Sam Smith, 2012 - One good way to step away from the daily news
and try to figure out what’s really going on is to imagine oneself as an
historian returning to this time some decades hence. What might you see as
having happened in the years since Reagan’s inauguration? Here are
some possibilities:
America’s imperial era was over but its leaders didn’t want
to recognize it and the media didn’t want to talk about it. The only wars that
America could claim to have won since World War II had been penny ante
invasions of tiny Latin American countries such as Grenada, Dominican Republic
and Panama. Other wars had cost America the lives of over 100,000 of its
soldiers and over $2 trillion, but such facts had little impact on policy,
media reporting, or action.
By the end of the first decade of the 21st century,
the level of federal, state and local unconstitutional assaults on civil
liberties was unprecedented, except during the Civil War and the two
subsequent world wars.
The Constitution was no longer a controlling document but
rather one from which the adhocracy in charge of America picked or ignored at
will. The elite, for example, greatly preferred the commerce clause to the Bill
of Rights.
America had lost its moral clout around the world. A
2007 survey in two dozen countries found only three in which a majority viewed
America’s influence as positive.
In the decade since 9/11 America did not take one
significant step to ease tensions with the Middle East or the Muslim world.
Instead it relied on failed invasions, futile sanctions and fatuous rhetoric.
The Democratic Party became more conservative than at any
time since before the New Deal – relying on a few social issues like abortion
and gay marriage to suggest otherwise. The last liberal Democratic presidential
candidate was Walter Mondale in 1984. Presidents Clinton and Obama were the
most reactionary Democratic presidents of modern times. Liberalism became a
social demographic rather than a political cause.
Unlike the New Deal, Fair Deal and Great Society, the three
decades after 1980 were (with a few exceptions such as the Americans with
Disabilities Act and the Family & Medical Leave Act) virtually devoid of
significant legislation that helped significant numbers of Americans deal with
their economic or social problems. There were, however, a number of measures
passed that greatly limited the civil liberties of Americans such as the
Patriot and Defense of Marriage Acts.
The closest parallel to the corruption at the top of
American society during this period was that of the Prohibition Era. The
biggest differences between the two eras was that during Prohibition the police
and FBI were far more likely to arrest the corrupt - and that the corruption
was far more costly to the American people.
The war on drugs moved into its fourth futile decade serving
largely as a means of imprisoning younger poor American males, especially
blacks, for whom there weren’t any jobs.It was, in a sense, a preemptive strike
against a possible class based rebellion.
While it is now clear that the biggest development of the
era was ecological, the media of the time gave little attention to the looming
problems. One study found only about 2% of media stories at the time
dealt with the environment.
There were some improvements such as:
- Serious crime dropped to its lowest level since the 1960s.
- Cancer death rates declined
- Traffic deaths fell to their lowest level since 1949.
- Capital punishment was at a 35 year low
- Risk of dying had dropped 60% over the previous 75 years
- Suicides, infant mortality, and fatal heat disease were at
their lowest since the 1950s
- Indicators for women, gays, blacks and latinos, other than
economic, were all significantly improved
On the other hand:
.
- For first time record, a majority of Americans had lower
hopes for their children.
- In the 1980s, about two thirds of corporations included
health care benefits with their pensions. By 2012, only about a quarter did.
- The Congressional Budget Office said the income gap in the
United States had become the widest in 75 years.
- In 1983, 50 corporations controlled most of the news media
in America. By 2002, six corporations did.
- The real income of poorest Americas dropped to its
lowest level since the 1970s.
- A record number of Americans 55 and older were still
working
- Credit card debt was eight times worse than it had been in
the 1980s.
- Long time unemployment was the worst since the 1940s
- A record number of homeowners were behind on their
mortgages.
- There were a record number of home foreclosures.
- The real wealth of the top 1% was up over 100% while that
of the poorest 40% was down nearly two thirds.
- The initial decade of the 21st century saw the
first decline in family net wealth since the 1950s.
- There are were a record number in poverty
- Child homelessness was at record levels.
While wars and the Great Depression had brought major disruptions to American
life, never before had the system simply disintegrated on its own to this
degree for this long. While the elite, including its media, refused to
recognize what was happening, there was growing awareness by ordinary Americans
of the depth of the collapse and an increasing sense that perhaps it was time
to try something different.
3 comments:
The Korean and Vietnamese wars accomplished one thing--to
defend China against Russia. It is an error to say that
those wars accomplished nothing. They accomplished much,
but not particularly to our benefit.
Currently suicide and death rates for some parts of the population are going up and life expectacy is going down. but an interesting list for sure
We don't fight wars, we police our world. With one exception, BRICS. But here we use stealth as in Brazil and Ukraine. The IMF has discovered that war is obsolete. As with TPP you conquer through bank v. government litigation. Nations are obsolete. Always on the eve of destruction the US game is to fill in the Axis map with the remaining eurasian holdouts. But here the world will be governed by a handful of judges, a page out of the Book of Judges.
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