If America Declines, Don't Expect Anyone To Talk About It

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/story/81652

If America Declines, Don't Expect Anyone to Talk About It

By Kevin Phillips, Viking Press. Posted April 8, 2008.

Is our political system too far gone to even discuss the predicaments of the volatile dollar, run-amok debt and Middle East disasters?

The following is an excerpt from Kevin Phillips' newly-released book, "Bad Money" (Viking, 2008).

Rarely in U.S. history has a president, especially a two-term president, been so unpopular at a time when the Congress, captured in the midterm elections by the opposition, is held in no greater regard. In such a case, the norm is for the two to fight, with one side gaining the edge. But that has not been true of George W. Bush and the Democratic Congress elected by running against him in 2006.

The two sides have gone after each other in a fashion, but more often they have simply talked past each other to their separate party constituencies, repeating familiar commitments to keep the true believers on each side somewhat more contented than the unimpressed independents -- those who bulk so large in the 60 to 70 percent of voters convinced that the country is on the wrong track. Most office holders on both sides seem to rest easier if everyone stays away from uncomfortable themes, even ones in the headlines, like costly U.S. overreach in the Middle East; the reckless expansion of private debt, as well as the federal budget deficit variety; the new economic (and political) dominance of the financial sector; and the mounting probability that the nation will have to choose between desirable energy supplies and global warming measures. After all, what you can sidestep today might go away tomorrow.

True, the public is not impressed -- "no guts" and "living in a dream world" are frequently heard descriptions of politicians. However, most big party contributors tend to donate based on established relationships and sympathies or on nonideological desire for access, not on philosophical engagement. No parallel to the simultaneous public distaste for a president and his opposition Congress comes to mind, but then modern polling goes back only to the 1930s. Let me stipulate: despite the obvious salience of predicaments like oil, climate, the volatile dollar, run-amok debt and credit, the housing bubble, and imperial overinvolvement in the Middle East, I would be the last to say that any more than 5 to 10 percent of the electorate would favor a 2008 debate over American decline. Average voters do not.

In these matters, history does not merely urge caution; it demands skepticism -- and about both public attention and likely governmental achievement. It is necessary to consider two other symptoms of weak, even failed U.S. politics: the entrenchment in Washington of a staggering array of interest groups, which has engendered a soulless political dynamic of perpetually raising and dispersing campaign funds; and the further, bipartisan trend toward what can only be called a politics of inheritance and dynasty.

Money politics and entrenched interests

The English-speaking peoples, when filling in new lands, had a certain naviete about the power of entrenched interests and how these could be subdued by locating a political capital in a remote federal preserve far from the existing centers of (corrupting) urbanity and wealth. The capitals were thus located in backwaters at a time when geography trumped media (Washington, D.C., Ottawa, and Canberra); but today, those names have become shorthand in their respective electorates for (1) metropolitan areas with strikingly high (and recession-resistant) per capita incomes; and (2) hothouses of seething interest-group concentration where elected representatives, shedding whatever grassroots fealty they may once have possessed, often train to retire after ten or twelve years to triple or even quintuple their salaries by becoming lobbyists.

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[izzie]

1. The people are talking about it.

We out here can see it coming. We need these old guys out of our govt. They are living in the times of the Post WW2 and WW2. This is not 1940's and we need new thinkers. The times of D-Day are long past and Congress and the WH should get with us out here.

[El Pinko]

2. "IF America declines?"

Have we not been in almost nonstop decline since 1981?


Or do the living standards of typical Americans not figure into that? Or our manufacturing base and current account deficit?

Or our national debt?



I was born in 1969, and growing up, I *NEVER* imagined that when I was in my late 30's this country would have degenerated into a belligerent pauper state, spending money it doesn't have hand over fist to wantonly attack middle eastern countries for no discernable reason, with its vast middle class reduced two two groups - an upper-middle-class elite that couldn't give a crap about anyone but themselves, and a deluded former-middle-class of ghosts who cling to their lifestyle via credit cards and equity loans that are drying up faster than water on a griddle. Where people who do actual work make a pittance, and are laughed at by the people whose job it is to rearrange papers and buy and resell assets.

:puke:

[truedelphi]

7. You've got it! n/t

[peacebird]

3. "IF"..? "If"? How about 'When"? Or perhaps more accurate still - "Now that America is in decline"

[Echo In Light]

4. "..no guts" and "living in a dream world" are frequently heard descriptions of politicians"

Too bad more don't realize that the more accurate description would be obedient servitude to corporate pay masters. "They're" not living in a "dream world," the public is.

[xchrom]

5. recommend

[carolinayellowdog]

6. Unimpressed Independents

Thanks, Kevin, I found my niche thanks to your terminology. So far, many who are unimpressed with either party are impressed with Obama as a candidate. Despite outnumbering Democrats and Republicans, Independents tend to be invisible or demonized in rhetoric here. Democratic-leaning Independents slightly outnumber Republican-leaning Independents, and will probably support Obama as strongly as self-identified Democrats. More strongly, if 28% of Clinton supporters vote against Obama in the general out of spite, as they say they will.

Not that I'm confident that he really represents "change we can believe in"-- but it's very clear that the other two don't.

[truedelphi]

8. According to a Pew Study group poll early this year

Americans who feel they belong to the Republican party are numbered at 28%
Americans who feel that they belong to the Democratic party number at 33%
And a full 39% of all Americans consider themeselves independent of either party.


But you would never know this by listening to the mainstream media!!