Need it Get Much Worse Before it (Ever?) Gets Better? Your Opinion Here..

[Robert Murphy]

'Llo Bretheren,

With (serious) apologies to Thomas Jefferson*, I hold these truths to be self-evident:

America is nearly completely controlled by those who hold the interests of the rich and powerful (a redundant phrase).

Since 1980, the presidency has had a Republican occupant for nearly 17 out of 25 years; this has resulted in the federal courts becomong increasingly dominated by Right-wing (and often reactionary) judges. Need I add that the Supreme Court is also controlled by the Right, and with W. likely to appoint at least one (more likely two) justices? This control is soon due to be consolidated...

Those in the Republican party who of a reasonable and moderate nature are increasingly marginlized by the idealogues who dominate it.

The American TV media are pathetic. While the (declining) print media (serious warts and all) remain reasonably decent, the TV media are the source from which the vast majority of Americans get their news. Need I say that they cannot be relied on to provide to hold the our government to even the most basic degree of accountability. (Paris Hilton, yes. The Bush Administration? Are you kidding?)

In short, are we f*cked?

If not, why?

I have no thoughts of giving up, but lately I am motivated more by the idea (ideal?) that at least future historians will damn these SOBs for all of the damage they have done. I.e., preventing these bastards from f*cking the environment (even further) to hell; destroying mechanisms for international peace and cooperation which were years in the making; realigning American society into a quas1-plutocracy, etc., seems to be well out of reach.

Robert

[Nimrod]

1. The voice of nihilism

In a word, yes. I believe it's going to have to get much MUCH worse.

How, I'm not exactly sure, but the corruption and financial elitism is too far entrenched in our society as a whole for anything other than a radical paradigm shift to dislodge it. We may go on this way for a very long time or a very short time, I'm not sure of that either, but complete and total breakdown is now the required catalyst for change.

Maybe this flu pandemic will finally hit. Maybe the dollar will vanish overnight leaving 99% of the population not knowing where dinner is coming from. Maybe the rest of the world nations will rise against us, viewing the US as the new Nazi Germany. Maybe we'll finally get obliterated by that nuclear holocaust we've been talking about since the 50's.

The point is, the days of "easy" revolution are over for the US. As things stand now there are simply too many people now all concerned over trivial shit to ever unite into a force capable of cleansing this nation of its corruption. There will be no Boston Tea Party, there will be no second Civil war. We've been split and fragmented and therefore rendered powerless.

Think about it. With the current atmosphere would anti-abortionists EVER work together with pro-choicers? Militant vegans with hunters? Baptists with Catholics? Feminists with pornographers? People who just won't want to miss Everybody Loves Raymond? Forget it.

In order to enact REAL change on a societal level, there's going to have to be a disaster big enough to override ALL factions and belief systems and attitudes. It's going to have to come down to a nationwide struggle for sheer survival. "Taxation without representation" just isn't going to do it anymore.

When it happens it's going to hurt. A LOT of people are going to suffer. But that's just the way it is in my mind.

[Taxloss]

2. My $0.02: yes and no.

Theories about civil war, spectacular economic collapse, etc. are very interesting and it would be foolish to say impossibel, but I'm not convinced. A depression is possible on a global scale, but it may not last very long. It may even be the required spur to shift over to a biodiesel/hydrogen economy - the TVA of the 21st Century!

However, I see a few parallels with Britain in the 1950s. Only a few, as the scenarios are radically different. The 1950s on the surface looked tough but OK in Britain, masking enormous problems: spiralling social and political polarisation, deep domestic discontent, dramatic industrial decline, and the prestige problems created by the disintegration of world power status. Britain just stagnated as the Empire collapsed, ultimately forcing dramatic domestic crises in the 1970s and 1980s - 3-day weeks, the Winter of Discontent, the Miners Strike. Endless economic stagnation and recession, punctuated by occasional unsustainable and unproductive booms. In the 1970s, some British commentators genuinely suggested that we were becoming a second- or third-world country. At every stage of the process, poeple always spoke in terms of nightmare scenarios - Communist takeover, total economic collapse, nuclear destruction.

Overall, the latter half of the 20th century was one long painful transition for us, from world power to Just Another Country. We still feel the effects today; but life went on, and overall has improved.

Remember: you'd be surprised how quickly countries bounce back.