Looking into the future: If America fails.

[lildreamer316]

So many times it seems overwhelming; the odds that this wonderful idea called America faces. And to be truthful,I am not so sure we are going to see it succeed in this time period. This idea has been struggling to see the light since Crete and the myths/possible reality of Rome and King Arthur. I admit, it is hard for me to accept that I may not see the beautiful result of true democracy and a free society in my lifetime. I must be a young soul to be so impatient and to believe so strongly that it could be made so in such a short time.
I propose not that we stop fighting for that vision, never that,but that we look past the doomsday predictions and the naysayers and realize that it may not be in this lifetime that it reaches any kind of fruition. Reality is that it takes hundreds of years, maybe thousands, for true ideals to prove themselves worthy of humans' reliance on them. I get discouraged a lot, but I am trying to remember that because of my work and belief in this life, maybe in the next one I will get to see the fruits of it. It sucks; to put it plainly, that we may not get where we are going this time around. But it is reality. The mountain of work before us is daunting to say the least. If America fails,it will not really have failed, because our efforts over the last 200 years will never be forgotten. We have surpassed Rome and almost touched the heights our greatest thinkers have imagined. We WILL get there. Just maybe not in this flesh vehicle. Humbling but true. It is so frustrating to us to see the pinnacle so close...yet so far away. If we could just change this one thing..and then this...and this...ahhh.Slippery there, isn't it?
I write this because in the midst of all the bad things that have happened in the last 5 years and the sudden movement foreword of the last few months,there is still something to be said for patience, the very very long kind. Frustration is high. Remember, we change and grow or we die. It IS inevitable. That just may be an inevitable we have to see with another generation's eyes. Don't worry; you'll be there. I promise. And just maybe, you'll remember your part in it before. I strongly believe this. Hope that I do not offend with the belief.........

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. reaching for the casandra hat

I am actually convined by now taht the expereiment will fail this time around. Why? The brits have noticed what my brother in law and I have noticed...this country is no longer a country, but the only thing that unites us, maybe, is a piece of cloth.

There is no identification with the country or its ideals, and when those die, democracy dies... teh dream dies. I will even go farther, the country will balkanize... some regions will keep the dream alive, maybe, others will not.

Welcome in some ways to the new dark ages

[amitten]

2. Not quite.

We've been through worse times than this. We made it through then, and we'll make it through now. America is more than the sum of its parts.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. This is as bad as the years that preceded the civil war

and we almost did not make it

the cold war has been going on for almost ten years now, how long until the shooting starts?

Oh and welcome to DU.

(Blame that training as a historian ok)

[amitten]

4. Thanks for the welcome!

The key word in your post is 'almost'. We ALMOST didn't make it. But, we did. And we will. And your history lessons are always welcome!

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Yeah but I wonder if we can dodge taht bullet twice

what is amazing is, reaching for the gamer hat or sci fi reader, how many 1980s and early 1990s games and dystopic novels predicated the break up of the US... that is amazing to me today

By the way , you want one source of what is going on via british eyes? Get yourself a copy of Armagedon 2089 (yes role playing game) the fluff is just amazing... they don't predict the failure of the US... but they just worst cased everything else and they may be too gentle.

[teamster633]

13. Speaking of games and gamers...

...this one looks interesting:


http://www.2kgames.com/shatteredunion/

[amandabeech]

7. What cold war are you referring to?

The cold war against the USSR began to end in '89 when the Berlin Wall came down. In '92(?), Yeltsin took over and some sort of elections took place. We trade with China. Altough frictions remain with both Russia and China, the situation is very, very different.

The internal war that we are facing seems to stem from the changes of the 1960s: Equal rights for minorities and women, baby boomer rebellion (sex, drugs and rock'n'roll), legalized abortion and contraception, our loss in Vietnam, and the decline of U.S. manufacturing in the fact of increased world competition. Add to that '80s greed, and voila, today's mess.

But you're right, no guns and no riots yet.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. every civil war is preceded by anywhere from five to ten years

of incresingly divisive langauge, ours started in 1996... with the Clinton nightmare.

The Right has done all it can to wedge, separate and create enemies... to the point that I cannot talk to a pug and many pugs cannot talk to a dem... not unlike what happened in Boston before the civil war between the abolitionists and the other side... families are now being divided among party lines, like they were in pre civil war US (or any other country).

Now teh source for that war, you are right, the Right Wingers want to return the country to the Gilded Age at the very least, at times I wonder if they just woudl be happier going back to the 16th century... and it is the 1960s that really PO them.

that is the cold war I am talking abuot, and I hope to god it never goes hot... will make my prediction here, when it does, it will be from the right.

[amandabeech]

24. Things actually were this divisive in the '60s to early '70s; maybe more.

Maybe you weren't around then, but I was. Even as a kid and young teen, it was easy to see just how polarized people were. The older boomers, who were the most effected, simply could not talk to their parents. There were constant demonstrations against the Vietnam War because the draft got many, many people and many, many people were trying to get out of it. The TV news was drenched in blood every night. I could go on and on.

Add to that the ending years of the Civil Rights marches and the Watts, Newark and Detroit riots.

People really were getting physically hurt, either in demonstrations or, in the case of Kent State, being shot at by the National Guard.

I agree that hostility between left and right is very strong right now, but I don't think that it will reach fever peak unless * institutes a draft.

As an aside, perhaps you could call this the "cold civil war." That way you won't confuse this period with the international "cold war" of the 1945-1990-ish.

[MildyRules]

16. The Cold War ended

remember? We "won." America will survive, we've been through worse.

[annabanana]

14. The dark portents are no excuse to stop kicking..

amitten, I think you're right.
Welcome to DU:toast:

[Tesha]

18. It's time. Let's split up.

New England would make a perfectly fine small country.
We're chock-a-block with smart people and hard workers.
And if we *KEPT AT HOME* the tax revenues we now send to
the South, we'd have the opportunity to improve a lot of
infrastructure that's been languishing for the last fifty
years or so.

Alternatively, we could join the Canadian confederation.

Meanwhile, the West could make most of the same arguments.
And they have the serious advantage that they could probably
even feed themselves (which is a real problem for New England).

It's time.

Blow the country up.

Let the South become an overt religious theocracy (instead of
simply fomenting a covert theocracy as they now do).

Let the Northeast and the West become what they have the potential
to achieve.

Tesha

[lectrobyte]

22. I'm with you. This big ol' superpower business seems so last

century.

[noahmijo]

6. I think it's safe to say that England went through worse than

us.

Look em today, they learned from their lessons, yea yea you could cite Iraq but thats more of America's failure than England's.

Alot of people compare America to Rome, but I don't think we've yet to reach that sort of imperial stature.

3/4 of the world have yet to live and die under the rule of George W Ceaser.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. not for lack of trying by the way

HAIL Caesar!

:-)

[noahmijo]

10. ::Micheal Brown stabs W:::

Bush: "Et Tu Brownie? Et tu?"



Sorry couldn't resist :)

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. RLOL

so what role does our Chenney have?

By the way this was FUNNY...

[noahmijo]

12. I dunno maybe Cassius??

Thing is though at least from what I remember of the story Cassius conjured the idea of killing Julius Caeser in order to PREVENT him from becoming a tyrant. But he did it because he himself wanted power or something around those lines.

Forgive me for my knowledge of actual Roman History and mythology is limited at best. All I know is that the Romans TOTALLY ripped off the Final Fantasy games with those outfits (sic)

Well with that I'm off to bed, thanks for the fun lates!

[Mikimouse]

15. While it is reasonable to argue that the Brits...

'learned their lesson', it was a long process fraught with strife. So, could we make a case for * being our 21st century equivalent of Charles I? Then, who would be our Cromwell? Our Hobbes? I believe that there is a reasonable comparison there, but would be interested in other input.

[sweetheart]

17. Failure is not an option

Liberal democracy must prevail or we erase the substantial good things
that have happened in the last 500 years like medicine, science, the
rule of law, individual property rights and so much... towards a new
dark age of people livving in bible communes with guns and waving the
bible over wounds for god to heal the sick.

But pessimism is not needed, as there are much more successful systems of
democracy all over the world, newer and more progressive having borrowed
from the good ideas in the US, most of the world now sees it as a salad
bar; that human rights has come from a different elenor rosevelt's
america to be enshrined in all european law. And america is left with
the paltry bill of rights, a shadow of what modern human rights have
become on the world stage.

So as much as the bush cabal can blunder about using torture and their
criminal ways, constitutional liberal democracy has absorbed the knowledge and will live on.

The constitution failed to consider 2 innovations that have since happened
that have corrupted the entire experiment. money and the federal reserve
system, and electronic mass media. The failure to separate the
corrupting power of the former is a tyrrany of the rich, a plutocracy
displacing democracy. The failure to recognize and manage public
airwaves as a civil common with plural and independent media is a
much more divisive failure... And perhaps the new lessons that
will work their way back in to the knowledge body of humankind from
the american experiment are how to regulate these artificail media
of commerce that they don't corrupt... and the framers of today
will write their constitutions including the lessons of america
no matter what the demise of the USSR-II, an evil empire that really
is better for the world if it collapses.

[lectrobyte]

21. Do you really think those things (medicine, science, the rule of law)

would be lost if America went through a USSR-style reorg? I'm kind of in favor of dividing it up along religious lines, since we already have a good start on it anyway.

[sweetheart]

23. how to divide it up

I think those things are at risk worldwide, yes,
and for the american underclasses, yes.

What is worrysome is the level of economic hardship will come down
on the regions as the boat sinks. A breakup of the military budget
would cut so many leeches off the pork... but the economic system is
what is unsustainable, the car-centric culture, the heavy-footprint
living. Products and services innovated in such a climate are not
exportable abroad, because the wordl cannot live at the same footprint
for it will be destroyed... and being rolled back to economic humility
could be rather a shock. It might involve a shock, a war in asia that
goes nuclear taking out a few west coast cities with nukes when china
asserts itsself across the taiwan straight.

And were a nuclear strike to take out just a few cities, the USA would
never ever be the same again. The horror of war, brought on the tide
of bush and the criminals, would enculture a very different world and
quality of life. And yes, i can easily see in the new plutocracy and
even poorer underclass of immigrants who are uneducated, and ushered
in to the military so they can be killed and not a burden to society.

[BeFree]

19. America is not a failure, nor will it fail

What will fail is the economy. The economy is based on cheap and abundant oil. Nearly every physical action we take is based upon that resource.

Now, when the oil is gone, America will be severely tested. But in the long run, (even unto our next manifestation) America will be the shining beacon on the hill for those who demand individual liberty, and a modicum of justice. That America, as long as there are Americans alive enough to continue those demands, will never die.

Life without the cheap oil: After the severe test, those most able to live without the cushion oil brought will be those with wisdom, ingenuity and freedom of thought. Around the world those survivors, with the idea of America still firmly planted in their hearts, minds, and souls, will reform a newer, even better democracy.

[lectrobyte]

20. Assuming of course, we don't decide to nuke the entire world

fighting over the last bit of the oil.