The Truth About America in One Short and Shocking Walk

Suffering, Individualism, and the Struggle for Change

As much as I’d like to set politics aside for a while, I cannot seem to shake it. Everywhere I go people keep asking me:

“Hey Nick, what do you think of this election?”

I don’t really mind, of course, as I love talking about this and have done my fair share of searching.

I can tell instantly from their tone of voice whether they are despondent, ecstatic, or maybe just secretly really happy. Interestingly, the latter has been by far the most common occurrence. About sums up America at this moment, right?

I’m starting to believe that this election represents the coming together of many different karmic threads and is more a revelation than it is a mandate for some coherent, compelling vision. If there is anything left of what is tying us Americans together, it’s that we are fed up. Exasperated and frustrated beyond the capacity for reason, we went to the polls in fear—fear of ourselves as much as the other side—and seeking actual change for once.

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I realized the other day on my short morning walk—where I take the kids to school and then walk down to Urth Caffé, my favorite writing spot—that many of the fundamental problems of our society are on full display in broad daylight.? Our problem is that we’ve grown so desensitized to the lack of change that we cannot even see the truth right in front of us. I know we’re all worried about the Deep State and the various conspiracies of the global elite but you don’t have to look farther than a 15-minute neighborhood walk to see what’s gone wrong in America.

It started almost the moment I walked out the door. It was trash day and all the bins were out. I noticed up the street that someone was digging through the recycling bins looking for anything of value—a very regular occurrence. As I walked past and said hello, I made eye contact with the young man. He was barely a man and the moment just a flash but I caught sight of something there, one of those rare intuitions that can come, the ones that shake your soul. For an instant, the profound sense of sadness and discontent on the face of this young man cut right through me. He had the “I cannot believe my life has actually come to this” look. If that’s a thing, he was certainly too young to have it.

Just what does America mean for this man? And what does it say about us that our system is so competitive and so unfair that it can leave a young man in such a state?”

While America is the best place in history when it comes to economic mobility and opportunity, it’s also wildly competitive, fundamentally unfair, and often leaves people clawing in the economic dust. This is the first truth about America that I saw that day.

Further up the street, there’s some city electrical equipment that has a small circular conduit box at its base. Sadly, at night it doubles as a makeshift toilet of sorts. Just about every day as the boys and I walk by, there’s fresh human excrement in there that looks as bad as it smells. I’m constantly yelling ahead to the kids, who usually are a good 10-20 feet in front of me, “Watch out for the toilet!”? ?And no, I’m not joking.

This is elemental human suffering on full display. Think of the lost dignity here. Not only is it awful for the people who are forced to resort to this but also it’s unfair to the people and businesses in the neighborhood and passersby. Nothing good is happening here. How does something like this happen in one of the richest cities of the wealthiest, most powerful nation in history? What does it say about us that not only do we tolerate this, but also we are no longer shocked by it?

Our lack of compassion is as problematic as our lack of moral strength. Someone living like this needs immediate individualized care. As much as I believe in building housing, and shelters, what this person needs is a massive life intervention. Yes, it will be costly but it is the right thing to do.?

The boys are always asking me questions about what’s going on here. “Dad, why doesn’t someone just help these people and give them a place to stay?” They literally cannot make sense of a world like ours, where a cold indifference to human suffering allows us to not only look the other way but also to tolerate such a sad affront to basic human dignity as just some natural, unavoidable consequence of modern life.

This situation reveals perfectly a second truth about America: that we’ve gone so far in our celebration of the individual that we’ve lost all touch with the truth of our responsibilities for each other.

For how else can we justify letting suffering like this go on before our eyes?

We act like there’s no consequence for us in all this besides some unpleasant sights and inconveniences now and then. But the failure to act when truth comes knocking on the door is as bad and as personally damaging as any deliberately evil act. Since we have allowed this suffering to happen at scale all around us, I shudder to think of the damage done. Indeed, there are many cracks in the moral fiber of America.

Finally, after spending a half hour at the school handling drop-off—I usually hang around until the last possible minute to maximize my time playing with the kids and all their friends—I walked back across La Cienega towards Urth Caffé. In the distance, on the sidewalk I saw a middle-aged man in a wheelchair, obviously in the midst of some psychotic break or drug-induced rage. He was blocking the door to a different hip coffee shop and positioned right next to a parked Rolls Royce Phantom (which only costs a half a million dollars or so) and going absolutely crazy. I wish I could do justice to the moment by providing some quotes but Profit+ isn’t an R-rated publication! Sadly, this is another rather common occurrence in the neighborhood.

Anyway, as people either crossed the street to avoid the situation or very carefully shimmied by to get into the coffee shop, it struck me that this might represent peak absurdity in policy failure. When it comes to dealing with mental health and drug addiction, we’ve gone so far down the road of championing the rights of the individual that we have completely hamstrung ourselves and are no longer able to do anything remotely effective. I totally get why we don’t want to lock people up in prison-like sanitariums like in the old days or get into a pattern of using the police and jails to deal with this complex human situation but to do nothing, again, is a profound moral failure.

What we are doing now makes absolutely no sense! How can we just let these individuals suffer on the streets alone? Get taken advantage of by drug dealers? Or in many cases, die? The ridiculousness of our inaction at such an obvious humanitarian crisis is palatable and is the kind of situation that will leave a democratic electorate looking for something different.

What we have here is the third (sad) truth about America: that we have allowed our politics to evolve in such absurd directions that we are no longer able to do the most obvious, reasonable thing—in this case, to mobilize professionals to help these individuals get out of crisis mode. This same dynamic is at play all over our system. Whether we are talking about our lack of affordability housing or our increasingly expensive and unwieldy health care system or our crazy competitive education landscape, we have come to a completely irrational and self-induced standstill.

Look, I know this is a long way of answering the question about what I think about the election but this morning walk really struck me!

This triple threat of truth—our increasing economic vulnerability, our narcissistic cult of the individual, and our absurdly irrational and unintelligent policy landscape—has left many Americans suffering and most feeling fed up. Americans voted for change and decisive action.? My goal is to make sure we get it! Stay tuned for future editions of Profit+ to learn how you can play a role in helping to solve some of these issues.

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