Pillars of American Society Are Showing How Incompetent They Are And They Don't Care

[unhappycamper]

http://www.alternet.org/culture/pillars-american-society-are-showing-how-incompetent-they-are-and-they-dont-care?paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark



Is the zeitgeist having a bad hair day or are deeper flaws at play?

Pillars of American Society Are Showing How Incompetent They Are And They Don't Care
By Steven Rosenfeld
October 3, 2014

The country’s biggest bank has been badly hacked and JPMorgan Chase didn’t quite alert tens of millions of account holders. The Ebola virus has arrived on U.S. shores in Texas and efforts to contain it have been as clumsy as the American military’s overseas response to West African nations where it is spreading. The Secret Service has not been keeping armed intruders away from the president, prompting many African-Americans to wonder if they really don’t want to protect Obama. And the NFL continues to duck and bob and weave with taking responsibility for its handling of the video showing Ray Rice assaulting his girlfriend.

Forget the sky-is-falling 2014 political races for the moment. These and too-many-to-mention other examples makes one wonder if America is having a bad hair day or is standing naked before the mirror and seeing revealing truths that that our most public hucksters usually keep under wraps.

Americans may be tied up in knots when it comes to seemingly irreconcilable differences over their politics or beliefs, but most people aren’t stupid. These examples of massive inept behavior and incompetence topping the news are not the public’s fault. They seem to stem from willful deceptions, denials and determined efforts to evade accountability among many pillars of our great system.

Take a closer look at these and other examples. You’ll find that most Americans are on the receiving end of a corporate culture that overpromises, requires payment first, typically doesn’t care about customer service—which is their real-world impact—and mostly is driven by organizational self-interest.

[Demeter]

1. The Adults have retired, or died off

And we have the most selfish, self-serving generation of Elitists in a century or more running things. What did you expect?

[pscot]

2. Our arrangements have become unmanageable

and look more and more like a house of cards; likely come tumbling down around our ears as the result of our failure to imagine he consequences of what we do. And we're locked into our present course. Like Miley said, we can't stop.