Do you really want to know why we are such a stupid society?  I can tell you, but you may not like the answer.

We are not as different as we like to think.

peace,  steve

www.behappyandfree.com 

by Steve Consilvio (18 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 184 comments [4 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Sep 8, 2007 at 11:17:25 AM

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David, you are being nostalgic.

In recent decades, the excesses of America has gone off the board - and that applies to just about the entire society, including you. No doubt the rich knows how to get even richer, by any means. To them, that's the American Way. Now according to some theories, a good chunk of the rich's wealth is supposed to trckle down to the middle class, as they have for decades after the war. However, two big things happened starting about the mid-80's that have come to disrupt this expectation.

Kids of that era started doing badly in schools, while the young middle class adults got hooked in the easy good life. The schools would not be fixed, so 15 years later, at the turn of the century, we have an entire generation of millions former kids now in their 30's, with awful skills and can't think. Socialogists call them the Z (for Zombie) generation. I call them the P&P (point and click) no-brainer generation. Add to this we have an entire two-generations of former young adults, now in their 40's-50's, who have decent skills but got addicted to the American Opium of rampant consumption, easy high life, pathological addition to throw-away electronics gadgets and cars, credit card madness. In other words, living way over their means and drown to the eyeballs in debt. Historians call this China's Revenge. (In the 1850 - 1900, China millions were addicted to opium and society grind to the gutter.)

To complete the picture, one needs to add a third ingredient - the educated businessmen. From the same mid-80's era, the fancy high-capitalist business schools of America began to teach the magic of CDC (creative distruction capitalism). Thousands upon thousands of the resulting MBA graduates now run America's corporation, fully converse with globalization, international arbitrage finance, supply chains - all vital to maximize profits from the cheapest costs in the global arena. (Some members of the same class have became infamous - Enron, Worldcom and such.) They helped create a so-called post-industrial America whose 'strengths' are finance and marketing, under the banner of 'knowledge'. But don't ask these business leaders to create, design and build things, things that require hard scientific and engineering knowledge. The only 'engineering' they know is cooking the subprime mortgage.

The Zombie young folks stand no chance against the globalized American businessmen. They have found all they want via outsourcing. Most of the Zombies become 'walkers' in big box stores, stocking boxes and admiring all the sophisticated products designed and built by Japanese engineers. The Opiumed middle class have begun to smoke themselves to foreclosure and bankruptcy, while the CDC bosses laugh all the way to the bank importing ever more American Opium.

So you see, there are no Non Americans. All three classes are helping each other to fulfill the American Dream, redefined for the glorious 21th century.

by TomK (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 330 comments [22 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Sep 8, 2007 at 2:20:14 PM

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Gee, think you can blame the victims? You reason like no one determines the system we live under. There are people that own all of those factories that have moved overseas. There are people that paid for those advertisements to buy those products they produced in the factories they moved overseas. There are people that own the mass media that do not give the electorate an alternative to the present ownership system. Ever heard of class analysis? Try reading some of the Soviet works analyzing the Weimar Republic in the mid 1920's and you may find some eerie similarities to our current situation (and also for Stalin's heavy handedness in his rush to prepare for WWII).

by W.M.L. (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 537 comments [52 recommended, 1 rejected]) on Saturday, Sep 8, 2007 at 10:19:08 PM

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Blaming Americans who are in their '50s and younger does not address this issue.  BUT, If you are going to blame various generations of Americans, what about the "Greatest Generation"?  They reaped the advantages of post-WWII America, such as free college education on the G.I. bill, and selling houses in the '90s through the present for many times more than they paid for them in the '50s, and now they're collecting the Social Security benefits that people such as myself who were born after 1960 will never see when we retire (practically dead of old age by then).  Then there are the Boomers, who helped usher in the AIDS era with the "Sexual Revolution" and acted like nothing was an issue till it started happening them to them (such as when they started turning 40 in the mid-80s.  You'd have thought the world had come to an end.)

You say that around the mid-'80s kids started doing badly in school.  If so, that did not happen in a vacuum.  Who was responsible for their education?  Why, people in the older generations, who would now largely be in their '60s -- an age group you didn't mention.  And you seemed to be saying that only people younger than 60 have been seduced by consumerism and easy credit.   There are many people 60 and over who are in heavy credit card debt due to their consumerism and addiction to disposable electronic gadgets and cars.   I know some personally who add new dimensions to the word "materialistic".

Since the mid-'80s the younger generations have been feeling the effects of all the I've-got-mine self-absorption of the '50s, '60s, and '70s decades.  Beginning in the mid-'80s, when I graduated from college, having a college degree meant very little.   Plus, college financial aid loan companies used draconian methods of getting loan payments from students of that era, because previous generations had been so cavalier about paying back their student loans.  Then, my generation became the first generation who were not better off than our parents had been, being able to get mostly "McJobs" for which we were overqualified. 

It's interesting that you blame many of our problems on people attending business schools in the mid-'80s.  Again, who were their teachers?  Could they have been people in the generations older than that, who were planning the massacre of the poor (of all races), the working class and the middle class -- disguised by catchphrases such as "trickle-down economics", "shining city on a hill", and "welfare witches"?

My intention is not to blame only the '50s and older age groups for these problems.  I'm just pointing out that the groundwork for what you describe had already been laid before the mid-'80s.   The forces which caused it all will continue to wreak havoc on America as long as the cancer they implanted continues metastasizing, because in all generations there are people who have a stake in this killing of America and people who help carry it out because they want to profit from it too. 

by teeem (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 41 comments) on Monday, Sep 10, 2007 at 3:37:44 AM

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I loved David Glenn Cox's article.  My comment/reply entitled "Hold on there" is about Tom K's comment "No Non Americans".

by teeem (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 41 comments) on Monday, Sep 10, 2007 at 3:43:17 AM

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David Cox's non-Americans hits the spot. You people can try and theorize all you want but he speaks the truth and as an investigative journalist I can verify his facts. Many Americans are armchair-bookworm-TV-Google experts that don't now anything about reality.

In a year or so you'll be on the run in Russia, Spain or any country that will let you in to seek out work at any wage to feed yourself and your vagabond family. The truth is coming - it all started when  King Ronald signed an executive order suspending the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Companies merged and moved to Mexico and far flung places throwing millions out of work here in America. To add insult to injury Congress didn't tax their overseas profits and America's infrastructure is crumbling along with nationalism and pride. In the middle 80's they robbed the S&L's and sent the money to Swiss bank accounts. Now they want us to join a North American Union and forget what we as non-Americans came here to establish. No it's not the kids to blame for this mess - it's time we took back America and act like Americans and start fighting these crooks by any means necessary. The Constitution gives us the right to employ violent means against enemies of the republic and those who wish to do away with America...it's time we sent them a message otherwise well be on the run looking for something to eat.

by Jcaylor (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4 comments) on Sunday, Sep 9, 2007 at 12:46:21 AM

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Tom, You are so right, that it hurts to the bone. We have all sat by, watched and imbibed the good life, reaped the full-unalloyed benefits of an illicit society. It was good so long as it lasted and so long as the targets were "the Other America." Now, much too late, you too are discovering (and must begrudgingly admit) that those chickens finally HAD to come home to roost. The illicit "white only" society has had a deep moral price to pay, and now it is time to pay it back in full: It legitimized a criminal society and normalized as "the American way" a half millennium of cruelty and brutality called slavery, genocide, white racism, white supremacy, white superiority and American Apartheid, both legal and now voluntary. But all this half millennium of illicitness really did was to put in place, from behind a screen of white supremacy and false "white only" consciousness, the structure of a Fascist political system, which in the end respects no human values or artificially color-coded barriers. American styled Apartheid, was nothing if not a training ground for demagogues, crooked politicians, hate mongers and professional Fascists. It allowed them to determine how best to take over the country under the guise and cover of the latest, mostly race-based fears. Now that the religious-right, the militarists, the corporate vampires, and the demagogues have all joined forces, the interlocking net has closed and been drawn full circle to choke out all remaining democracy – no longer just non-white (or to use your euphemism, non-American) versions of democracy. The script they used and honed to a fine point in order to disempower, maim and cripple the last several generations of non-Whites (the original and the real non-Americans) has now being turned back on its owners and primary beneficiaries of the illicit period: lily white Americans themselves. The only remaining safe haven is to find a rationalization that will allow one to join the Fascist forces, or wait and be crushed sooner rather than later. If no one but me has noticed, there are no countervailing anti-Fascist forces in America. The Liberals are just running towards Fascism a bit more slowly than the Conservatives are. Jim, when the ocean was smooth, you too were enjoying the champagne on the Titanic. How do I know? I was the Black waiter in the white jacket serving it to you! It could be considered cynical to first eat the poison fruit, and then cry foul only after you get a tummy ache. Katrina was only a prelude. Just wait, there is more coming down the pipe, much more. It is not an accident that the house idiot, G.W. Bush was elected twice in this century. America is still a racist "white only" country in denial, pretending to be a multicultural one. Just as no white people voted for Nixon after Watergate, and just as there are no "admitted racists" in the U.S., white people are taking no responsibility for the current mess? This state of mind and the election of the house idiot are not flukes, and does not suggest that there is a terribly enlightened "other white America" out there somewhere. All whites, including those voting for Osama Obama are also drinking the Kool-Aid. Jim, this is your watch too. Today, you wake up as if "Fascist America" is a new discovery; as if somehow the system has changed. It has not changed, just evolved – perhaps even metastasized – into the only form that it could possibly take: Corruption, is corruption, is corruption whether it has a "lily white cover" over it or not. There is nothing disconnected about America's criminal history. The paradigm is one continuous stream of racist slime, which has finally "gone critical" and come home to roost. There are no more screens behind which to hide. The only reason you guys did not see the iceberg was because it was white. Had it been black, the Titanic would have never sunk. Get in line, behind me. We are now all "N-words."

by Herbert Calhoun (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 54 comments [4 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 9, 2007 at 12:09:31 PM

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Marina - I have no particular issue with what you said. All pretty correct. I am pleased I have provoked some thoughts.

jcaylor - Interesting what you said. For decades after the war, US Big Business had only marginal influence on politicians. That changed during the 80's when Congress bought into the Big Business agenda (globalization, 'free trade', and a thousand other special treatments) lock, stock and barrel. For a time the general public went along because new good jobs were created by businesses due to true innovations and smart investments. That stopped in the mid-90's as the power of creative destruction capitalism (CDC) swinged the other way and started to destroy more than it creates. This, in my view, is the bigger force that sweep all of society along. Study history and one learns that utopian ideologies and absolute power always fail because there's no check and balance. CDC has been running without the proper checks and balance and it started to destroy. What caused the out-of-balance? Big Business always getting their ways from the politicians. What caused that - isn't the political system designed to separate powers? Yes, separate powers from each other, but not from a major interest group! Why and how? Politicans want money because money elects politicans. One can figure out the rest ...

by TomK (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 330 comments [22 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Sep 10, 2007 at 11:49:54 PM

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