Are the USA commiting suicide ?

[tocqueville]

"But the incompetence revealed by the response to the hurricane is deep-rooted, and can be traced to the twenty-five-year project, begun in the Reagan era, of discrediting government, "starving the beast" of resources and exalting private markets and faith-based charities. Tax cuts for the wealthy and Congressional corruption have drained government of the imagination and resources to address human needs. Katrina has brutally exposed Americans to the costs of this folly."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050926/editors

This is the same conclusion that Emmanuel Todd
(http://www.buzzflash.com/hartmann/05/04/har05004.html)
presents in "Le Figaro" today - sorry French only -
(http://www.lefigaro.fr/debats/20050912.FIG0354.html)

when discussing the aftermath of Katrina :

He says that in the former Soviet Union, the state was all, the individual nothing. In the US of today it's exactly the contrary. Both ideologies will result in both empires collapse.

From a nation of scientists and engineers that won a war on two fronts against mighty eenemies, reconstructed Europe and provided about half of the world necessities, it has turned into a virtual economy (he calls it a video-game) where artificial consumtion is based on loans abroad and plundering of foreign ressources. The engineer has turned into a predator.

To the difference from the Europeans, Americans cannot deal with scarce ressources and make the best out of them. They steal or waste instead.

He ends by calling it the "scorpion syndrome" : when surrounded by a ring of fire, the scorpion injects itselfs its own venom.

IMHO, unless a MAJOR attitude change occurs, the American civilization is doomed to disappear, it wouldn't be the first time in history that civilisations commit suicide (Aztecs, Athens, Easter Island etc..) based on a completely erroneous ideology.

What is interesting is to refer too to the libertarian "no state" ideology. I wonder if the mask of "liberty" is indeed hiding a very, very reactionary attitude.

OK I have my flamesuit on...

[jeff30997]

1. IMHO,the scorpion injects itself with oil these days.

[dbt]

It's more like we are being "drowned in the bathtub."

But we do not care, for we have our bread and circuses.

Remember New Orleans.

[Henny Penny]

15. Its more like you are the lobsters swimming in a large pot ...

that is slowly warming....

Some people are thinking..."Hey that's strange... " but most are just feeling sleepy... so very sleepy.....

[annabanana]

2. I think you're right, but..

Please don't think of those neo-cons as Americans. They took power on a technicality, and kept it by massive voter fraud with the help of a complicit +/or lazy media.

If we can insure that our votes are being counted properly, they will be gone.

[sam sarrha]

3. What ,...The people are Nothing HERE, they send our jobs away, they let us

drown in floods, they are planning to depopulate us with Bird flu to a manageable population... managing as in slavery.

there are NO facilities doing adequate research on a vaccine.. not vaccine factories here.. and when it hits the foreign factories are NOT going to send it away to us.. a World Pariah..! with Jonah as president.

they have sent 24 million jobs to Mexico alone.. they care not if our children starve..

the Fascists have overthrown this country and the consequences are just starting

[bryant69]

4. Poor guy

What is controversial around Democratic Underground about posting "The United States is fucked." People do it all the time. So why do you need a flame suit? Are you fragile?

At any rate I'd say the United States has a lot of problems, but I wouldn't rule out a comeback either. It will change, but it would have changed anyway (everything changes). But there are still plenty of people who aren't into the extreme individualism and who see an appropriate role for Government to play.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[tocqueville]

8. I am not fragile and I think that the US can make a comeback

The flamesuit was for my "attack" on the libertarian ideology

The attitudes go deep into the US society for historical reasons, both to the left and the right.

If a US president campaigned for :

more taxes (to build a welfare state of let say Canadian-European model)
Regulate corporations
Strengthen unions
initiate an energy policy of oil independence...
nationalize or at least take 50% of the shares in energy production
build collective transportation
gun ban

would he be elected ?

becaus ethis wouldn't go against NEOCONS or REPUBLICANS only...

[bryant69]

12. Are you under the impression that this is a libertarian website

He wouldn't be elected - and for the record, I don't agree with the entirity of that list myself. Some of them would play ok - like corporate regulation and energy independence - but creating a europeon style welfare system would not, and neither would a national gun ban (neither of which I would support, incidently, along with nationalizing the energy business). I don't know what you mean by collective transportation - I assume you mean public transportation, and if that's what you mean, public transportation is a much better word.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[tocqueville]

17. no I am not (libertarian)

but I noticed that this tendence is represented here, at least it's left wing if not in majority. It has to do with the discussion individual/state. Ideas can span over formal political affiliation.

With collective, I mean public. Which doesn't mean that transportation cannot be owned by private interests but compensated by tax money to ensure for example that commuters in remote areas can be reachable beyond rentability. It's a question of regulation and solidarity.

Your reaction to the welfare/gun question shows that it's a question of attitudes that span over the whole society.

And I don't mean that the European solutions are always the best. Maybe the ideas are okay, but we can "sin" regarding the practical application with undesirable effects.

The ideal is to achieve a fair balance between common and individual interests and rights. The question is if the US invidualism has gone so far that the slightest attempts to reverse the course are considered as "communism".

Remember that most of the European right-wing parties would be considered as "left-wing liberals" in the US.

[bryant69]

18. I do know that

And has it occured to you that maybe i've thought about Gun Control, listened to both sides, and decided on my own that outlawing firearms is a bad idea? Or to put it more accurately, those of you who want to ban firearms haven't made a compelling enough case.

Bryant

[donsu]

27. while we have rigged voting only the bushgang will win

voting is pointless

[oc2002]

5. your all wrong, this country is slowly being converted to a FACIST CORP ST

the media is controled by a few.

the status quo is protected by both parties.

new parties are marginalized and discredited. The DNC is just republican light.

corporations control the government and BOTH parties.

THE SITUATION IS FAR WORSE THAN YOU REALIZE!

[bryant69]

7. Thank God you are here to point us to the light

Now, Oc2002 - what do we do that we might smite these enemies of the people?

[oc2002]

10. ..reform the DNC for starters.

until the majority of America feels the country is heading down the facsist rabit whole of a 3rd world nation, not much can be done.

At least the DNC, after losing the last 2 elections was the most incompetant performance I have ever seen, should see massive resignations and head chopping at that organization.

thats a start.

[bryant69]

13. Youe mean we should fire Dean?

That's to bad, I've kind of liked his performance so far.

[oc2002]

14. Dean is just a part of the problem, no, I think there needs to be a

major restructuring of the DNC, but that will not happen. The DNC is just as much a corporate whore as the RNC, just not as blatent about it.

Both parties are rotten through and through.

Like I said, the situation is very very bad.

[whatever4]

6. Personally...

I'd recommend keeping pills around. I don't want to be tortured in prison. I'll die first, thank you. In this nation, there is very little to be hopeful for. My children, would I EVER have had children had I thought this was the world they would inherit? It leaves me empty and numb. There is nothing I can do. Save move to another nation, and hope for the best, but it's so hard to give up being American. It's even harder to watch Americans that look and sound just like me...being the worst murders and planet killers ever imagined. OUR people, ruining not just our nation, but the world as we know it.

's just not much left. They will enjoy our suffering. Like throwing Christians to loins. These people are no different. I'll be damned if I'll ever be their entertainment. I'm sure the worry and flurry of our despair is entertaining itself.

Yuk it up, monsters. Have a m'f'in party about it, hire some strippers, knock yourselves out, trashing everything the rest of us hold dear, like mean little boys throwing rocks. Destruction is FUN! Yeah, I'll be the scorpion. And trust me, for everyone that checks out, that's just one less person they have to worry about. Pushing us over the edge is part of the agenda. How can it not be? It's win at all costs...and WE ordinary Americans, WE are the enemy of this state.

Our despair is their triumph. When we hold up, Katrina is allowed to happen. WE are meant to depair. It helps them, even if we can hardly help but play along.

[deutsey]

9. Oh mama they got us livin’ suicide

Oh My God by Michael Franti and Spearhead

http://www.spearheadvibrations.com/index.html

Oh my, oh my God

Oh mama they got us livin’ suicide

Singin’ oh my, oh my God

Oh mama they got us livin’ genocide

Oh my, Oh my God



Slam bam I come unseen

But like gasoline you can tell I’m in the tank

Like money in the bank

I smell appealing, but I’m toxic, can send you reeling

Without an inklin’, keep ya thinkin’

‘Cause you gave cash to the feds, left your school district for dead

Fuck you up in the head, but still they sayin’ nothin’s wrong

Selling fire-water but outlawin’ the bong

Still believing the system is workin’

While half of my people are still out of workin’

Anonymous notes left in the pockets and coats

Of judges and juries from ‘Frisco and Jersey

Threats and protests politicians mob debts

Trumped up charges and phony arrests

Stage a lethal injection, the night before the election

‘Cause he got donations from the prison guard’s union



(chorus)



Listen in to my stethoscope on a rope

Internal lullabies, human cries

Thumps and silence, the language of violence

Algorithmic, cataclysmic, seismic, biorhythmic

You can make a life longer, but you can’t save it

You can make a clone and then you try to enslave it?

Stealin’ DNA samples from the unborn

And then you comin’ after us

‘Cause we sampled a James Brown horn?

Scientists whose God is progress

A four-headed sheep is their latest project

The CIA runnin’ like that Jones from Indiana

But they still won’t talk about that Jones in Guyana

This ain’t no cartoon, no one slips on bananas

Do you really think that that car killed Diana?

Hell, I shot Ronald Regan, I shot JFK

I slept with Marilyn she sung me “Happy Birthday”



(chorus)



Well politicians got lipstick on the collar

The whole media started to holler

But I don’t give a fuck who they screwin’ in private

I wanna know who they screwin’ in public

Robbin’, cheatin’, stealin’

White collar criminal

McDonald eatin’, you deserve a beatin’

Send you home a weepin’, with a fat bill for your Caribbean weekend

For just about anything they can bust us

False advertising sayin’ “Halls of Justice”

You tellin’ the youth don’t be so violent

Then you drop bombs on every single continent

Mandatory minimum sentencin’

‘Cause he got caught with a pocket full of medicine

Do that again another ten up in the pen

I feel so mad I wanna bomb an institution

singin’



(chorus)

[Justin54B20L]

11. As Abraham Lincoln once said....

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth in their military chests; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in the trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

[PATRICK]

16. The majority are not scorpions obviously

The main problem is that majority is relaxed in prosperous indifference, upset by the truth, by the doom, by the shameful catastrophes that alone are allowed to be "progressive" but hamstrung in action and response, voiceless behind an electronic curtain, busy earning useless fortunes to pay exponentially rising debts of slavery.

In the Roman Empire civilized barbarians quickly became docile and dependent and the myth of the dominant state sealed its own doom. There never was a republic representing interests only a pyramid game of increasingly aristocratic contest. OUR evolution and devolution is sadder and more shameful than ny precedent in history. Empire is anathema to the American soul. The American soul was the first thing corrupted and put to the sword. The thugs and aristo wannabes are obsolete buffoons with too much greed, too much entitlement. They gain success far beyond their merit, even their evil merits.

The melt down of America as swift as it is is in direct proportion to the democratic and populist challenge it too softly hurled against the world. Too parochial in its innocent assumptions. Now it is marched to engage the world with old fashioned robber baron hypocrisy, with fraud fraud fraud all at the top.

And in all this insanity lies coiled the economy, the health and the weaponry of total annihilation. Rome seems small potatoes on the most scales. When reactions came to the Cromwells, the Neros, the Bonapartes, a lesser evil came sourly to replace it and failed. Eventually a stable democracy ensued.

But with our gifts, challenges and position in history we have little luxury for a modest conservative second act. Yet that is what is being planned for. Nor will this model succeed in that the Bush dynasty will
come back as well after some "centrist" style sanity. We will not be allowed to evade the truth or our doom, not allowed to evolve back to competent order with diminished and disillusioned vision, not allowed to prosper and stagger on for centuries like Rome or into mild democracy like England and France.

The people must conquer their own nation and enable their own vision or there never was much of a nation to die for in the first place.

[emulatorloo]

19. As you are wearing your flamesuit: Grammar Flame - "Is" the USA committing

Verb Subject Agreement.

United States = singular noun/subject -- there is one United States.
so you need a singular verb -- is.

[tocqueville]

20. Excuse my poor grammar...

I thought States were (was ?) in plural as in all other major languages

[emulatorloo]

22. States is Plural -- but United States is singular -- the many states are

United into one entity. . .

Thanks for posting the Nation article --

(PS I don't usually do grammar or spelling flames -- because I am sooooooooooo bad at it myself and I know it is mostly irrelevant -- but your pretty silver flamesuit tempted me.)

:toast:

[Kralizec]

23. technically you're right...

but often times when people use the acronym "USA" they refer to it as a single entity. but you're right because technically you're saying "are the united states of america committing suicide?"

peace

edit-spelling

[emulatorloo]

24. "United" means the many states are bound together as one entity.

and so that's how that works out that "United States" is singular. One country. Made up of many states.

Sorry to be on a grammar kick it is not like me.

[Kralizec]

21. I agree with you and I like the way you wrote it...

just remember, the scorpion is not just the usa, it's the world. We're just the part of it that will feel the sting first.

[tocqueville]

25. it's not my choice of words

he could have chosen lemmings, but actually they don't commit suicide...

[donsu]

26. not suicide - it's murder - they are killing america on purpose

they can make more profits by murdering america and then putting it back together the way they want it. no regulations, no social services.

we are being murdered.