I hate the denial that goes on in this country and the idiotic mindset that the good will of all the countries around the world is somehow irrelevant. Fortunately I think that rhetoric has died down a bit over the past several years. What is still occurring sadly though is the dumbing down of America combined with the surge in evangelical Christianity. That dynamic has really created some scary ideology in the mainstream out there these days. I think the ever diminishing quality of main stream media and the poor quality of the educational system will ensure that American's by and large stay stupid.
Ok sort of switching gears but not really, just bare with me for a bit. I think that the power vacuum created with the fall of the communist block and the USSR really had some intellectual implications here in the US that not many people have acknowledged. I think it gave people ... even just the average Joe out there ... a sense of smug "we won" and to some extent that eroded the impact of the lessons we learned during the Vietnam experience. I think that what was already occurring in the mid 1980s was the beginning of the media revolution brought on by the widespread impacts of cable television, print media was beginning to undergo a transformation as well. From the mid to late 1970s many States in the US began to experience tremendous funding difficulties and this had widespread impact on education and social service. Through the 1980s these trends continued and by the early 1990s the media revolution was taking on a whole new scope with the early beginnings of the internet, with the global media networks like CNN and with over a decade of underfunding education and social services things were getting bad. Now in the late 1970s evangelical Christians began to unite in lobbying efforts and in efforts to effect policy change, to elect sympathetic politicians, etc. etc. All of these things were coalescing in the same decade ... by the 1990s the foundations of disaster were firmly in place. The election of George W. Bush all but sealed the fate of America ... and the rest is as we say history. Look at where we are today, not just because we elected a horrible president, but because we as a nation have been asleep for nearly 20 years. After Watergate the American people simply checked out and never really have seemed to check back in. My feelings about America's hopes of regaining its senses are not very high, I just don't see how we can turn the ship around. People are so fixated on themselves now, the consumerism of the 1950s and 60s ... well it never stopped it simply progressed. The attitudes of the average citizen now is one of utter complacence regarding the political process, even those who do care seem to be woefully ill equipped to understand what is actually going on.
Ok hopefully here is where I pick back up on the starting passage. Many of those people sadly turn to the demagogues on the right like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, the 700 Club, or authors like Glen Beck, Ayn Rand (who was an atheist by the way) etc. etc. These sources are the ones which lead people down the path of "who cares what the rest of the world thinks" and "to hell with em nuke em if they don't like it." These are the forces which white wash consumerism, and the degradation of American financial stability, these sources advocate wholesale capitulation to corporate interests. Obviously those sources are also bombarding people with evangelicalism whether overtly or indirectly. Of course there are forces on the far left that in ways are just as counter productive ... though I struggle to name one with the recognition and clout of those I just mentioned. So where are we headed as a nation? How can we plot any course different than that of the past 9 years? Again I hope somehow, some way ... we come to our senses collectively and stay the course with Obama and the Democrats and I hope somehow they manage to find a way to disengage us from this path.
