Xicano Pwr posted a diary called TN Town Considering Banning “Hispanics” From Its Parks on which I made the following comment:
It’ll be a few years, but just as the U. S. S. R. broke up, so shall we.
Bet on it.
And then I posted another comment elaborating upon the first.
It sounded like it might be a worthwhile diary, so…here it is.
Read on.
Combine this with the other cultural/regional splits going on now in the U.S….including the fragmentation of the media into specialized areas…and the glue that held this country together for several hundred years appears ready to let go.
This happened at the dawn of the last technological revolution…the industrial one (As opposed to this tech/info revolution, which is really still in its infancy)…and resulted in a successful “Civil War” that held the country together by force of arms. I predict that this time force of arms will NOT prevail, because of the simple fact that “force of arms” in a nuclear/WMD age is ultimately unusable. As is happening in Iraq, war is pretty much unfightable on a real, serious W.W. II-sized scale because the amount of destruction that results makes the winning of a war not worthwhile. Who wants to “win” when the only booty possible is cinders and contaminated dust?
So each side is forced to use “terrorism”. The terror of guerrilla war always beats that of conventional modern armed forces, because terrorism ITSELF depends on psychologically applied fear. Up close and personal fear…a few people murdered, a random bomb every few days, one 9/11 every few years…is MUCH more terrifying than total destruction, because total destruction leaves no witnesses to be terrorized. When Bubba or Ahmed or Liam or Tran or Guido next door is quite likely to come into your house and cut your throat if you do not behave in the manner he demands, “terror” gets REAL. There IS no fighting it. But when it’s Marines and helicopters…”Waall, boy howdy!!! Them fellers is jest MESSIN’ wif us. Time to join the resistance!!!”
And then you have a thousand Fallujahs.
Little Rock Fallujah.
Detroit Fallujah.
South Central Fallujah.
Small town Fallujah.
Against which NO empire can stand.
That’s what is coming if we do not get our act together, and SOON.
Our enemies list is growing rapidly, and they are all signing on to the newest tactic…economic war. The Muslims proved its efficacy in Afghanistan vs. the U.S.S.R., and now you are hearing the same song being sung in several continents.
Not just the Middle East.
China.
South/Central/Caribbean America.
Only Europe is not yet singing it.
Europe and poor, fucked Africa.
If the nations of South/Central/Caribbean America get their act together before we reform this out of control system…game over.
Economic collapse followed by the disintegration of the United States of North America.
Too bad.
Step right up!!!
Come one, come all!!!
Y’pays yer money and y’takes yer chances.
Step right up!!!
Yup.
Later…
AG
Yup.
The South shall rise again!!!
On BOTH sides of the Manson-Nixon Line.
BET on it.
From the lips of the tragic prophetess Billie Holiday to your ears.
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Have fun…
AG.
The collapse of the United States is now overdetermined.
The powers that be have destroyed the sense of national concensus which, however fake and incomplete it may have been, provided the sense of a single national polity. Their goal has been a banana republic in which they could operate more freely, but they have already achieved a momentum which will result in overshoot: The national government will in effect be totally in their hands, but it will be a government which is crumbling to nothing. The destruction of democratic process is now so far advanced it cannot be stopped, and with it goes the moral reason for the US to exist.
There are of course, economic reasons. But since 1980, and especially since year 2000, the US has so mismanaged its economy that it is hopelessly in debt, nearly bankrupt, and producing almost nothing the world wants. It has been shown that the very wealthiest have made a fortune off these misadventures, but their attitude has been that of a farmer deciding to quit milking the cow and just slaughtering it for the meat. You get to do that one time. The single largest remaining industry area is housing construction, and with the popping of the housing bubble, that is about to collapse like every other sector before it. Crash will not be staved off very much longer. It will not be like the Great Depression, which was a debacle of the financial industry only. It will be worse: This time the PHYSICAL requirements for recovery are not there. When the crash comes, the US goes.
The corruption of the military seems not to have been intended, but has been so thorough one can only watch in amazement. While the army tried to recover from Vietnam, the complicity of the high command in the corruption of THAT war definitely limited the extent of the clean-up. Two things they never did seem to get was the importance of clear objectives before engaging in combat, and the absolutely demoralizing and corrupting nature of body-counts. This has been synergistically exacerbated by a civilian command with a pre-adolescent understanding of power, and a knowledge of military matters consisting entirely of a superficial understanding of Hollywood films. The upshot is a military which can no longer achieve strategic objectives, while it builds up body of men inured to senseless killing. Re-read the history of 14th century France, if you think this is a good thing. Speaking abstractly, one can only say it does not promote national unity.
The resource substrata on which the US depends is failing. Mainly, this means oil. The current wars, meant to claim oil for the US, are only accelerating the process by which oil becomes unavailable. But since oil is physically essential, this means collapse is brought forward.
The environment does many things, including human life support. But industrial activity is knocking down the environment’s ability to sustain human life. With climate change, crops don’t grow. Overfishing leads to exctinctions which cascade and further reduce food possibilities. Strange weather disrupts the economy physically. The behavior changes needed to quit promoting these processes of failure can not be made in the exiting political economy which is actually designed to promote just these destructive processes. Quick fixes introduce new problems, which exacerbate and accelerate the existing ones. Example: The US is poised to start developing biofuels, diverting land from needed food production to fuel production, and introducing new invasive species that will further disrupt the botanic economy.
Any of these things by itself would likely be sufficient to bring the United States to an end. Together they represent a maze of death which the US is not even attempting to navigate.
Over-determined.
A supersaturated solution waiting for the immersion of a single crystal.
Yes, gaianne.
You have pinned it.
Sadly…you have pinned it.
Only a miracle will save us.
But…life IS a miracle.
We shall see.
Fight on.
AG
P.S. That image at the top of my post…
The faces of the white people?
Truly horrifying.
That is the evil joker in the American deck.
Yes, a nation of the dispossessed. But a large enough percentage of those “dispossessed” were in trouble in their homelands because they damned well DESERVED to be in trouble. Large enough to survive and prosper as part of the gene pool, large enough to always and forever drag the truly noble idea of “America” right into their own genetically predetermined ghetto hell. Castro saw this weakness, and used it to dump his own criminal class on us. The children of those faces? They are the 38% that is ButchCo’s immovable electoral base.
Short of waking up one morning and finding that a latent genetic marker has exploded the heads of every white supremacist, racist, sadistic pig in America, we will continue to waver down this shaky road towards a nuclear-powered Armageddon.
God help us all.
AG
Our once lily-white state of MN is an interesting case in terms of transition. We have spent the last 20 years adjusting to the many immigrant communities that have developed – primarily in the twin cities.
In the early 90’s the Hmong, who were a tribal people that helped the US in Laos during the Vietnam war and were promised immigration to the US if things went badly, began arriving. Then, after Somalia fell apart, many came here to settle. And finally, Mexican farm workers have now begun to settle not only in urban areas, but in many out-state areas as well. We have spent lots of time, attention and resources to understand these changes and help people settle here – not enough – but there have been major efforts.
Just recently we hired a young man who’s story reminded me that we have a whole other group of refugees that have gone completely unnoticed in our midst. He came from New Orleans years ago to go to college in a small town in northern Minnesota. When I asked him how an African American went from urban New Orleans to small town MN, his answer stunned me. He said, “I looked around at my friends and family and realized that if I was going to survive, I had to get out. So I took the one opportunity I had.”
This young man works in a middle school with kids who are chronically suspended from school. And he can really relate to the young people he works with. Over 70% of them are African American boys who recently moved here from places like Detroit, Gary, Chicago, etc. All of their families could probably tell the same story, “I knew that if I was going to survive, I had to get out.”
Whether or not they will survive here is still a story to be told. But what I know now is that our refugees these days are not just coming from Asia and Africa. They are coming from our major US urban areas. And they see their survival being questioned.
True. And it is these “children” who will bear the burden of the breakup of the U.S.
And die in the process.
Unless we DO SOMETHING.
Interestingly enough, right next to this composition box is an ad for HBO’s “The Wire”. I had heard some good things about this series, so I tuned in this year. It is about EXACTLY this problem, and extraordinarily well done. A living antidote to the Sopranos/Deadwood nihilism. Last night, a sheltered academic is given a tough cop as his guide to the Baltimore drug underworld, and taught the sad lesson that if you are going to reach these kids, it will have to be at intermediate school level because they are already nuts by the time they reach 16 or so, those that are going to GO nuts. I have taught at that level in equivalent schools as a music teacher, and the show captures the negative energy that runs those places despite the best efforts of a few teachers and BECAUSE of the worst efforts of the system that runs them.
Solutions?
I have none.
Except to keep trying and hope for the best.
PRAY for the best.
Later….
AG