The truth shall set us free--but first it will make us miserable.

• Author: Hall, Robert
• Position: MARKETING SOLUTIONS - Viewpoint essay

What we had in the '30s was a healthy society sitting on a sick economy. What we have now [in the 1990s] is a sick society sitting on a healthy economy.

--Peter Drucker

WHAT WE HAVE NOW IS A SICK SOCIETY SITTING ON A SICK ECONOMY. That is awfully negative, but I am simply saying what many feel. As we draw near the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the look-back is a little confronting. Even a partial list of corporate deaths and near-deaths is long and distinguished: Enron, Arthur Andersen, Tyco, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, General Motors, Blockbuster, Wachovia, British Petroleum, Countrywide, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Toyota. Confidence in big business has fallen the past two decades from 26 percent to a current anemic 16 percent.

It is not just the corporate world. While the metrics are different, according to Gallup only 11 percent of us have a "great deal or quite a lot" of confidence in Congress, favorability ratings for political parties is at an all-time low, and high school graduation rates have fallen to around 70 percent. Only about 25 percent of us trust government to do the right thing--down from 42 percent 20 years ago and the lowest on record; 61 percent believe the country is in decline. Gallup reports the country is even more polarized in their view of the presidency under Mr. Obama than the previous low record set by Mr. Bush.

The bright spot

The blunders, bailouts, and scandals in the public and private sector coupled with a struggling economy, tough credit markets, and stubbornly high unemployment make for difficult times. It can be overwhelmingly depressing, but actually there is hope and opportunity if we focus on three key points.

First, we are not alone in this. It has happened before and it is currently happening to others around the world. It is bigger than any of us and in a global economy it is bigger than any single country. Some countries are worse off than us (think Greece) and others are advancing out of this faster than we are (think Germany and China). This economic and political morass is a global phenomenon. While our forefathers' situations were very different than ours, they overcame similarly grim circumstances like the Civil War, attacks by foreign armies and financial depression. As a country this is not our first rodeo. We have withstood internal and external chaos and attack before. The key is not what happens to us but how we respond...