is breaking down because America is a relationship between its people and its institutions. And relationships are based on trust. Since we can't trust our leaders anymore, not those in business or government, the system is starting to malfunction. Ask anyone who didn't vote Tuesday. Ask anyone whose vote didn't count in Florida's primary or in the 2000 presidential election.
America is in trouble, and a war with Iraq, even if necessary, won't fix it because most of our problems are right here within our own borders, within our own institutions. I wish that was what kept President Bush awake at night, instead of images of Saddam Hussein.
Jim Sollisch is a free-lance writer who lives in Cleveland.