Over 6,000 U.S. service members were killed during operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, climate change is increasing the intensity of hurricanes and wildfires that devastate millions of people each year and Earth has a growing population the planet cannot sustain forever.

Benjamin Busch, retired U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col., said these figures mean absolutely nothing to most Americans, who are more desensitized and disenfranchised than ever.

“There are alway going to be people trying (to solve these problems), but it can’t be a very, very few,” Busch said. “The hard part of that is how do you reanimate those who have already drifted away?”

Busch, who served 16 years as a U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer and is an actor, author, journalist and filmmaker, visited Marshall University’s campus Tuesday to lecture about the current state of America through the eyes of a veteran.

Conversation sparked between Busch and his audience of faculty and students. Many agreed with Busch that civil discourse in the United States has polarized to the point of tribalism, causing Americans to disengage from the political process and distance themselves from social injustices Busch said need to be resolved.

“I think that we’ve lost a sense of our national soul,” Busch said. “And if everything derives from a certain kind of soullessness, what does that have to do with equity and democracy, the death of collective good?”

According to Busch, the American public has been sold on nostalgia, an America that does not exist any longer.

“The idea of a labor based economy has defined masculinity in America for a long time,” Busch said. “We’re going to have to find a new way to define a man.”

Clean, renewable, natural resources are the fastest growing industries in the United States, and West Virginia has turned away from it with the misled idea that production will return to the Mountain State, Busch said.

Marty Laubach, professor and department chair of the sociology and anthropology department, helped organize Busch’s visit to Marshall.

“There’s been a real breakdown of communal practices in our society,” Laubach said. “I think it’s extraordinarily destructive to the polity.”

Damien Arthur, assistant professor of political science, had Busch speak to his class while he was on campus Tuesday.

“We seem to have forgotten how good a government is and what good government can do,” Arthur said. “Getting a man on the moon is a testament to the good a government can do.”

Americans have moved away from supporting collective goods and social projects, according to Arthur. To Busch, this is the equivalent of a nation that has lost its identity.

“A nation exists as a compromise between a vast group of people,” Busch said. “Those people define, by their choices, by majority, what that nation represents, its essential identity. And I don’t feel that we have that right now.”

Sebastian Morris can be contacted at [email protected].