USA: There has got to be another way
...... or we are doomed to entropy for all our "superpower" claims
“ENTROPY: the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system”
"The direction of [US] history here and now, and for the foreseeable future, is neither toward liberalism nor toward any alternative, but rather away from order of any kind. Ours is an age of entropy."
I hope we all… or, at least, most of us…. realize our US of A is steadily doing her best to shoot herself, first, in the foot and, then, to the head, so as to complete her self-imposed demise. Ukraine proves by the day we’ve lost some of the most essential elements of logic that allow countries to control their destinies to the best degree possible.
I’m increasingly incredulous, for one, at America’s collective inability to realize how far down the road to disaster we’ve advanced—and what Herculean determination is required to reverse this trend.
I can only expect this critical situation to deteriorate farther, and faster, thanks to allowing “gender politics,” abortion, “diversity and inclusion,” and all the other “woke” mumbo jumbo elements of disarticulating society, to win and occupy the high governance and legislative ground.
A society that has failed to weave unifying principles into its daily existence has no real future. And post-WWII America has already emerged as the archetype of how to take a reasonably successful politico-economic system and wreck it in the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
The same American-bred virus is working its way through “united” Europe as well which has yet to find a proper defense against the scourge of illegal immigration, both racial and religious, thanks to being busy with seeking absolution for its colonial past. This “politically correct” effort, however, is being carried out by pushing her indigenous populations to become themselves refugees in their own homelands via “integration” of newcomers, who cannot, and won’t, be integrated even if a 21st century Moses descends from the mountain with the tablets containing the current edition of the Ten Commandments.
Ukraine is brazenly adding fuel to America’s post-WWII obsession with war as the principle manner of maintaining dominance in world politics
, a choice that was wrong from the day of its inception since it ignored the historically iron-clad manner of how empires collapse because of overvaluing their “permanence.”
I disagree with Chris Hedges on multiple accounts, yet his lengthy experience of detailing how America undermines her own vital interests is both undisputed and harrowingly real.
His latest below paints yet another disturbing, yet brutally real, of where we’re currently headed unless a miracle corrects America’s bearing.
It truly makes you think.
No Way Out but War
Permanent war has cannibalized the country. It has created a social, political, and economic morass. Each new military debacle is another nail in the coffin of Pax Americana.
The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.
The permanent war economy, implanted since the end of World War II, has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion, $ 6 trillion more than the US GDP of $ 24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military, $ 813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.
We are paying a heavy social, political, and economic cost for our militarism. Washington watches passively as the U.S. rots, morally, politically, economically, and physically, while China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, and other countries extract themselves from the tyranny of the U.S. dollar and the international Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging network banks and other financial institutions use to send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. Once the U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, once there is an alternative to SWIFT, it will precipitate an internal economic collapse. It will force the immediate contraction of the U.S. empire shuttering most of its nearly 800 overseas military installations. It will signal the death of Pax Americana.