Right now, everyone is excited about Barak Obama's Historical Candidacy in the US. Many Americans think that once he is elected (assuming he is, which maybe a big assumption) somehow everything will sort itself out and in a year or two we will be back on our merry way to riches and prosperity. In this Diary, I propose that not only will that not occur, but it is more likely that things will continue to get worse, and the Obama Presidency may very well end up being a failed one for the reasons below (as you will see, hardly due to his mistakes.) The problems we face now are far far deeper than just being a result of the Bush/Rove/Cheney neo fascist cabal, but rather, rest much deeper in the American psyche, attitude and outlook. Before I begin, Let me state that when I refer to the Average American Here, I am not referring to the Average Kos reader, who in no way I consider to be average. Anyone who participates here is far from average, and should not be considered your average American: most Americans don't read blogs, let alone participate in the kind of discussions we have here. Rather, I am referring to Joe Average, who does not participate here, or red state , or any place else.
Basically the biggest problems that face America now are outlined in the points below.
- Individualism as a disease in the US.
Since the beginning of the so called Reagan revolution, America has drifted further and further not to the right, so much as it as drifed into a cult of rabid,out of control selfishness and individualism: We are a country were the average American has been so brainwashed over the last 30 years that government is the problem rather than the solution, that many many Americans honestly don't believe that its possible for government to solve problems. And given that for at least 8 years we have had people governing that have done such a terrible job, is it really any wonder that so many Americans believe that government is incapable of solutions to problems? but this is only one part of the problem. most people in America know less than 2 or perhaps 3 neighbors on the street where they live on a first name basis; many do not know a single person. they live in autos, and are totally disconnected from their communities( which I would argue are hardly communities at all in the traditional sense, but rather more like fancy dormitories for people with large houses and yards , where people can ignore other people rather than interact with them.) Most places in America its impossible to walk to stores or shops, and what town centers exist do not promote any real sense of belonging. Add to this the notion that is now common in America that all that matters is the material wealth one collects oneself, and that the notion of any kind of common living space ( parks, rec facilities, town centers etc) is of any real value to the individual. look at the vast tracts of suburban housing, where you would have to walk for miles just to get to a 7-11, let alone a grocery store, the fact that no one knows the people who operate these stores by name, etc, and you can see we are in a very serious situation. Yet another example of this mentality is the kind of crap we have heard for years about the soldiers in the army: the repug talking point that the soldiers volunteered for the army, so why are they complaining about fighting over there. this, in and of itself, is a clear indication of the total disconnect in the average Americans mind about what it really means to a part of something bigger than ones own selfish desires. Look at the way our soldiers are abandoned to terrible medical care in the VA system, which is just one indication of this problem. Why haven't we had a draft? mainly because everyone knows that few people would really answer the call, even in a real crisis, let alone the manufactured one the repuglicants have cooked up over the last 8 years to try and keep this country in a state of endless war. People never talk about duty to community, except on a volunteer basis: the idea that people have to give something back to their country is totally forgotten by most Americans. "I pay taxes" they yell, why should I have to do anything else, is typical of this line of thinking, and extremely common on both sides of the spectrum, left and right. If the average American was told you HAVE to do something by government, their first inclination would not me, my country needs me, but rather, fuck you, how dare you tell me i HAVE to do anything, I am an AMERICAN. I'm sure you have all heard this kind of thing, and at the heart of it is this disease of self that our nation suffers from today. look at our pop culture: how much of it promotes uncontrolled self indulgence, I give you the average day of MTV ( of which an entire generation has been raised on over the last 30 years) as one example.
- A financial meltdown caused by deregulation, and shifting world economics.
The economic crisis in America continues to worsen day by day. oil rises, the dollar falls, more people lose their homes, and more people default on debt. the job losses continue to acceleate, and as discretionary income falls, more people will lose jobs, and the sprial will continue downards. here is a quote that is worth reading:
It will take central banking skills of great subtlety to pilot these seas. Slavish adherence to "inflation-targeting" and other such totemism and pseudo-science will ruin us all.
Yes, we face an oil and food price spike. Call that inflation if you want, but note that Europe's M1 money supply has contracted over the last five months. America's M1 has turned deeply negative, while M2 and MZM growth has collapsed.
America is going from bad to worse. A net 861,000 people joined the dole in May, pushing the unemployment rate from 5pc to 5.5pc. US house prices have fallen 14.4pc over the past year (Case-Shiller index). Miami is off 25pc.
The Mortgage Bankers Association says 8.8pc of all US house loans are in default or arrears. Negative equity has engulfed 11m households.
The "AA" rated tranches of 2007 sub-prime mortgage debt are now trading at 12pc of face value (ABX index); the "BBB" grades are down to 5pc. The debacle is reaching the 2004 vintage debt. We moved a step closer to a meltdown in the US municipal bond market last week when the "monoline" insurers Ambac and MBIA lost their "AAA" rating from Standard & Poor's.
the full article can be found here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...
in short we face one of the worst crises economically to occur ever in this country. I could go on but I think the point is made.
- The end of cheap energy in America.
The final problem is something that is going to haunt us for at least a generation, and can be simply stated as a long term energy crisis. The root of this is that Americas infrastructure was totally designed over the last 80 years on the basis of cheap available energy and cars. When you look at our transportation system, our housing system (suburbs of low density housing spread far from city centers) the inaccessibility of most shopping malls to pedestrian traffic, the total lack of a functioning national rail system (which, btw, its the ONLY one left in in the industrialized world that runs on diesel electric rather than pure overhead electric,which is somewhere between 20 and 50% more efficent), the fact that with the current ongoing and deepening financial crisis tax revenues are falling (thus preventing construction of new rapid transit systems, as in Denver, where ridership is up over 20% from last year at this time, but there are now talks of cutbacks due to the worsening housing crisis there) we are in really serious trouble. given the size and scale of America, and how we have chosen to develop it, we have no good short or medium term solutions to create mass transit, and basically no money to do it, given the financial meltdown, and of course the war overseas. the combination of these situations is going to cause massive, probably catastrophic problems for many communities, particularly rural communities that will never be suitable for mass transit due to low population density. Simply put, as oil goes up , it costs more to ship goods into remote rural communities, and it costs more to ship products out; the net result is a lowering of profit margins which will make such towns literally uninhabitable ( the average business net profit is about 8or 9% of the gross take..you do the math, but if gas doubles ( or even rises by 50% in the next year) you can already see that at some point soon these places will be financially uninhabitable. also rural communities are some of the poorest educated places in America as we well know from the last 2 national elections ( just look at who voted for our fuhrer, Herr Bush) which means that these people are both the least equipped educationally to deal with a globalized economy and least prepared to develop suitable solutions to the coming crisis.
In summary I fear that a great depression, worse than any previously experienced in the US, is about to change America forever; It will take at least a generation, perhaps several to resolve all of these issues.I expect open violence in the streets, and probably worse: just look at the some of the recent reports on the web, the incident in Connecticut where a person hit by a car was left in the road for an hour. The solutions rest in massive cultural and educational changes in the US, which the vast majority of Americans are not even ready to contemplate yet; look how many people think the recession will only last a year or 18 months at most ( people should be listening to Warren Buffett right now, who has predicted a massive and severe long term American recession). The Key to solving all these problems lies not in the quick fix solution of electing Obama, but rather in a massive, fundamental, and permanent shift in the cultural outlook and expectations of society. Given the dynamics at play in the US, the fact that most people under the age of 70 have never experience hard times like those about to set in, I fear that there is a good chance that America will deteriorate into something that most of us have only read about in history books ( and the average American has never read about at all, given the average Americans distaste for history, and debate constructed on facts and logic rather than ideology and opinion. Please wake up people, sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is nothing more than a speeding freight train headed in your direction.