Powerlessness soaring as society spirals: Economy, climate and wars erode U.S. psyche

[marmar]

from AP, via Detroit Free Press:



Powerlessness soaring as society spirals
Economy, climate and wars erode U.S. psyche
BY ALAN FRAM and EILEEN PUTMAN • ASSOCIATED PRESS • June 22, 2008



Is everything spinning out of control?

Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Airfares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.

Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.

The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's conviction that destiny can be commanded with courage and perseverance.

The sense of helplessness is even reflected in this year's presidential election. Each contender offers a sense of order -- and hope. Republican Sen. John McCain promises an experienced hand in a frightening time. Democrat Sen. Barack Obama promises bright and shiny change, and his large crowds believe his exhortation, "Yes, we can."

Even so, a battered public seems discouraged by the onslaught of dispiriting things. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll says a barrel-scraping 17% of people surveyed said the nation is moving in the right direction. That is the lowest reading since the survey began in 2003.

"It is pretty scary," said Charles Truxal, 64, a retired corporate manager in Rochester, Minn. "People are thinking things are going to get better, and they haven't been. And then you go hide in your basement because tornadoes are coming through."

Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire.

Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet's weather that people seem powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge?

It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.

Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, because of increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008806220556

[Warpy]

1. Liberals went out of power in 1969

when Nixon was sworn in. The Democratic Party faced his southern strategy and allowed its own conservatives to dictate party policy, taking kitchen table issues out of the party platform and pandering to a mythical GOP swing voter instead of their own base of working people.

When a party abandons its base, it is going to remain powerless. When conservatives are allowed to take over, progress is halted because the one thing conservatives fear above all else is change, even change for the better. When progress is halted, people lose hope.

We're just looking at the conservative endgame, something a lot of us have predicted since the 1970s because the country has been down this road before and the destination never changes.

Conservatives are the problem. They can never be part of any solution.

[CrispyQ]

3. Nicely stated.

"...taking kitchen table issues out of the party platform and pandering to a mythical GOP swing voter instead of their own base of working people.

When a party abandons its base, it is going to remain powerless."

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[tom_paine]

2. The Toady Media have it backwards as usual. The powerlessness came long ago.

We didn't get here overnight, and BushCheney, horrifically criminal and barbarous as it is, didn't magically sprout from the ground on 12/12/2000.

No, these are the SYMPTOMS of the actual powerless of the people, or should I say the Ameikan Subject Populace, manifesting themselves finally and on towards terminally.

We became powerless long ago. The Bushies sealed the deal when the privatized the vote and thereby gained control. We only woke up and saw the results of their clandestine efforts. Well, they only SEEMED clandestine because the already-neutralized Toady Media refused to tell us while it was going on.

The Toady Media makes me sick. Even now, they get it wrong. And by coincdience, they get it wrong in the way which frames the topic in the way that is most beneficial to the Bushies and aristocrats who made us powerless in the first place.

Some coincidence. Happens every time, like flipping a coin and comingup heads a thousand times in a row. Nothing to see here, move along.

In fact, this article, framed as it is and deceptive as it is, seems talor-made to make people feel EVEN MORE POWERLESS.

Gosh, I am so surprised.

:puke: