How long do you think it will take the US to recover from BushCo?

[FormerRepublican]

The budget is bust - our children will be forking over the dough to pay the interest on Bush's crony $$$. China will own us.

Social Services have been rolled back to the dark ages - it's fend for yourself or die. The government prefers you die. If you doubt this, wait until the next hurricaine wipes out your city.

Our military has been abused and nearly destroyed to the point that the "volunteer" military has become a joke where no one "volunteers."

The world hates us. We are not respected. We are scorned.

Congress is completely corrupt, and undergoing massive investigation by law enforcement. Criminality is encouraged in BushCo.

The White House itself is guilty of leaking the name of a covert employee for political reasons, with far reaching effects for our national security.

I could go on - the list of damage caused by BushCo is nearly endless.

How long do you think it will take for America to recover from the BushCo disaster once they are ejected from office? One year? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?

[China_cat]

1. 30 to 40 years socially

200 at least financially.

[NanceGreggs]

2. I hate to sound pessimistic, but ...

... I'm in my fifties, and I don't think I will live long enough to see my country regain its former standing in the world. Hopefully, my grandchildren will.

But as your post points out, the damage done by this Admin is truly overwhelming.

[catmother]

3. good question. n/t

[TheCowsCameHome]

4. I'll never see it in my lifetime.................

[Nay]

14. I, too, will be dead and gone. I'm 54.

[TheCowsCameHome]

16. 60 here, but will easily double that.......... :D

[Divernan]

5. Some opportunities have been lost forever or at least 2 generations

Consider what could have been accomplished in terms of health care, infrastructure (high speed rail/highways/water treatment).
The quality of life of at least TWO generations of Americans has been greatly diminished.

Then consider the environment. We cannot recreate the wilderness destroyed by Bush's corporate welfare buddies with their subsidized rape of our country's natural resources and natural beauty. Can the mountains of West Virginia and Virgina be put back in place after the horrendous coal mining practise of cutting off the top of the mountains, blasting out the coal, and dumping the dirt and other mining detritus in the valleys, destroying them and causing water pollution and flooding. Can the old growth trees be regrown? No.

[TahitiNut]

6. The damage has been 25 years in the making.

By every measure of equity and justice, the rot-from-within has been proceeding since the beginning of the Reagan Regime. It'll be more than 40 years, afaicg, before we're back to the levels of liberalism we saw at the end of the 70s. I'll offer just a couple of the indicators below: federal minimum wage and Gini Ratio (a measure of income distribution).


Until the minimum wage is increased to $7.00/hour (in last year's dollars), we're not close to the labor compensation for the poorest we had in the late 70s.




Until the income equity is adjusted (more for the lowest income and less for the highest) and we attain a Gini Ratio of 0.35 or below, approaching that of other western industrial countries, we're still burdened with the plantation economics of banana republicanism.

[whosinpower]

7. never

The US will never be what it once was. It is lost, gone forever in a miazma of corporate cronyism and corruption.

You can't undo it. Dead is dead.

What the US can do however is adapt and mould itself into a nation that lives up to its lofty ideals. What we see today are empty platitudes that are just fluffy lies heaped upon decades of wargaming and death.

Here is what I mean - the shining nation on a hill shouldn't engage in concentration camp ideologies and torture. The nation that was founded on the ideas of truth and justice should recognize that justice is equal for all - not just a select few....and the hammer can and should fall with equal consequences.

The nation founded on freedom - should not have to make stupid excuses that their soldiers burning and TAUNTING enemy fighters was not just for hygenic reasons.

The nation with one of the best constitutions in the world should not engage in using chemical weapons on a civilian population that melts the skin off their bodies. This same civilian population that had all their men 16 and older forbidden to evacuate that very city.

I love America for what it could be and should be. I love her heart and soul - but I hate what she has become....and I mourn the death of a good friend.

[ChiciB1]

8. I'm NOT Going To Be Around To See It Happen....

As a matter of fact, it's still going on! Where's the recovery???

Has ANYONE noticed all the interviews MSM is doing with the soldiers in Iraq??? Gee, to hear them speak it's all just "peachy keen!"

Guess who dreamed up these little ditties? Funny how all of a sudden the SOLDIERS are getting to have their say, and of course it's ALL positive!! We Want To Win The War & Finish OUR Mission!

I was brought up as an Army brat... and that's EXACTLY how it was when I was in the ARMY!! You WILL follow ORDERS, Sir!!!

[ArkySue]

9. Longer than I'll be alive.

Stupid stinking basturd!

[ugarte]

10. I wish it were only BushCo we had to worry about

It's the crazy Bible-thumping 30% of the US population that would vote for someone just as bad or worse.

[Syncronaut Seven]

11. I've got some bad news.

Unless we solve our population and energy problems by 1970 or so, we're fucked.

Recovery will never be complete.

Oh yea, it wasn't hindsight then.

[madrchsod]

12. after i`m dead

so i`d say about 20 years if i`m lucky.

[Conker]

13. I don't even want to think about how long it would take.

Are deficit is sooo bad right now.How long do you think it will take before most Americans (every American seems unlikely) realize the damage Bush has done?

[davidwparker]

15. All true, but as Malloy says, "at least the queers can't get married."

I'm 43 and I think I'll be gone. How long did it take for the country to recover from the Great Depression? I think it will be at least that long.

[Sinistrous]

20. Recovery from the Great Depression required the

economic stimulus of WWII. I pray we will be able to recover from the predations of the bush cabal with less catastrophe.

[davidwparker]

26. Me too. But after 9/11. I no longer set a low point for what man's

greed will do.

Good luck to us in this country.

[BlueJazz]

17. The truly ironic thing is the very people who plaster Flags and...

..crap all over their automobiles are the very ones who have/will cause the demise of the USA.

[stillcool]

18. i'm still waiting for the bottom...

every time i think it's curtains...the corpo-whore enablers come along and shovel it all under the rug....feels like we're in a bus teetering over a cliff..will a tow-truck come along and save us?

[jody]

19. 100 years. n/t

[0007]

21. You forgot that our natural resources are well depleted

At this point in time even the best of men would have a hard time guiding the U.S. back into a decent position. This is a greedy country run by the rich and they are not about to take a step back so others may have a meal or a coat when cold.

I have no idea :shrug: I'd say we reached our zenith years ago. And now are on the decline.

[flordehinojos]

22. will this country ever be able to heal the divisions and polarizations

created and augmented by the bushes?

will the blackwater mercenaries recede? will bushco thugs ever recede? will there ever be freedom of speech in this country again?
will politicians have open debates rather than staged appeareances to select audiences?

Pope John Paul II said of Bush's invasion of Iraq, "GWB will be solely responsible for changing the course of humanity." JPII was so right...GWB changed the course of humanity in iraq, at home and the rest of the world.

[cornermouse]

24. No.

[lostnfound]

31. How about an optimistic approach?

I could agree with you all, easily. But to play angel's advocate, let's pretend for a moment that:

A new country will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes, a country which is fully awake to the nature of its own imperialism, which is at least partially awake to the existing of an insulated overclass, which rebuilds civic institutions and a sense of the public good, which undertakes the Herculean task of mending the great divides between us and them, which finds ways to learn geography by other means than war.

It's up to us to make it happen.

[flordehinojos]

34. if only ...... but then, why not?

:)

[tinfoilinfor2005]

23. Never.

And not just the U.S. Globally the damage is too great to completely turn around, because those wheels grind so slowly and our little planet was in trouble yesterday. And bush didn't start that, but he turned his back on everything that was being done to rectify the problems.

[CJCRANE]

25. Once the neocons are out of the WH

the whole world will breathe a sigh of relief.

Any non-neocon president inaugurated in '09, even if it's McCain, will improve America's standing in the world overnight, simply because no-one could be as bad as *.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

27. None of us will live to see it, if there ever is a recovery.

[DemoTex]

28. Depends. With a truly progressive government .. several generations.

With the status quo or a diluted imitation of Bu$hco (either Dem or Repub) .. never. But you are absolutely correct, FormerRepublican, that "the list of damage caused by BushCo is nearly endless." Your other observations are equally correct, and very frightening.


Two turnin', two burnin'

[ruggerson]

29. A lot quicker than you think

we're a very resilient country

[Popol Vuh]

30. You want my honest opinion?

My honest opinion is: Our country's government for most, if not all, its history has been nothing but a hypocritical den of corrupt rich assholes with only rare exceptions. And now after the wake of disaster inflicted upon us that is George Bush, coupled with today's vast numbers of ignorant American sheeple with their heads up their asses, clueless as to the on going butt raping they're receiving. I unfortunately have to answer your question by saying that our country has crossed over the event horizon of eventuality of a second American revolution or losing the country to a total police state right out of 1984.

So therefore, I believe our country's government is beyond repair and the only road to true recovery is that wich is spelled out in our Decleration of Independence.

I hope I am proven wrong in my lifetime - I am 39.

[BlueIris]

32. I'm feeling optimistic today, so: 100 years.

It will take 100 years of work on this society--and then, only if a majority of Americans work pretty damn hard--to get us back to anywhere near the level of prosperity that we had prior to this cabal taking over the nation not in 2000, but in 1980.

[Donna Zen]

33. Wisdom from our ancestors:

Admittedly the bush administration has done all it could to destroy America as we have come to know it, although even that was far from what our mythological ideals demanded. Nevertheless, if we are to claw our way back to sanity, then above all else we must preserve and protect our Constitution. To fail in this duty is to fail no only ourselves and our children, but we will have failed to nurture the dream that has lived inside the souls of all enlightened people. As Webster points out, for that we learn the meaning of true mourning:

Daniel Webster on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of George Washington’s birthday.


Other misfortunes may be borne or their effects overcome. If disastrous war should sweep our commerce from the ocean, another generation my renew it. If it exhaust our Treasury, future industry may replenish it. If it desolate and lay waste our fields, still, under a new cultivation, they will grow green again and ripen to future harvests. It were but a trifle even if the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars would fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the fabric of demolished government? Who shall rear again the well-proportioned columns of constitutional liberty? Who shall frame together the skillful architecture which unites national sovereignty with State rights, individual security, and public prosperity? No. If these columns fall, they will be raised not again. Like the Colosseum and the Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful, a melancholy immortality. Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them than were shed over the monuments of Roman or Grecian art. For they will be the remnants of more glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw: the edifice of constitutional American liberty.

In an interview on AAR, it might have been Franken's show, Wes Clark was asked about the greatest threat to America. He said that it was a "one-party state." Some people think that the good General is out campaigning for Democrats because he thinks only of his own political fortunes, but I believe that he is right and they are wrong. He also said then, that if we can protect the Constitution, even after the bush years, we will be alright.

Wes Clark: 100 Year Vision

Looking ahead 100 years, the United States will be defined by our environment, both our physical environment and our legal, Constitutional environment...Institutionally, our Constitution remains the wellspring of American freedom and prosperity. We must retain a pluralistic democracy, with institutional checks and balances that reflect the will of the majority while safeguarding the rights of the minority. We must seek to maximize the opportunities for private gain, consistent with concern for the public good. And we must institute a culture of transparency and accountability, in which we set the world standard for good government. As new areas of concern arise -- in the areas of intellectual property, bioethics, and other civil areas -- we will assure continued access to the courts, as well as to the other branches of government, and a vibrant competitive media that informs our people and enables their effective participation in civic life. And even more importantly, we will assure in meeting the near term challenges of the day -- whether they be terrorism or something else -- that, we don't compromise the freedoms and rights which are the very essence of the America we are protecting.

Of the members of Congress, only Feingold passed the test of protecting our liberty, when he bravely voted against the Patriot Act, and in my mind, only Feingold should still have his job. I wrote to both "parties" at that time and requested that they all resign because they had betrayed their oath of office. I still believe that. I have read the Constitution, the cowards need to go.

If you wish to save America, you are already on the right path--you're here and engaged. Now, we must work together or we will surely mourn together.

[mrgorth]

35. I'm thinking 50 years

but that's best case.

[freestyle]

36. At least 40 years. Things are FUBAR.

There has to be a wholesale reordering of American life for there to be any hope of recovery from this mess. In addition to the financial, international reputation and internal divisiveness mess, there is the energy situation. Our way of life is based primarily on cheap energy and importing things we used to make. Both courses are utterly unsustainable and there is lots of pain to come.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

37. It depends on two things:

1) Getting control of Congress in 2006. If we don't do that, #2 is irrelevant.

2) Electing a president in 2008 who is as bold in his own way as the Republicans have been in theirs. We need an FDR, who will courageously risk offending people in order to right wrongs, not a Bill Clinton-type, who is so willing to compromise with the Republicans that the wounds remain unhealed.