It’s hard to feel optimistic about America’s future, or the future of mankind, for that matter. At a time when most things need to be going right, almost everything seems to be going wrong. The environment, the economy, pending global and national energy shortages, food and water security, health care, public education, public infrastructure, an overextended military, and a flagging national reputation all suffer the ill effects of corruption, incompetence and neglect.
Recent changes in American domestic and foreign policy clearly show that America is a nation in decline. Although the decline began some years ago, the past seven years of the Bush Administration hastened the nation’s journey along the road leading to its ultimate demise. The death of America will forever be a part of the Bush legacy.
Today’s America is not the country I was born into; it no longer resembles the country I once knew. Neocon nitwits write, speak and teach revisionist history, to the detriment of all but those in the top few percent of the social hierarchy. As a consequence, an entire generation of young people is rendered oblivious to the loss if its Constitutional heritage.
When the federal government extended to corporations the same rights of citizenship it granted to ordinary citizens, it sealed the nation’s fate. Corporate interests, powered by big money and represented by lobbyists, eventually seized control of the government, thus ensuring the gradual disenfranchisement of the people. And the people, whose attention is easily diverted by celebrity and media sensationalism, didn’t see it coming.
Nothing the Bush Administration has done in seven years inspires trust or confidence in the government’s ability to address the nation’s problems. Good ideas go unrecognized while the power brokers—bankers, investors, corporate titans, various movers and shakers and others of the privileged class—clamor for business as usual. What few people understand is that business as usual is the primary cause (but not the only cause) of the problems.
Unless the corporatocracy that now controls the world is planning a mass human extermination event for the near future, it would do well to set aside its policy of business as usual and implement policies that lead to sustainability. Remaining on the present course—short of mass extermination—means that the Vampire Elite will also feel the stings of environmental and economic backlash.
But I have no great hope that the powers-that-be will do the right thing. As always, they’ll do the expedient thing. They’ll do it because greed always trumps good sense.
4 comments:
Things are repairable as long as those of good will resist. But, whining is not resisting, action is required for that label.
I do not accuse you of whining, but the level of apathy and self-disenfranchisement is horrid. 40% will not vote, 90% will not give to a political cause, 99.5% will not participate in their Party machinery. Bad results are guaranteed.
I couldn't agree more about the apathy and self-disenfranchisement, Chuck; the numbers are appalling. When Americans lose America, they'll have only their apathetic inertia to thank for it.
There needs to be more education about the corporate media. If you only listen to them, you would think that that your concerns were completely isolated and impotent.
People (offline) need to be taught that there are other means of learning about the world.
Corporate media is the wolf in charge of the sheep. Only by holding corporate media to a higher standard of reporting the news (and denying them any means of spinning it) can we hope to end their grip on the controls of information dissemination.
As for our off-line comrades, perhaps it's best to demonstrate, firsthand, the possibilities and potentials that exist online, and that non-traditional news sources often deliver results that are more honest.
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