I spent 29 days in Thailand during the Spring of 2002. The Royal Thai Army hosted my Battalion for joint training exercises in the East Province of Sa Kaeo about 150 miles into the jungle from Bangkok. We lived in a village alongside the local population, and we really got to know our hosts well. The raw poverty was obvious. Every day was hard work for them. I had read about such poverty, but until Thailand, I never sat on a dirt ground to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner with people who live that reality every hour of every day of their lives.
I think a lot of people in the U.S. forget that life is a constant state of struggle for most of the world. And not the cliche struggle that I may face in modern America. Real physical struggle, just to have enough to survive. There are foreign governments that see the U.S. as an enemy and they point to our luxurious lives as evil. Many individuals around the world view the people of America as not sharing in the daily struggle of life. The U.S. does live in relative wealth (which is evidenced by Standard of Living measurements and very high immigration numbers into the U.S.). The U.S. “poor” are very rich in most of the world. It appears that our opulence has led us to imagine struggles and oppressors and/or we become alarmists for things that aren’t truly alarming. Those made-up evils gain faux credibility when our leaders dress those concerns in Culture War battles.
Jamie Ruehl grew up in Erlanger. He graduated from St. Henry District High School, earned a degree in business administration from Xavier University, served the US Army on an ROTC Commission in 2001, attaining the rank of Captain and serving overseas. Back home, he graduated from Northern Kentucky University’s Executive Leadership and Organizational Change Master’s Program in 2018. He served as a Law Enforcement Officer for 8.5 years and was inducted into the American Police Hall of Fame. He has been a staff insurance adjuster since 2019 with a large carrier headquartered in Cincinnati. He is attempting to be the best possible husband to his wife of 15 years and best possible father to their 3 children. They live in Edgewood with their two dogs. He is a life-long distance runner.
While serving in the U.S. Army, we constantly trained to be combat effective. Our operation orders continuously reminded us that we were to prepare for war and be alert to threats even in times of peace. Much of the world has that same mentality and lives in a “dog eat dog” environment. They don’t have the luxury of survival without making sacrifices every day. Because U.S. citizens have lived in a long period of stability and means (as in no perceived wars fought on our soil and an abundance of resources at our fingertips), our people have forgotten that we are in an endless race. There are constant efforts to destabilize the U.S. There are always dangers to our Republic that we should all be aware of. Instead, we have distracted ourselves with a Culture War. Our population has lost our edge of discipline which is sharpened during survival in hard times and we have subsequently lost the ability to identify what truly threatens us.
While we prioritize arguing about which bathroom to use, other countries steal our technology and plant seeds of destruction in our society. According to a July 29th CNN article by Kaanita Iyer, US officials “believe malicious computer code has been hidden inside networks controlling power grids, communications systems and water supplies that feed military bases.” China is actively setting the stage to destabilize the United States. In the 1990s as part of my undergraduate degree I learned that “globalism” was justification to offshore much of our production and assembly occupations. I remember a professor speaking about the obvious advantages of using China’s cheap labor and how China could never really pose a threat economically much less militarily. Those days are long gone. China now has the largest fleet of naval warfare vessels in the world and is churning out even more every year. China is openly recruiting spies in our military, businesses, and technology sectors.
Meanwhile our elected leaders quarrel about ideas that don’t threaten our existence. Our national leaders have been asleep at the wheel, whether it’s Trump on his crusade to clear his sordid name or Biden pushing extreme left ideologies not founded in reality. The current president and the previous president are too busy fighting Culture War engagements by pointing fingers and name calling. Some of our state governors leverage the Culture War campaigns to increase their power base via executive orders and or mandates and our elected representatives will not keep them in check.
Some of our nation’s biggest companies were “too big to fail” and got huge government bailouts when they should’ve been corrected by the market. If a “mom & pop” fails due to poor business decisions, they go out of business, as they should. The laptop class was “excused” from the Beshear Lockdowns while blue collar workers were told to report to work and essentially serve them. The citizenry has lost trust in our society’s leaders but possesses the luxury of wealth to numb their senses. There is a general cognitive dissonance in these decisions by our leaders and it’s bearing fruit.
According to a March 2022 publication by Axios, 56% of Americans do not trust our federal government. A Gallup Poll taken in 2021 measuring “trust in major institutions” proved only 27% of respondents had confidence in those institutions’ decision-making. Our people have lost faith in our leaders both in government and our community.
I’m hopeful this lack of trust proves the tide is beginning to turn and the people of the U.S. are not as distracted by our political leaders’ Culture Wars. Just like the people I learned from in the jungles of Thailand, we can prioritize survival. Despite our glut, we can ask “how important are facts?” Even though our society doesn’t require discipline to survive, we can instill discipline in ourselves. We can overcome the squabbles of an absurd Culture War. Our nation can come together and acknowledge true threats to our existence, but only if we fight the good fight.
United We Stand.