Today, as the sun is temporarily blotted out over the United States, Barbara Will wonders if her country is in a permanent state of eclipse:
Pick up any newspaper and the evidence is clear: most Americans feel pessimistic about the nation’s future. Since 2009, polls consistently show that over 70% of Americans worry that the country is on the wrong track. A full 65% believe the country is now “in a state of decline.” More than 40% fear an imminent terrorist attack.
Worries over race relations are at a record high. Bookstore shelves are lined with titles like The Plot to Hack America; White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide and Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium.
The Great Experiment managed to survive the carnage of most of the 20th century:
For a large part of the 20th century, America was on the rise, enjoying a sense of peace and growing prosperity denied the countries who had suffered through World War I and its terrible aftermath, World War II. Yet if empires rise, they also fall, often with what historian Alfred McCoy has referred to as “unholy speed.”
But the last fifty years have seen remarkable missteps:
It would take our own series of violent misadventures – in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as places like Guantanamo Bay – for a similar post-war dark mood to settle on our side of the Atlantic like a heavy shadow.
Today's solar eclipse is only temporary. The jury is still out on whether the American eclipse is temporary.
Image: Wikipedia
12 comments:
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An excellent piece, Dana. Thanks. All empires eventually fall. We may be in the final days of this one.
I don't think the jury is out, Owen. I think the verdict is in and it's unanimous. America can hardly escape what's already setting in around the world, the combined impact of climate change, overpopulation and overconsumption of inadequate resources. I did a post today that hinged on the failure of my flatscreen TV on Friday and my trip to the electronics recycling depot that then wandered into the greater, if not grander scheme of things on an individual, national and now civilizational level. We're in the grip of this thing and I'm trying to piece together answers as to how it happened and why and the best of a bunch of less than wonderful options remaining to us. Isn't it funny how, today, the Bush/Cheney years don't look nearly as bad as we once saw them?
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld made some terrible decisions, Mound. But at least that administration managed to attract some people who were truly competent. The Trump administration -- from upper to lower levels -- is a study in incompetence.
Call me naive. But I keep hoping that the country and its citizens will turn things around -- as Churchill said Americans did. But they're running out of time.
Like Africa and the Middle East where carved out with dull knives and to this day the wounds
do not heal, America may have flesh eating disease. Lets hope it only Bouchards in Canada.
Owen its not a study in incompetence. I wish I was incompetent enough to make a Billion Dollars. Its a study in hubris.
The disease comes from within, Steve.
It is very much a study in hubris, Steve. But hubris and incompetence are not mutually exclusive. Often, one follows the other.
Reading Mound's comment and your response, Owen, I have to tell you that we do our winter 'penance' in Arizona each year and developed great friendships with pretty forward thinking Americans (who vote Democrat because its the closest to reality they can get). I commented to one that After seeing the star performance of the Cheeto, I can't believe I stand here and say that Bush Jr. sounds perfectly intelligent compared to the garbosch currently encounced in the White House.
When Trump makes Bush look good, Lulymay -- and Obama look superlative -- clearly the United States is in the hands of a blackguard.
I wonder how many of your readers know the etymology or how to pronounce "blackguard". Just a curiousity.
It's a terrific word, Dana. But it's fallen out of use.
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