A hot take on why the bald eagle is not a representative emblem of the USA

The bald eagle is a sea eagle that commonly occurs inland along rivers and large lakes. The adult male is about 90 cm long and has a wingspan of 2 metres, whereas the larger female birds may reach up to 108 cm in length and have a wingspan of 2.5 metres. Both male and female birds are dark brown, with a white-feathered head which gives its ‘bald’ title, and a white tail. The eagles have yellow beaks, eyes, and feet.


The bald eagle is the only eagle solely native to North America and was adopted as the national bird and emblem of the USA on 20 June 1782. The eagle was chosen because of its long life, great strength, its representation as a bird of freedom, and because it was believed to exist only in the USA (it doesn’t, it’s common across Canada and visits Mexico in the winter). But does the bald eagles’ life span, strength and freedom really make it a representative emblem of the USA today?

Long life

The death rates from smoking, obesity, homicides, opioid overdoses, suicides, road accidents, and infant deaths are all higher in the USA than in other rich countries. In fact, life expectancy in the USA has been steadily declining since 2014, and there are now 19 American counties where life expectancy is lower than the global average. And in 2020 alone, largely as a result of the pandemic, life expectancy in the USA fell by a year and a half to 77.3 years, the lowest level since 2003 (for comparison, life expectancy in the UK is currently 81.26 years). As long as these trends continue, and there is no sign of them reversing, I don’t think the long life of the bald eagle can continue to be considered as representative of the American people.

Great strength

The U.S. Armed Forces are considered the world's most powerful military, with a budget of $693 billion in 2019, the highest in the world. And in 2018, the USA’s military spending accounted for 36% of total global defence expenditure. So militarily speaking, the USA does indeed have great strength. But for many people in the country household income has effectively stagnated since the 1970s, and there is a large and increasing gap in income disparity between the small group of the richest people and the rest of the population. In effect, while the country has great military strength, the population is effectively weakening in terms of economic mobility. This combined with the lowering life expectancy outlined above, means that the general population is effectively becoming weaker over time. So, the bald eagle’s strength cannot be considered representative of the American people.

Freedom

As of May 2021, the USA had the highest rate of imprisonment in the world, with 639 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population. This is 13% higher than the rate of the next-closest country, El Salvador, which has 564 inmates per 100,000 people. For comparison, in England and Wales, there are 131 inmates for every 100,000 people. To look at it another way, less than 5% of the world’s population lives in the USA, but it has 20% of the world’s incarcerated people. In short, America is definitely not the land of the free, and so the freedom of the bald eagle is actually quite dichotomous with the highly incarcerated population of the USA.

Benjamin Franklin’s hot take

When the bald eagle was adopted as the emblem of the USA Benjamin Franklin wrote “I wish that the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country, he is a bird of bad moral character, he does not get his living honestly, you may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing-hawk, and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to its nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him and takes it from him.... Besides he is a rank coward; the little kingbird, not bigger than a sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest… of America.”

Perhaps the bald eagle is a good emblem for the USA after all…

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