The Good News is….
According to John Kenneth Galbraith:
“Under the thrust of power of present forces, including the money-making powers, there’s going to be a continuing and disastrous decline” in America [. . .] “We are seeing the disintegration of the American economic and wider world role, which could well continue after this election.”
He’s right, of course. I’m not sure that even people on the left are aware how irrevocably GW Bush has set the US on a course of permanent decline. Galbraith notes that more than half of US discretionary spending goes to the military, to fight an arms race against the *possibility* of an arms race. Meanwhile us technological and scientific leadership diminished steadily. More ominously still for the US, its allies and enemies are reconfiguring themselves against the US for the long-term.
The old Onion article had it right. And this isn’t a competition the US is likely to win.
This, of course, is the good news. The US record as superpower and hegemon has been mixed at best, despite some notable accomplishments. And ethically there was never any way to justify US economic and military supremacy. Yet (the bad news is that) the rest of the world doesn’t appear to be ready for the transition. In fact as Russia and China slide towards a kind of fascist state Capitalism, I fear that what’s happening is not a transition to an equitable post-hegemony world order, but a slide back into the nationalist multi-polarity that preceded World War I.
What’s the answer. Perhaps this?
It’s an idea I like, and a start.
For good measure, here’s a couple of other small but interesting ideas, about the upcoming election:
Sign a petition and take action against devious Sinclair Broadcasting.
Is this ethically permissible? Maybe if I had a little more cash, or if Bush weren’t leading in WI by 10 points…