Is American decline real?
More and more thinkers are warning that our glory days are over, but their arguments are flawed — and old
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/is_american_decline_real/
A lot of interesting stuff on Salon today…
So this is an argument against the looming apocalypse. I wish I could get excited about it, even for a few minutes, but to me this paragraph is most telling:
Beyond material strengths, the society itself benefits from a durable political system, rule of law, vigorous free press and information media, and a competitive and adaptable economy, as well as strong traditions of entrepreneurship and innovation, leadership and critical mass in new technology, and a history of resilience and flexibility in overcoming adversity.
“Durable political system”? I see that as a side effect of the design of our government. I doubt that our founding fathers intended to produce a revolution-free government (indeed, based on my reading, they specifically intended for there to be regular revolution), but I believe (and feel sure I mentioned here before, but can’t find the relevant post) they accidentally created one. Because, nominally, our government is elected by the people, anyone who is serious about changing our government has but to run for office and effect change. The reality, though, is that in order to effect change to the current system one must first become part of that current system and it takes a huge act of will to now turn against the very system that supported your rise in the first place. For those few who didn’t ‘sell their souls to the devil’ in order to get elected, through the simple expedient of rejecting any efforts to effect change, the status quo members can easily get the ‘change effector’ thrown out of office by the very people who elected him in the first place. So, to me, the very ‘durability’ of our political system is part of its problem, not something to brag about.
“Rule of law”? I believe I have made my case for the oligarchy-controlled police state quite clear (I believe I have a post on that topic earlier today). Law in the US today is in name only and exclusively applies to the 99%.
“Vigorous free press” must be a joke on the part of the author. While the two adjectives, taken in isolation, do in fact apply (it is very vigorous in reporting inane chatter like Kim Kardashian and it is ‘free’ in the sense that the government doesn’t actually own it), the intent for a ‘vigorous free press’, I am quite sure, was to have something adversarial to our government, not what we have today which could most generously be described as a loyal lap dog. The ‘information media’ tacked on at the end must be regarding the Internet, but anyone who bothers to read the news (which automatically means a very few percent of our sheeple-like population) knows the government is intent on eliminating any freedom on the ‘net.
The rest about competitive and adaptable economy of entrepreneurs, based on my analysis (and personal experience) that is a bunch of BS. Succeeding in business is more of a lottery today than any time I can think of prior to the crash early last century. When I ‘grew up’ it was expected that 80% of businesses would fail in the first 5 years. While that is a huge rate, much of that failure was due to ignorance on the part of the entrepreneur (it amazes me so often that while no one thinks anyone can be a brain surgeon, everyone seems to think that anyone can successfully start and run a business). Today venture capitalists are generally happy if they can have one out of ten companies make money and supposedly these people are highly educated, well funded, well connected and experienced. Where is there room for ordinary people any more?
Then again, I was reading this book on the history of atomic weapons (“US NUCLEAR WEAPONS The Secret History” BY CHUCK HANSEN (it is available for download if you search for it)) and found this in the introduction:
Since the end of WWII, a vast empire has arisen largely unnoticed in the United States. Conceived in secrecy during the war, its scope and products have remained beyond the public consciousness, except when its exploits or blunders have brought it widespread national or international attention.
This secret empire has cost taxpayers dearly: $89 billion in development costs since 1940, and $700 billion for delivery systems for its products [I wonder what that would be in inflation-adjusted dollars today]. The sheer volume and number of these products is mind-boggling: between 1945 and 1986, the nuclear weapons production complex in the U.S. manufactured approximately 60,000 warheads of 71 types for 116 different weapons systems. Of these warheads, 29 types remain in the current inventory. Since 1945, the U.S. Army has deployed 21 types of nuclear warheads; the U.S. Navy/Marine Corps, 34; and the U.S. Air Force, 43. Another 29 “candidate” warhead types were canceled before reaching production, and an unknown number of other warhead designs have never progressed beyond paper studies. By mid-1987, the U.S. had detonated more than 850 nuclear devices and weapons on the surface of the earth, underground, underwater, in the atmosphere, and in space during tests in, over, and under the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and in several states in the continental U.S.2
The U.S. government has always gone to extreme lengths to keep this orgy of nuclear self-indulgence hidden from public view. Even though the weapons labs, research centers, and production complexes and their artifacts are well-known to the Soviet government, they remain a mystery to most of the citizens of the United States.3 Literally tens of millions of documents chronicling this vast “black project” remain locked in vaults, well-protected behind a formidable wall of secrecy, and hidden in perpetuity by one of the largest permanent classification establishments in the entire U.S. government.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s willingness to go to extreme lengths to protect this status quo was illustrated quite dramatically a few years ago when an obscure political magazine in Madison, Wisconsin attempted to publish an article about the American nuclear weapons complex. The article described the products of the secret empire by means of an illustrated account of the operation and design of a hypothetical thermonuclear weapon. The U.S. Department of Energy, specifically, James R. Schlesinger, its director at the time, requested the Department of Justice to seek an injunction to prevent republication of a collection of information that had been in the public domain for many years (much of this data had been released by DOE and its predecessor agencies).4 A compliant judge was found, and a preliminary injunction against publication was issued quickly. The battle to overturn this injunction lasted for six months in 1979 (the longest prior restraint on publication in the history of the country) until the government, faced with the strong possibility of a precedent-setting unfavorable court ruling, dropped the case in the fall. I was a key participant in the case: a letter I wrote to a U.S. senator, analyzing the government’s misbehavior and probable motives for bringing suit against publication, finally forced an end to the original injunction in Wisconsin and a second injunction against a student newspaper in California. Since 1979, the government has maintained an embarrassed silence about the case.
One of the purposes of this book is to shed more light on the history and products of the secret empire, and to provide at least a partial history and description of some aspects of U.S. nuclear weapons development and testing programs since the end of WWII. As has been the case with all of this writer’s previous articles on this subject, all of the information in this book is republished or derived from unclassified documents (including some very informative government reports newly declassified specifically for this monograph). Extensive footnotes in each chapter cite specific sources for many of the points discussed (footnotes are gathered together at the end of each chapter). All conclusions and opinions are those of the author (except where noted) and have not been reviewed, edited, verified, or approved by any agency of the United States government.
Chuck Hansen
July 1987
Note the year. Deja vu all over again, eh? Of course in my estimation things have steadily got worse since then, but clearly people have been predicting doom and gloom for a long time and (for the most part, for most of us (don’t want to be an outspoken Muslim at this point in US history!)) things are still going OK. However, just as Rome wasn’t built in a day (who in the hell thinks Rome could have been built overnight anyway?), it didn’t fall in a day either. It took a long time and while the decline was reversible for a substantial chunk of that time, there reached a point where it became irreversible. It is my opinion that we have passed that point of reversibility. Perhaps it will still be longer than my lifetime before things get really ugly (when the barbarians be at the gate) and perhaps there is still enough of a window I can squeeze through to climb up to the 1% of the 1%. But, just as I am sure was the case when Rome collapsed, once you start down the slide into the dust bin of history, momentum reaches a point where no amount of effort will reverse (or even slow) the decline. One can hope that the US doesn’t destroy the whole world when it goes into the dumps.
Then again, maybe I am the one full of shit and the author cited at the top is the one with the right vision. I am _happy_ for that to be the case!