The fall of America

[pen dragon]

anyone else feel that in the past 4 or 5 years everything negative about America has become the glorified norm, hoisted up a flagpole in all its putrid, soulless, excessive, rididiculously destructive and stupid glory and revelled in by the hopelessly distracted, easily manipulated and deceived mindless masses. America has become Rome when it degenerated into a decadent, morally corrupt, war hungry society. It's a coming train wreck watching US culture unfold on our TV screens since Bush became emperor. It was declining for a long time, but since Bush things have accelerated ten fold. There's a big fall coming for America, everything good it once stood for, and which it struggled with its darker nature to become, has already rusted away, and not nearly enough people seem to notice or care. Never has there been a chance for a greater society to flourish and lead the world to a better tomorrow. Destroyed by the greedy, conspiring, power hungry, fascist termites eating at the foundations. When America finally lists over and begins to go under all bets are off. The new dark age is at hand for the entire planet, Bush is the catalyst, and evil and chaos will reign supreme.

Hunter S. Thompson probably saw this truth staring him down like a herd of satanic buffalo just before he unholstered his gun.

We won't recognize civilization as we've known it by 2010

[mwb970]

1. I agree.

This is a historical moment. And don't it feel good?

[K-W]

2. America has been through worse.

And America has done worse.

This nation has been close to falling apart many times. Yes things are bad, but there is no reason to think we are facing any kind of endgame here. Sure, it could be, but perhaps it wont be. Weve looked into the void before and sometimes weve even turned bad situations into progress.

[bryant69]

3. I agree

Don't get depressed, get organized.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[mattclearing]

4. Dingdingdingding!!!

This is correct.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

We've done the stuff we're doing now fairly consistently for the past 200 years.

Was it ever this coordinated or consistently successful? Probably not. But with new times come new adversity.

I think we can handle it. The tide is always turning...which way depends on what side you are on and how hard you push.

[brindis_desala]

6. I agree. Difference is ; at the rate we're ravaging the planet

the stakes are infinitely higher. We are set on a course of self-destruction and the terrifying aspect is that the Bush "believers" are greeting this with glee.

[atreides1]

8. But perhaps this is the final Chapter of the America we know

While America has been through worse and has done worse, most of what was done was within our borders, the things done outside of our borders were done for the corporations, as General Smedley Butler pointed out.

And now the religious fanatics have their hands in all things political, and the mindless masses are more apt to listen to the likes of Falwell and Robertson, then they are to reason.

The sheep fear gay marriage, abortion, and all those terrorists hiding under every rock. They care nothing for the poor, disabled, or others in need. They pay lip service by "Supporting the Troops",
and yet they say very little about the cuts that are planned for
our veterans.

[K-W]

10. You are romanticizing history.

There has never been a time in history where there have been more critical thinkers than today.

It used to be that EVERYONE followed robertsons and fallwells. The people who are now using the corporate economy and the cultural backlash to get power are the kind of people that used to have all the power.

They also dont control the government, corporations do, dont kid yourself. They have just found the religious right to be a useful ally. The christian right will lose its momentum and fade, the oligarchs will fight on to try and regain the status they once had, because they are never happy until they get more control.

There was a time when there was no such thing as legitimate government, all government was corruption, all government was elites securing power and hustlers using the system.

The struggle of progressivism has been the slow battle to create a society where those people do not rule. There was never a day where that war was won, we have only slowly won battles and that is what we must continue to do.

We are very close to our government collapsing under the tyranical control of the republican party. Im not saying it wont happen, just that the idea that the past was any different is an illusion. Welcome to the chaos that is human society.

[OneMoreDemocrat]

This is one of the best posts I've ever seen on DU.........

Bravo.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Jimbo S]

5. Have we peaked as a society?

I don't think we are spinning downward as quickly as you claim, but history is possibly being made as we speak. You say eight years, I say maybe in 50 years, we will look back on the last half of the 20th century as the "golden era".

[Dogmudgeon]

7. We Apocalyptics

It's a good observation. The second paragraph, about HST, packs the wallop of one of the good Doctor's shootin'-irons. It's going in my own Writer's Notebook of Excellent Writings To Envy.

But as an apocalyptic, I've noticed a one-sided glee to our collective observations of America and the World going down the tubes. I am not sure that "being right" will matter at all when we have to deal with a debased currency, overwhelming unemployment, nightly curfews, the aftermath of one or more nuclear explosions in our own nation, martial law, electricity that is off as often as it is on, food shortages and hunger, and finally, several major die-offs from disease.

Rome took a couple hundred years to "fall", and for the most part, it wasn't apocalyptic, though many episodes were quite violent and painful. Any one of the problems our leaders are currently ignoring could plunge humankind into a world of irredeemable pain. A Roman citizen, whether clever or well-heeled, could do much to survive the slow-motion fall of his empire. But something like climate change or disease does not discriminate that well. It will be much tougher to survive any of these disasters than we can expect.

The objects of our efforts ought to be the public and influence agents. None of these disasters are necessary, and can each be avoided through vision and effort.

Which means that right now, the odds don't look very good.

--p!

[raccoon]

11. I've always loved to read apocalyptic fiction,

but I never expected or wanted to live it.

As you said, "being right" won't matter when we have to deal with a lot of inconveniences, not to mention privation.

I read somewhere--wish I could remember where--that,
"The Great Depression left a lot of people disillusioned. Another depression will leave America's cities in ashes." I believe that.

Octavia Butler's PARABLE OF THE SOWER depicts a nightmare future that I could very easily see coming down the road at us.

[IrateCitizen]

12. Well, we're certainly a decadent culture in serious decline...

We are currently in the process of rejecting the last vestiges of the Enlightenment, the thinking upon which our nation was founded.

Jeffersonian Democracy, however imperfect and hypocritical, was founded upon strictly Enlightenment principles. Contrary to popular belief, religion did not have anywhere close to the role in public life in the early 1800's as it does today. While the church may have been a social center for many towns, fundamentalism and evangelism were not nearly as prevalent. Furthermore, one of the primary activities people engaged in during their spare time was the discusssion of political events. There were social clubs and salons and the like that sprung up all over the country, where "ordinary" people would gather after work in order to discuss current events, politics, philosophy, and the like.

Much of this spirit was eschewed with the rise of the scientific side of the Enlightenment, expressed in the technological boom accompanying the industrial revolution. Applied science became the ruler of society, and the effects of the industrial revolution, with its grueling workdays and grinding poverty for the masses of workers, helped to kill the spirit of egalitarian democracy that had risen out of the initial founding of the country.

The effects of the industrial revolution passed from killing the metaphysical side of Enlightenment thought to utterly compartmentalizing American culture. We bought so much into the fruits of technology that we started to lose touch with each other. Perhaps nothing epitomizes this phenomenon more than the rise of television. Where people used to regularly gather in public spaces for discussion, debate, and plain socialization -- they now retire to their individual homes and passively receive information, and even their thoughts, from a television screen.

This passivity has propelled us toward the final jettisoning of Enlightenment ideals -- the rejection of science itself. The fact that increasing segments of the population identify as evangelicals, coupled with the recent fights over teaching of religious myths such as creationism in schools under the guise of science, is evidence of the unraveling of this vestige of thought.

Of course, this unraveling will also prove to be the death-knell of America as we have come to know it. Where freedom was initially defined by the founders as freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and so on -- it has now been replaced simply by the freedom to shop and consume. References to the initial Enlightenment ideals of freedom have become antiquated and "quaint" to the vast majority of Americans. At the same time, our country is beating its chest and declaring this to be a great dawning of America. In this sense, America is behaving as a classic decadent culture -- it is in decline in reality, but it perpetuates the myth that it is still ascending to the peak of its culture and influence.

[K-W]

13. We produce less than we consume.

Because our economy is so horribly warped and disordered.

Societies advance when they utilize thier resources and labor to thier own benefit.

We refuse to do that because we have mistakenly placed our faith in an economic system based on social darwinism.

[IrateCitizen]

14. It's a much deeper malady than our economy...

The seeds of this sickness are sown within American society as a whole. Just think about how many times you're heard the phrase, "defending the American way of life."

What is the American way of life, anymore? It has nothing to do with freedom of expression, speech, assembly, or anything like that anymore. At least not in the eyes of the average citizen. No, it has to do with gluttonous consumption and wastefulness, and the belief that such action is our God-given right as Americans.

Just look at how people are increasingly saying that restrictions should be placed on freedom of speech and the press. However, if you tell them they can't get a gas-guzzling SUV anymore, they'll howl like a banshee in protest.

We're a sick society. Sick societies tend to decline rather quickly.

[K-W]

15. I disagree, its always been this way.

The founding fathers wrote the constitution while some of them still owned slaves. Sufferage was among white male land owners. No sooner did we have free speech than the government started abusing it.

It was a great idea, but please dont be fooled into thinking it was ever realized.

What you are talking about are the fundemental problems in the way Human beings interact in large groups. In groups and outgroups, pro-social and anti-social behavior, attribution errors, groupthink. It is a chaotic system, the problem is that previously most people pretended it wasnt.

[IrateCitizen]

16. I'm not saying that it wasn't a tenuous struggle the whole time...

After all, I am VERY familiar with the anti-sedition act of the late 1700's. I'm also aware of the extreme hypocrisy of many of the founders, as I acknowledged in my initial post.

However, there WAS a much different dynamic in play back in that time. For a reference, I would suggest you check out the book, America's Second Revolution: Adams, Jefferson, and the Election of 1800 by Susan Dunn.

Perhaps some of what I'm bringing up here is recalling Emmanuel Kant's recognition of the failures of the Enlightenment, and how most human beings don't really want to think, because it's just too hard. That's where the group dynamics come into play and the ability of demagogues to hold sway over the masses.

But to be honest, I cite "popular culture" for a great deal of the decline of our society over the past years. So long as people are kept isolated from one another, and passively receive their thoughts through technological media such as radio and television as opposed to developing their own through books and reflection, this downward spiral will only continue, IMHO. Things were hardly perfect at any other time in history, but even the most skeptical and cynical among us would have to say that the regular discussion of political events by people in taverns and meetinghouses was quite different a dynamic than the current trend of getting your "talking points" from Bill O'Reilly and your daily dose of Rush Limbaugh as the basis of your "thought process". The former is actually based on some modicum of thought, while the latter is nothing more than a simple belief system, no matter what others may say to the contrary.

[K-W]

18. Certainly the technology of communication has changed things entirely

I agree, this is a completely different paradigm, and never before has so much power been in the hands of the people, and yet most of them cant use that power in thier best interests, its horrifically frustrating. And yes, culture is a problem, but it is itself a symptom. The problem is, how do we create a rational society when most of us are not socialized to be rational people.

At least thats where I see the root of the problem. As long as most people refuse to aknowledge that our interaction is a chaotic system, prefering instead to apply myths to it to give themselves the illusion of order, other people will use those myths to control them.

I think the only foundation of a truely free society is a population that understands freedom, and as Bush proves every time he opens his mouth, most americans do not have a rational understanding of the concept.

That is why corporations have managed to convince so many that an unaccounatble economy is a free economy.

[Igel]

17. The American way of life had, in practice, little to do

with freedom of expression, speech, or assembly.

It had to do with being allowed to own your own bit of the continent and go about your business while being harrassed by as few government workers as possible. What most people had to express--and still have to express--nobody much cares about. Most people don't want to engage in political assemblies. They just want to live their lives as prosperously as possible, and make their own happiness.

Of course, much of it didn't apply to various sections of society (an ever-changing set, but invariably including at least most blacks).

You pick the aspect of your culture you like the best and romanticize it, holding it up as the central aspect of your existence.

[K-W]

19. ignore

mispost

[IrateCitizen]

20. That's true, but isn't it true for all of us in some way?

You pick the aspect of your culture you like the best and romanticize it, holding it up as the central aspect of your existence.

Yes, I am certain that this applies to me here -- as it also applies in some way to every single person on this board, yourself included. After all, there is no such thing as "objectivity" when it comes to history. We all come with our own belief systems and preconceived notions, that influence the way we interpret history, and what we choose to emphasize and what we choose to only mention or even leave out.

I readily admit that I'm as guilty of this as everyone else. And while your assessment of the overall American spirit in the early days of the Republic are certainly accurate, I also know from my own studies that my citing of various meeting groups and political societies WAS a reality of the times, even if it didn't have a huge and immediate effect on the governing structures as a whole.

[Igel]

27. Absolutely.

I pick the bits of my culture that I like, that's what I'd like to defend.

Early in the days of the Republic there were a lot of meetings ... at least of white propertied men, and the freedom to speak out was important. Just less so after, oh, 1840 or so (if I had to guess at a year), with occasional blips (I'd imagine that 1860 in slave states saw a lot of meetings).

Ciao.

[RevCheesehead]

21. I disagree with your statement about the role of religion.

During the 1800's, as our nation was settling in, various denominations began to appear across the land. At that time, Methodism grew far beyond its ability to support itself - there were not enough clergy to serve all the communities. So the Circuit Rider was born - an ordained minister who travelled a circuit (area) to reach as many people as possible. A pastor would come to a church maybe once a month (or less), preach, baptize, and give communion.

While the preacher was absent, the laity held their own services, and some "lay preachers" were appointed to serve as pastors, until the Circuit Rider would arrive, quarterly, and hold "conferences." Thus, preaching became more important than sacraments. "Revivals" were social events where people gathered in camp-meetings to worship, pray, and share the events of their lives with one another. The guest preacher was called an "evangelist," and his role was to inspire and unite the people in rededicating their lives to God.

I believe that evangelicals today are descendants of those people, who cry out for our current need (or lack) of social and spiritual community. Rather than something new, evangelicals are deeply-rooted in fronteer American Christianity. Fundamentalists are evangelicals with a stick: "do it this way, or else."

What's new is that evangelicals are being heard nationally, rather than just at the local level. But don't kid yourself - they most certainly were around in the early 1800's, and played a central role in the lives of most Americans in the heartland, south, and beyond.

I think the key is in recognizing that we are all on the same side: We reject the isolation and passivity of our culture, and yearn to be connected with one another. That's why evangelicals have "demonized" TV (and its colorful characters) - because it's one way the family and community have been disrupted. We, as progressives, see the commercialization of television as its own demon, with subliminal messages that we are not complete unless we consume. Same side, different issues.

Bush and certain evangelical leaders have found a common language, but with differing ulterior motives. It is an unholy alliance, and sullies the name of religion and politics, to the demise of both.

[IrateCitizen]

22. Thanks for the information and claification...

And I would certainly agree with you that the issue of the coarsening of popular culture certainly makes for strange bedfellows. I find myself in almost complete agreement with groups like Focus on the Family when it comes to issues like advertising aimed at children.

And you're correct in that I should not have lumped evangelicals as being the same as fundamentalists. I do know there is a difference, and I should have been clearer on that. After all, I've actually counseled a few evangelical Christians seeking military discharge as Conscientious Objectors, while fundamentalists probably don't support such a stance or my work on helping those seeking to take it.

[RevCheesehead]

23. That's ok - and thanks!

I'm one of those people who can't answer the survey question: "do you consider yourself to be an evangelical Christian?" or "are you a born-again Christian?" I'm a glorified mix of evangelical-orthodox, one who embraces both traditional and contemporary, liturgical and spontaneous, biblical and liberal (hopefully, much like John Wesley - and oh yeah, that guy named Jesus!)

[tom_paine]

25. Damn, that was an excellent post, excellently worded, IC!

So true. May God Help Us and the poor bastards who come after, it's so true.

[European Socialist]

24. This was also true 20 years ago under Ronnie Ray-gun.

It took Poppy Bush and the dems to finally restore fiscal sanity-although our trade policies still sucked. This time we will sink like a stone. John McCain is the only hope on the other side and he is woefully lacking-other than talking a good game.

[Karenina]

26. LOVE that graphic!

Did YOU do that? It's superb.

[pen dragon]

28. Honest Dubya?

Yeah I made it. thx for liking it :)

[Karenina]

29. I much MORE than like it.

It's comic balm to my Yurpeen friends (who are SEVERELY pissed off at Amurikka in general) illustrating that the spirit they've always loved still lives... You're a wonderful artist. :loveya: