It never fails to surprise me about how little people retain from each day's news cycle. A few weeks ago, Obama's warming up towards Cuba was big news - and the "conservatives" were all chastising him for abandoning tactics which have been proven not to work. The same thing was done with Iran - and again, it was big news for a few days, and almost forgotten. We're seeing public opinion swayed by talking heads, in ways that George Orwell could only dream of....
Orwell, in "1984", presented a public speech where someone was ranting about one enemy, and in the middle of the speech the enemy changed. The former enemy was now a friend, and the former friend was now an enemy. Although this type of change isn't happening as fast as in Orwell's novel, we're already seeing this in our media. How many of us remember when our enemy was "godless" communism? And now our biggest trading partner is the People's Republic of China - governed by the Communist Party.
Although George Washington warned us against having any permanent entanglements, I don't think that he would believe how quickly the world changes in our lifetime. My father has seen Germany and Japan go from being friendly countries, to enemies, and back to being friends. And in my lifetime, I've seen the same happen with Vietnam, and am seeing it happen with Iran and Cuba.
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About 50 years ago, the city of Baltimore had its riots. And now, it had another round of riots. The problems are the same as they were 50 years ago - a general lack of economic opportunity. Americans will forget about this round of riots, as they have other important things in the news. But will we learn from them?
This time, we're seeing people around the world "armed" with cell phones (most of which contain the latest software) and active internet connections. Even in Iran's riots of a couple of years ago, the central government was unable to suppress all the news from getting out of the country. It couldn't suppress the news being passed along by its citizens. And the same thing happened here - the Baltimore Police could no longer cover up what triggered the riots - a "thug" whose rights were ignored by the police, and a death that couldn't be ignored.
Now, I've just used the word "thug" to describe this person. But is he as bad as the label I've attached to him? In an area as economically depressed as his section of Baltimore, over 56% of the adult male population is unemployed. Dr. Phil noted in an interview on Fox News that the people living in these poor sections of cities may have the same potential, but not the same opportunities, education, or inter-generational social pass-throughs. Was this person's rap sheet caused by a defect in this person's character, or was it caused by the environment he lived in?
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Two generations ago, we didn't need to worry about the problems of structural unemployment. Today, both people in the inner city and the suburbs are affected by these problems. The low end jobs which were stepping stones to greater opportunities no longer exist. Low value/High Labor cost manufacturing left the United States years ago. Computers have replaced humans in many tasks which would have provided work - the computer managed "help lines" we call are perfect examples of this. It is cheaper to have a human interface with a series of telephone menus than to reach a real, live, flesh and blood human. And society no longer provides the full and free education needed to fill the jobs of tomorrow.
Our college education system has been corrupted by government funding - instead of having our government expand access to college by building more colleges, we've seen our government increase the monies available to students in student loans. Simply adding more money to buy more education doesn't do much good - it only raised the nominal price of an education, making it much harder for both the poor and the middle class to afford college. And for those that got the student loans, they often now have onerous debt to repay, and are deferring having children. (I'm not even talking about those who took out predatory student loans issued by for-profit colleges that provided sub-standard educations - these students were screwed the day they entered school, and no one wants to fix this problem because the affected students come from the lower castes....) Since student debt can't be erased in bankruptcy, we now have a generation of Americans who will not be able to afford what will be needed from them in the future.
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It is very interesting is that the problems that once only afflicted the lower class are now affecting the middle class. Poverty used to be clustered in the inner city and in remote rural areas. Now, we're seeing newly poor people scattered through middle class neighborhoods. Houses are becoming derelict because of predatory lending combined with "Zombie Titles" that insulate banks from maintaining foreclosed properties - Banks are no longer foreclosing on many properties, making it impossible for borrowers to walk away from debt that they can no longer afford. Sadly, this may only be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what the banks will be doing next to preserve their power in society....
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Where will we end up? I don't know. I'm afraid for our future, as we're seeing the signs of America's upcoming collapse - and we, as a whole, have a lot of questions about our society's future that need to be asked and need to be answered. So far, all our leaders are doing is pandering to us and our fears - they do nothing to deal with the real problems. And this is a great danger that we all should fear....
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