How will history judge this generation of Americans?

[JailBush]

I think we're going to rival the Nazis as the most reviled generation of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Obviously, we haven't unleashed the full horror of the Holocaust on the world. However, the corporations that run America are causing real harm to millions of people around the world. On the other hand, foreign corporations are up to their eyeballs in corruption, too.

But even if the new global arms race President Dumbass has started doesn't result in the deaths of tens of millions of people, I think Americans will be reviled simply because they're so pathetic. Compare them, once again, to the Nazis.

Germans suffered greatly in the wake of World War I. The humiliation and economic woes they were subjected to certainly doesn't justify what they did during Hitler's reign of terror, but it does help explain why they went nuts.

But Americans were wallowing in wealth and prestige when we allowed our dictator wannabe to take control. How can one explain how an entire generation would throw everything away, allowing George Bush, Inc. to squander our wealth, international prestige and even the environment all civilizations are founded on?

The Nazis may be judged the most evil, but I suspect Americans will win the Darwin Award, for taking the initiative in trashing the United States' superpower status, demoting it to one of the solar system's biggest jokes.

[Spider Jerusalem]

1. Not the Nazis.

Have to go a little further back than that, I think. More like Rome circa 4th-5th century CE. And I have a fairly strong gut feeling that after us comes another Dark Age...

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Well I think history will also note

that some of us have resisted

It will also record that we are in the midst of a silent revolution

I would like to bring your attention to 1800 and the Second
American Revolution

[Rowdyboy]

3. Our generation will be judged much like the Americans of

the 1920's and the 1950's. Easy money, an easy life, excellent environment and they produced nothing

[JailBush]

5. Just for the record, I do appreciate all who are fighting back.

However, we comprise a very tiny percentage of the population. How many don't vote - roughly 50%? Of those who do vote, most are stinking idiots. We don't have ONE honest elected official here in Seattle, and I don't think Washington, D.C.'s much different.

I recently read a story about a good Nazi. He was in Nanking, China, when the Japanese committed their unspeakable atrocities, and he helped the victims. Similarly, I think future texts will include stories about isolated individuals who gained some notoriety fighting the corporate hordes - Daniel Ellsberg, Paul Wellstone, etc.

But I think they'll be little more than exceptions that prove the rule.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Due to one of them exceptions

my father is alive today.

Also most of history is made by those who are willing to stand
up and be counted

Most people, regardless of when, are too busy with the minutiae of
life to notice.

Now it is the exceptiosn who are far more noticeable now than they
were in Nazi Germany... don't get me wrong there was some resistance
in Nazi germany, but at least to my trained eye as a historian
not as much until later in the regime.

Here after teh shock of 2000 people have slowly taken up arms (or the
pen to be specific)

Remember, our society is full of Spring time Patriots, it has always been full of them, but I do think we are slowly turning the tide.

Maybe I have a more optimistic view of this, see above, my father survived the holocaust with his immediate family, because of a Polish Family who hid them from the Nazis.

[NJCher]

4. a stain on the menu of life

At least, as JailBush has pointed out, the Germans were coming off the defeat of WWI. We have no such excuse. Americans are a nation of ignorant, materialistic fat asses with a sense of entitlement like the world has never seen.

To answer JB's question, however, I think the world will look back on us in the same way we look at *. Nothing but an asterisk in history. Had it all, moral corruption, end of story.

Had it all; lost it all.


Cher

[LibertyorDeath]

6. Harshly

[ElsewheresDaughter]

8. with contempt and weeping

[jpgray]

9. What makes you think an entertained populace cares about anything? (nt)

[jbutsz]

10. One observation

Compared to the economically prosperous years just prior to Bush, it seems as if Bush destroyed everything when he took over, that prior to him everything was in working order. Because there were no major wars (aside from NATO), everything seemed politically harmonious as well - so much that republicans were forced to impeach Clinton for that sin.

However, if you look at the entire 20th century, one can see how our government has been systematically weakened between periods of overt corruption over the entire century with the exception of a few Progressive years here and there. As the years passed and Corporations grew, we controlled our government less and less now, to the degree it is no longer Democratic in any meaningful way.

This weakening is what has allowed factional extremists like Bush's administration to seize power; until we reconstitute control over our government we'll be vulnerable to whichever faction puts up the best fight.

[0rganism]

11. We may well be at the ass-end of history

There is no longer time to digest the source materials, such as are made public. Our "news" blends current events with retrospective and editorial willy-nilly, fuck hermeneutics, and double-fuck dialectics. The Zeitgeist has become completely schizoid, and is about to engage in a serious bout of self-immolation. The signal-to-noise ratio of the late 20th century Americans decreased exponentially from the day JFK died.

How does history judge Europe's previous "Dark Ages"?

Minimally. Historical judgment passes over "the Dark Ages" like a gourmet chef faced with an order for a big mac with extra cockroaches: quickly, dutifully, and glad when it's the fuck over with.

We are the age of infomercial: it is increasingly difficult to distinguish serious reporting from advertisement. Everyone has a slant, a hidden agenda, a product or investment plan to sell. Future historians might as well seek answers in our landfills as our archives.

[tom_paine]

12. Well said, Organism, I do disagree with one thing, though

The "Dark Ages" may be glossed over historically-speaking, but the Fall of the Roman Republic and the Rise of the Caesers and the Empire is among the most studied.

Much as we who are educated in the ways of history can see the future, or at least the sweeping repetitious trend sof history, does not mean we are yet living in those times.

Our time, and this generation of Americans, who willingly became Imperial Subjects of Amerika as if the first 225 years of the Old Republic never happened, will for that reason have a spotligh cast upon it, just as the 1930s Germans had the spotilight cast on them, for a different yet similar reason.

And history will not look kindly on the Generation That Ushered In the Age of Totalitarianism (which is perhaps also the generation that presides over the "point of no return" for extinction of the human species).

Not kindly at all...

And remember, unless these trends are altered, we are living at the very beginning of the Bush Dynasty and Empire.

THESE are the Good Old Days, and may God help those who come after.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

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[JailBush]

14. Who said anything about SOCIALISM?

Where's "funcking Albania"? And what have you been drinking?

[tom_paine]

15. Don't feed the trolls

Can't you read that this propagandized automaton is repeating what his Bushevik Masters tells him? That, like most propgandized automatons, he MUST drag the conversation back to an area in which he can speak, which is to say an area which his Bushevik Masters have drilled him repetitvely with lies and half-truths?

Of course no one mentioned socialism. But this Freep had to drag the converstaion back to something he "knows", back to the Goebbels v2.0 talking points drummed into his head.

But I think it's terrific, and this troll has proved the point entirely.

And the "fucking Albania" comment is a weak imitation of his Bushevik Masters' mouthings. It is reminiscent of PJ O'Rourke or the guy who has made a living copying off of PJ, Jonah Goldberg.

Beware of propagandized Bushevik automatons. When his Masters tell him to behave EXACTLY like a Soviet or Nazi (spying on his neighbors, voting multiple times in "elections", etc.) he will do so without thought, question, or remorse.

[DivinBreuvage]

16. I think it's too early to tell...

And it's important not to let the sense of doom and despair, which I admit it's sometimes difficult to avoid, make you lose perspective. We've had two similar periods in our history and came through them both times, and we may do so again.

Françoise

[Vogon_Glory]

17. This Generation of Americans Will Be Judged Harshly

This generation of Americans will be judged harshly by future historians and by the future public on a number of counts.

This generation was the one that voted for George W. Bush and the Republican Party faction that led to massive cuts in education and job training at a time when those areas were becomming vital for an industrialized nation to successfully compete with its neighbors.

This generation was the one that defeated Soviet-style socialism, but bungled the chance to remake the old Soviet Union and the poorer countries of the former Warsaw Pact into peaceful, prosperous, productive members of the world community.

This generation was the one that allowed the income and property gap between the wealthiest five percentile and the poorest of the poor to swell to levels matching those of the 1920's--and did nothing.

This generation was the one that elected legislators and allowed the appointment of indifferent or negligent officials that allowed numerous ecosystems to slide towards collapse, fisheries to be fatally depleted, and numerous species with useful biotech applications to go extinct.

This generation was the one that elected a reactionary party and president that isolated the US from its old allies and its trading partners.

I could go on...