It seems like every day now the news is bad. 30 die in bomb blast; war looms with Iran; constitutional crisis seems to have our congress in a constant state of dysfunction. One would think this would alarm people. I am often amazed at how few seem to notice or worse care when 3, 7, or more of our service men die.
What does it take to jar people out of their trance?
We now are practicing “state sponsored terror” in Lebanon financed largely by the Saudi government as described by Seymour Hersh in
this interview.We are probably close to at the very least limited use of nuclear weapons in Iran. The argument for which is being made here;
The Words None Dare Say: Nuclear WarWe are standing at the edge of the very collapse of constitutional democracy in the United States as described by Chalmers Johnson
here where he writes:
One of the oddest features of political life in the United States in the years since the terrorist attacks is how few people have thought or acted like Barbara Lee. The public expresses itself in opinion polls, which some students of politics scrutinize intently, but there is little passion in the society, certainly none proportionate to the threats facing our democratic republic. The United States today is like a cruise ship on the Niagara River upstream of the most spectacular falls in North America. A few people on board have begun to pick up a slight hiss in the background, to observe a faint haze of mist in the air or on their glasses, to note that the river current seems to be running slightly faster. But no one yet seems to have realized that it is almost too late to head for shore.
Like the Chinese, Ottoman, Hapsburg, imperial German, Nazi, imperial Japanese, British, French, Dutch, Portuguese, and Soviet empires in the last century, we are approaching the edge of a huge waterfall and are about to plunge over it.
If the American democratic system is no longer working as planned, if the constitutional checks and balances as well as other structures put in place by the founders to prevent tyranny are increasingly less operational, we have not completely lacked for witnesses of every stripe, domestic and foreign. General Tommy Franks, commander of the American assault on Baghdad, for instance, went so far as to predict that another serious terrorist attack on the United States would "begin to unravel the fabric of our Constitution," and under such circumstances, he was open to the idea that "the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government." The historian Kevin Baker feared that we are no longer far from the day when, like the Roman Senate in 27 B.C., our Congress will take its last meaningful vote and turn over power to a military dictator. "In the end, we'll beg for the coup," he wrote.
To summarize we need to give up empire or democracy but we will not have both.
We are on the brink of a major economic collapse; whether it is the national debt owned by China or changing of the fiat currency from the U.S. dollar to purchase oil that is responsible for the collapse it is coming and will be devastating. Global capitalization; our dependence on military spending and therefore weapons manufacturing has left us with little manufacturing in this nation. No jobs, health care and retirement in crisis with little or no social program is where this nation is headed and people are still asleep.
I mourn the loss of this nation already; certainly the nation it could have been. The most tragic part of this is that it still could be prevented but it won’t. It won’t because some portion of the human race has learned how to use the evolution of intelligence to prevent other humans from using theirs in reacting to imminent danger in time to save themselves.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(43 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
