When will the decline of America reach the point of no return?

[44 AMP]

The point of no return....

Not only has been reached, it is constantly being moved further out. And where it is currently depends entirely on your viewpoint. For some we have already gone too far, and for others, we aren't even close to where we "ought" to be.

We cannot (AND WILL NOT) turn this country back into what it was in the 50s, or the 40s, or the 30s, nor for that matter the 80s or the 90s. Too much changes, and too much doesn't.

As things progress, the established order becomes the basis for reference. What went before is either the "good old days" or "the dark ages", dependant entirely on your own personal agenda.

For some people we are always in the worst of times, or at least just before the end, and for others we are constantly on the edge of a "brave new world".

The same old song and dance still plays. The elite do their best to arrange things so they maintain and add to their wealth and power, and the rest of us do the best we can to get by. This is the way the world has always worked, and likely the way it will keep on working until the end. Human nature doesn't seem to change much, or often. It is quite possible the most brilliant modern philosopher is George Orwell. Or maybe just the most relevant.

As to global warming, I do enjoy the debate about what is causing it, but in the end I believe it to be meaningless. Instead of either burying our collective heads in the sand and claiming it isn't happening, or running around screeching the sky is falling and expecting the taxpayers of the USA to foot the bill to "do" something about it, why don't we just accept the reality that we cannot turn back the clock, and that there are actually some things on earth and in the heavens that mankind cannot alter. Instead of trying every harebrained scheme in order to stay where we were, why not do what we, as thinking beings are most uniquely equipped to do. ADAPT! natural selection will adapt plants and animals, no matter who or what we blame for the changes, and unless we act smart, it will do the same for us. In order to stay ahead of the game, we should (and could) adapt before we are forced to.

Remember that the whole global warming issue is being hyped using AVERAGE temps, and data going back to times when by current standards the best data available was a good guess. Just a few years ago, the great coming crisis (as a consensus of scientists believed) was global cooling. The next Ice Age was upon us, and could happen within a couple of decades! And, according to some folks, it still could! What I resent is the belief some folks have that I should have to adjust my lifestyle in order to pay for their scheme to prevent this "disaster" they say is coming.

On the whole, I look at it the way I look at people who get their homes flooded. If you get your home flooded, it means you built it too close to the water!

 

[amprecon]

When we patriots give up on it.

 

[LightningJoe]

I doubt we'll be able to save all of what is now called the United States of America. Worstcase, the bad will pull down the good along with it, but it's also possible that in time we may be able to gather up what's good in America and discard the rest (even if the rest is the bigger part).


Look at the difference between an inner city and a suburb. If you took the average, it might not look good, but if you could get rid of the inner city and just keep the suburb, it'd be great.


If we can geographically separate the productive, law-abiding people from the unproductive and unruly, then we could just build a long fence and keep the good part. Sounds impossible now, but things are changing rapidly. Think of a map of blue and red areas of the country. There's a certain amount of geographical separation already.


There are certain sociological and political phenomena that are producing separation between the groups of people that we would need to disentangle before we could keep the good part of America and dump the rest, such as:


1] Politics in the US favors the existence of two major parties. The good and the bad are being sorted between the two parties with increasing efficiency.

2] Telecommucations and telecommuting are making physical location and proximity to urban areas less important, allowing like-minded people to congregate if they choose to.

3] Decent people who want to live among other decent people have developed a pattern of selling their houses and buying new houses in areas they regard as more desirable. So far, this has involved radial movement away from city centers, but in future years with less connection between location and employment, it could turn into movement from one region to another.

4] The US is importing vast numbers of insular, unassimilable people who have a common ethnic and political identity. As their numbers increase, they may develop overt political control over well-delineated regions of the country.

5] Globalization increases the Darwinian nature of the national economy. Inefficient companies and organizations face competition from the best the rest of the world can field. Companies and other entities that choose to hire, fire, promote, and retain based on characteristics other than excellence will tend to be put out of business by companies and entities that reward excellence primarily. This has the effect of disentangling productive people from parasitic elements that would use statutes and the courts to maintain their presence.

6] Demographics in the US are shifting away from the existence of a majority group. This has a variety of psychological effects including a decreased proprietary sentiment toward the country as a whole and a stronger concept of common interests among groups smaller than the national population and identified by characteristics other than nationality.

7] Social pathologies among the underclass look unfixable. At the same time, violence and ill will toward productive people are obvious. There is no love lost between the two groups, no sense of community. The danger and social cost of proximity to and custodianship of the underclass are well understood by most productive people.


It's conceivable that advancing technology, labor mobility, political developments, demographic changes, and what's left of state sovereignty may create two Americas with enough geographic separation to allow the good part of America to survive at the expense of giving up the rest. Anybody who can read this will probably be dead of old age before we know the outcome, but the next 75 years should tell us something.