This piece was originally posted on my now defunct blog after the November elections, as a sort of introspective on where America is as a country.
It occurs to me that with a total failure in leadership from both the Democrats and the Republicans, that the future of America is firmly in doubt.
There is no end to our economic woes in sight. The right has totally bought into the ceaseless drumbeat of misdirection spun by corporatist media. Americans blame Barack Obama, a populist president who after being elected made a sharp turn to the right, rewarding the same elites he railed while dismissing the people who voted him into office.
It was no great surprise that his party lost. In the House they were swept away by populist anger combined with a decreased turnout from a base that felt rightly screwed.
The Republicans do not have ideas, they have the sound and the fury of idiot America.
Meanwhile our nation slides further into depression and ill-relevance. "Quantitive Easing" will not work, because those who can obtain the money at 0% are reinvesting it overseas to produce products Americans can no longer afford.
What I do see is a system in tatters, a federal government hobbled by a defect run up primarily by a taxation policy designed to transfer massive amounts of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 10%, a failing social safety net under attack by the right wing media, our elected representatives totally deaf to the slow motion destruction of our very national fabric, a supreme court front loaded by pro corporate justices and worst of all an ill informed electorate with no concept of the true problems that threaten to tear us apart as a nation.
Americans who can get out may decide to leave this failing nation state and seek a better life elsewhere.
Prognosticating a little further into the future I can see Americans who were fortunate enough to get an education or have a skill leaving this country in droves to seek a better life elsewhere, much like how the rest of the world emigrated here in the last two centuries.
But where will they go? Western Europe? India? China? Which country will be the next America? I have no idea. What I personally know is that I will not be sticking around to pay a trillion dollar deficit foisted upon our populace by a corrupt electorate. I am not as attached to the idea of my country as I used to be.
Every civilization has a shelf life, perhaps America has reached it's "sell by" date.
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