The Future of America

It's interesting that in this novel, people try to "buy" their way, or compete their, way, into a "way out".

Amerika: Corporation, not a Country

"Now, a question arises with regard to the USA: is it more of a country (like, say, France) or is it more of a corporation (like, say AIG or GM or GS)? Looking at its politics, it is apparent that it is more of a country club than a country. Corporations are clearly the ones in charge, through electoral campaign donations, lobbyists, and the revolving door between corporate and government positions. The periodic electoral monkey-business and fake media frenzy are just there as an ad campaign to keep the brand fresh. It does seem more and more like a corporate entity, with a small and shrinking number of shareholders, whose latest scheme (now that the whole thing is spiraling the drain) is to have the government print lots of money just so that they can pocket huge sums of it...."
Dmitri Orlov

The Coming "Good Society" of Obama in Amerika

"Civil society, as a phrase, has been receiving attention lately as well: Yuval Levin, in the recent issue of National Review, for example, has an article[ii] outlining the Obama administration’s contribution to the hollowing out thereof. The president’s vision, as Levin describes it, is of a society where the longest-term exclusive relationship that exists is that between the individual and the government...."
Source

Also,
"I am not the stuff of which reformers are made; rather than indulge in that variety of meddlesomeness I would sweep a crossing. Nine-tenths of the reformers of humanity have been mischief-makers or humbugs. I have no desire to be added to the list. A man who reforms himself has contributed his full share towards the reformation of his neighbour...."
Source

So, "Progress" = The Destruction of Civil Society, the Past, and our Souls. When that word is used, this is what it means. It COULD mean an improvement on all these, but then, it would have to be creative and build, rather than merely being dialectical and destructive.

Slaves Who Consider Themselves Cursed

"But our commonalities are not looking so good at this time. I think of Nietzsche's comments about how there is nothing more powerful than when a slave class has learned to consider its existence an injustice and sets about taking revenge, not only on its own behalf but on behalf of past generations. ...
Source,

The Inner Meaning of Revolution

"Carvalho's study of the revolutionary mind has been well regarded in Brazil by people such as Roberto de Oliveira Campos,^[11] Paulo Francis,^[12] and Bruno Tolentino.^[13]

He sees a characteristic of the revolutionary mind in the inversion of the perception of time. He says normal individuals, based on common sense, view the past as something immutable and the future as something that can be changed (it is contingent, as de Carvalho puts it). However, the leftist revolutionary sees the utopian future as a goal that eventually will be reached no matter what and the past as something that can be changed, through reinterpretation, to accommodate it.^[14]

Carvalho also points out that because the revolutionary believes implicitly in a future utopia where there will be no evil, this same leftist revolutionary believes that no holds should be barred in achieving that utopia. Thus, his own criminal activities in achieving that goal are above reproach.^[14]"

Wiki, Carvalho

Sex, Family, & Amerika

"Many of us drift toward conservatism because we realize just how vast a disaster liberalism has been. In the United States, our parents and grandparents in the 1960s inherited the wealthiest nation on earth, and they’ve turned it into a third-world Kali-Yuga ruin."

Source

As this blog has argued before, Liberalism is nothing other than instantiated suicide, personal AND collective, because it lies to itself about having no "intolerance", meanwhile having the greatest intolerance of all towards precisely those who 1) support the state (the beta-class of workers and middle class who do not want bigger government or special favors) 2) are fighting to save the state (conservative intellectuals of various stripes).

At this point, however, in Amerika's decline, if you are an enemy of the Liberal Super-State, all you have to do is kick back and watch it burn.

America & Books

It’s a curious feature of American history that some of its major turning points are best summed up by books. In the years just before the American Revolution, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was the book; it had a huge role in focusing colonial grievances to the point that they were ready to burst into flame. In the years before the Civil War, it was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin; that’s the book that made the North redefine a troubled national dialogue over a range of regional differences as a moral debate over slavery, pure and simple, and so pushed both halves of the country into positions from which they couldn’t back down short of war.

This is quite true; now, we are defined "as a propositional nation", not by propaganda via books, but by the Great Stereopticon, the Television set, which tells us, not what to think (they don't care what factoids we choose to swallow, and which to refuse), but how to think, a mindset. They set the parameters of Thought, or what passes for thought these days. For instance, when the "talking heads" come on the tube, we know that something important is about to be announced, beyond the day-to-day bombardment of tripe. They then "debate" the "issues", either "burning questions of the day" or "critical events": their "real meaning" or their "import". After endless shouting or droning on, there is a final question: "So what can we take from all this?" (the great American bottom line). There is then a "zinger" or quip or (more sadly) sentimental moral tripe, or (worst of all) "moral outrage". Again, we are free to choose one of these modes ourselves, and modulate it (with sensitivity) the critical impact of the event (eg., joking about racial issues is off limits, always, although one can get away with some amount of sangfroid if phrased with political correctness.

America Again

Actually, even Japan could learn some things from Germany, such as the low cost of the educational system, and the strength of labor unions and work councils. TG's remarks about how Americans use their disposable income to turn their homes into gadget-filled cocoons while even blue-collar Europeans go out drinking, dancing and to the (live) theater also make one ponder the strength of our social fabric. If you have any interest in reading about social reality rather than vampire tales, "escapist" murder mysteries, or political rants by folks who are proud to be ignorant, you'll find this book a great mix of fun with seriousness.
Were You Born on the Wrong Continent

Amerika

"The essential problem is that Americans have been lying to themselves for so many years now that they are completely incapable of telling the difference between the rather frightening truth and their mythological view of America. The roots of the problem go back to the 1930's, but the real problems began right after the Second World War, when the American government came under the control of the group of thugs who still run the country. There has been a carefully planned program of complete domination of all sources of information through total media control, the creation of the 'think tank' system to manufacture policy, the establishment of entrepreneurial right wing religion as a method of political control, the use of political contributions to buy politicians, and, if all else fails, simple violence. It is now a country where anyone who could do good is marginalized or assassinated, and changes in government are at least as likely to occur by coup d'etat than by the operation of democracy. There is no longer even the necessity to hide the fact that the country is run entirely for the benefit of certain large pools of capital. The essential lies that Americans tell themselves, which mainly have to do with class structure and, even at this late date, race, infect every major political issue in the country - crime and the incarceration industry, health care, the 'war on drugs', education, immigration including the racist response to 9-11, the environment, poverty and the extraordinary creation of what is really a new caste system consisting of a permanent underclass (something that has happened, unnoticed, only in the last few years), and even American foreign policy. Each year since around the time of Sinclair's broadcast [Gordon Sinclair's famous broadcast from radio station CFRB in Toronto in 1973] the situation has gotten worse, but lately the rate of deterioration appears to be increasing rapidly. Things have gotten so bad that the government is now fronted by a retarded (and I use that word in a technical sense) clown, who everyone treats as if he were a real President (the worst lie to yourself is when you have to pretend that the obvious idiot who leads you is entitled to do so). The lies are so deeply ingrained into American thought that the vast majority of the population apparently is incapable of seeing that there is anything wrong, meaning that there is no possibility of change." 4