01-25-2018, 11:50 PM
(01-25-2018, 08:00 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: Actually, it looks like the US is following the same path the USSR did to the way to
oblivion.
Falling life expectancy, check.
nomenkatura, check.
imperial overstretch, check.
incompetent bureaucracies, check
failing economy, check. It's there, underneath the gilt. High real unemployment. The headline is fake news.
https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-the-r...te-3306198
I'll give Americans this. We use a wider array of substances to numb out the pains of despair. The drug problem is an environmental problem, not a moral problem.
More here.
https://www.salon.com/2010/12/06/america_collapse_2025/
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/201107...eats.shtml
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/wor...l-spending
I dunno when it will happen, but all empires end. Besides we'll be colliding with climate change, resource shortages, etc. etc. Russia got lucky in that they didn't have to experience collisions with some pretty damn big black swans.
Donald Trump is as much a symptom as he is a disease. Despite our potential for widespread prosperity most of us get little from the growth. At this point we must question the merit of the economic growth that Donald Trump and Republicans promise because it comes with greater inequality, more corruption, degradation of the environment (including AGW), and brutal management. Donald Trump believes in gangster economics.
The opioid epidemic reflects that it is easier to treat pain by numbing it (prescription opiates are now almost as cheap as common antibiotics) than to get people into medical treatments and physical therapy that can solve the problems. Yes, opiates have their legitimate use for short-term and terminal pain. Were I a physician with terminal cancer patients I would be liberal in prescribing opiates to people who need opiates to have some quality of life. But let us also look at meth. I live in a meth-sodden community, and I do not like it.
I have seen neo-Nazi tattoos. It makes me sick to know that people can affiliate with people who murdered millions. Considering that as a smart, liberal, educated German-American I have far more in common in culture and morals with two groups of victims of Nazi genocide (Jews and educated Poles) than I have with Nazis, it is best that I did not confront the creep who showed those. Fascism is the perfect system of beliefs for a sociopath, and it is hardly surprising that neo-Nazi cults flourish in prison...
We should be living in the light of unprecedented prosperity in America, but not only is prosperity ill-shared within communities, it is also ill-shared between communities. There are rich urban areas like Boston, New York City, Washington DC, Austin, San Francisco/Silicon Valley, Seattle, and perhaps San Diego... and poor ones like Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Memphis. In the rich cities one gets gouged for rent, effectively being taxed by private profiteers for living where the jobs are.
A few people grabbing everything? That is the usual prelude to proletarian revolution or fascistic reaction.
Sure I am a liberal -- but the conservatism that I used to know could not defend this stuff.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.