Running from Fundamentals

When you read about ancient mega-societies – Rome, Incas, the Chinese Ming dynasty, Persians, Ottomans – you think about their glory… and then their downfall. Often these great civilizations, lasting two to four centuries on average, began a period of serious decay, eventually falling to military defeat or internal fractionalization… before dropping into history. Even the famed British Empire, of which we were once part, could no longer make the claim that “the sun never sets on the British Empire” after Hong Kong was ceded to China in 1984. England is still around, but she is hardly the superpower of even a century ago and is facing worse economic problems than we are right now.

So ever ask yourself, “when is it our turn?” We’re touting the 21^st century as the Time of Asia, particularly China with a touch of India, but where is the United States in all this? Are the social safety nets that we, and our Western brethren, created for society’s betterment of our standards of living unaffordable drains on our economies, destined to drag us down into that period of historical decay that seems almost unavoidable? Or can we wage “wars for national security” without so decimating our economic ability to survive that we effectively kill ourselves in an effort to preserve what we believe we have. How long can you cut educational programs before you destroy your future?

Look at the simple signs. A massive trade imbalance tells us we consume more than we produce. A massive budget deficit tells us we live beyond our means, and someday we will have to pay the piper… is that day coming soon? China has trillions of U.S. dollars in reserve, is luring research scientists back to the mainland, just as we have a huge negative bank account with a falling dollar value. The fact that the U.S. dollar is fighting to be a bigger part of that “special drawing right” currency intended to replace the dollar as the global currency reserve tells us that the global community no longer has faith in the stability of the U.S. economy. That the U.S. political and economic structure clearly favors special interests over the general welfare of her people, such that virtually everyone seems out only for themselves these days, regardless of the impact on everyone else tells us we are in a desperate free-for-all fighting for limited resources.

Factions each want to govern everybody else’s behavior in conformity with their needs to political choices – freedom’s become just another word for nothin’ left to lose. Wall Street wants to be unregulated to create new “profit-making” bubbles (they make money only when an economy is moving, up or down), with government support if something goes wrong. As the President tries to reign them in with restrictions on banks’ investment rights (especially against their own clients’ positions), watch the special interests administer a full-court lobbying press, particularly now that the Supreme Court has removed the restriction on their campaign actitivies. Many religious groups each seek that their view of the universe becomes the law for everyone else, whether they accept the underlying faith or not. The First Amendment needs to be repealed, if you follow their dictates. Farmers want subsidies, the NFL wants a blanket antitrust exemption, oil companies want special depreciation rules, Nebraska doesn’t want to pay its fair share of Medicaid, and each little bit adds up to…. Well, we aren’t really that concerned with the “us” in U.S. anymore… only how we individually are impacted by the rules of state.

And Americans are scared… even if we don’t look at the bigger questions. At least at a gut level, we see the writing on the wall. Little things – like the fall in December retail sales – tell me how scared we really are: “From supermarkets to department stores, sales fell 0.3 percent from November, a decline that economists attributed to a persistent reluctance by Americans to open their wallets. Analysts, encouraged by signs that consumers were regaining confidence and the labor market was improving, had expected sales to rise 0.5 percent.” January 14^th New York Times. Unemployment number stabilized for a while… and have begun to slide back up again. How many of those who lost their jobs in this mess will actually return to their former industries in remotely comparable jobs? Little things, like California’s jobless rate rising from 12.3% to 12.4%... “little” unless it was your job… or higher weekly applications nationally for unemployment benefits.

The collapsed economy has dominated the headlines for the last year and a half, and we are all looking for signs of a recovery. But has this economic malaise simply accelerated and then masked a much bigger reality? Is this reality a time of transition, of the ebbing of America as a viable political entity? Are we in that kind of decay that ends political structures and relegates them to the trash heap of discarded history books? And if these signs are so completely obvious, why aren’t they the basis for a rallying cry for good Americans to do incredible acts to sustain a great nation?! Or are we willing to slide into footnotes and chapter headings in some academic PhD thesis about the “decline and fall” of the United States of America?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.