Pay too much attention to the American Media Propaganda machine and it will have you believing that the world is ending before your very eyes. It is a bit difficult to keep a sense of balance and joy in a world that is ending before your very eyes. Fortunately though, if you think about it, how right can they be? After all they manage to get just about everything else wrong in varying degrees of inaccuracy. One of the biggest and most profitable news organizations regularly suggests that President Obama is a) Muslim, b) a Muslim Terrorist and, c) not an American citizen at all. These are demonstrably false in every detail, but the news readers keep right on talking and Fox keeps right on making massive sums of money. Which means that a huge number of Americans keep going back to be lied to again and again. How did George Bush the II put it, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me, you can't get fooled again." Sounds like a Fox News watcher to me.
Maybe the idea that large numbers of people actually go to the American Media Propaganda machine to hear something they think in true is enough to make one think the world is coming to an end. Or maybe the idea that nearly half of American adults think that a god created people just as they are now, less than 10,000 years ago, is enough to conclude the world is coming to and end. A reported one quarter of American adults get their moral leadership from the Pope and the Catholic church. (That one stuns me. That's like getting moral leadership from the Mafia.) A large number of people here in Missouri are going to vote for Todd Akin. A guy named Paul Broun, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, doesn't actually believe in science and is a young earth creationist. In fact he claims that knowledge that contradicts his YEC views are a conspiracy invented by the Devil himself. Worse? The people of the 10th Congressional District of Georgia have been electing this person to power in a free democratic elections since 2007!
Which, since some of this crosses the boarder into pure insanity, could well mean the end of the United States of America is in sight. But that will not be the end of the world. In fact, seeing as the US of A is the world's largest weapons producer and seller, and threatens the rest of the planet with an army twice the size of all other armies, combined, the end of the USA in its current iteration may mean the beginning of the start of a new direction for the rest of the world. For the sad fact seems to be, as long as a war loving United States dominates world politics, there is little chance for peace.
When I see people throughout the world protesting against the United States I don't see people who hate democracy and freedom. I don't see people who despise the "infidels" or who want to burn down modern civilization and replace it with some bronze age theocracy. What I see are people who are devastated by the wars being brought to their front door by an elitist and uncaring Super Power; who are trying to escape the tyrants supported by the West in general and the US in particular. I see people who are tired of being under the heel of our military boot. And yes, I see people who prefer their own backward religion to the backward religion of the West. But how does that make them any different than Todd Akin or Paul Broun, both of whom would make it law that every child in this country be taught the religious myths of Christian Creationism as fact, that every married person meet the bible's definition of a "family", and that all morality be dictated by their morality?
Maybe what we are seeing the the beginning of the end of the American History of War. I've said it before but it is worth repeating, America has been at war for more than 200 of its 235 year history. (Clearly the idea that the purpose of a strong military is to protect the peace, is pure bullshit.) It seems clear to me that the military has bankrupted both our finances and our sense of morality. I'm not sure how we fix the latter, but the former is going to fix itself. No country in the history of human kind has ever been able to support a military mighty enough to subdue the rest of the world. It isn't likely that the US will be the first.
This is particularly true since we hate paying taxes. The math seems kind of simple. It takes a certain percentage of any country's GDP to maintain a civilization. For first world societies that includes things like roads, schools, a power grid, inspectors of things like food and medicines, police, fire departments, disaster response teams, the countless interactions of government / industry / individual / bureaucracy that makes any people a "people". So all first world countries start out kind of even in the necessary tax rates to fund their country. Now add to that the world's biggest army by a factor of 2. Americans have to be paying the highest tax rates in the first world, right? We have a first world society plus the burden of having, by a wide margin, the world's largest military. But no. We are way down the list of tax rates. Magic, or so it would seem until one looks at the debt. The truth is we probably couldn't afford our military even if we were willing to pay for it.
But we are not willing to pay for it, pushing of the costs to following generations. We will not pay enough taxes to support it now, and it isn't likely most of us will accept eliminating every dime of spending and cutting every single government program, entity and office to nothing in order to pay for it in the future. Which, by the way, appears to be what it will take to keep our out sized army in bullets. It also appears to be a society that the T-Party / Republicans think of as "ideal". The fact that such a society can't possibly exist doesn't occur to them. Then again they are the party of fantasy, magic, and faith so that shouldn't be a surprise. It is also another indication that America as it currently expresses itself can not endure.
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