America is a sick society

[David Horn]

(07-31-2017, 01:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I agree about the not-so beneficial impact of NAFTA, but your cart is before the horse on that. The Religious Right dates back to the 1970s, and probably its ancestors to the 1920s at least. Flyover country was taking refuge in and enclosing their minds in fundie churches long before NAFTA. The Bible Belt has a long history.

As the article mentions, it is more likely that fly-over country caused its own problems because of their retrograde ideas, values and votes, than by economic policies that ignored them. So, they feel their economic pain now, but their solution in 2016 was to vote for Trump. That just shows their apparently-incurable ignorance and inability to grasp solutions.

Assuming you are right, and the author of the referenced article is as well, nothing short of a cataclysmic crash that triggers mass dislocation and even starvation is going to overcome that mind set.  As a nation, we can't survive that and rebound to anything greater than second class status, so another answer needs to be found.  I don't have it, and no one seems to be proposing one either.  Bernie Sanders did yeoman's work trying to raise the flag and get things rolling, but we let that opportunity pass.  Trying a second time will be ignored in much the same way all other evidence-based solutions are ignored.

I'm convinced that this won't be fixed in our lifetimes, so our discussions here are of academic interest but little else.  If the right wins the day in this 4T, and they are heading in that direction, then the next 2T will either start the new ball rolling or it won't.  In any case, it will take another 4T to get it resolved.  The world will look dramatically different by then.