{"id":71306,"date":"2016-04-04T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=71306"},"modified":"2016-04-02T13:46:04","modified_gmt":"2016-04-02T12:46:04","slug":"real-america-an-endangering-and-endangered-ruination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/04\/real-america-an-endangering-and-endangered-ruination\/","title":{"rendered":"Real America, an Endangering and Endangered Ruination"},"content":{"rendered":"

28 Mar 2016<\/em><\/p>\n

A Ruination<\/strong><\/p>\n

Real America is not the window dressing of a nation posed by her government or by the corporate dominated mass media. Behind that pose is an endangering and endangered \u201cruination.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you follow unbiased accounts of current events and conditions, you know I am not exaggerating. For decades I have been keeping tabs on Real America\u2019s conditions and her actions at home and away and they are appalling. To summarize them I compiled and reported elsewhere a list of what I call \u201csadtistics.\u201d1<\/a><\/sup> They amount to a pitiful portrait of every element of America that matters, whether domestic (e.g., high rates of homelessness and poverty), environmental (e.g. polluted rivers\/reservoirs\/drinking water) or international (e.g., ubiquitous military bases and destructive and deadly military and CIA operations around the globe).<\/p>\n

According to Charles Derber, a distinguished sociologist, Real America is already a sociopathic society in which there is a predominance of antisocial and harmful behavior by individuals and institutions.2<\/a><\/sup> Real America is also a nation that always has been led by presidents with psychopathic personalities, if we can believe a host of experts, and I do.3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Real America is already a fascist state. It meets all 14 attributes (e.g., controlled mass media, obsession with national security) political scientist Lawrence Brit identified as characteristics of a fascist state.4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Real America\u2019s Abysmal Future <\/strong><\/p>\n

Rome\u2019s militaristic imperialism lasted over 500 years. But times and conditions are not so forgiving and repairable today. If Real America continues her ruinous course, she is unlikely to reach her tri-centennial. Real America could eventually become a failed state; could undergo civil war; could experience escalating blowbacks; and could irreversibly suffer with the rest of humanity one or more global calamities.<\/p>\n

(a) Failed State<\/strong><\/p>\n

While it is not one of over 100 nations on the \u201cfailed state index\u201d published by the non-governmental organization, Fund for Peace5<\/a><\/sup>, there is ample evidence from the list of \u201csadtistics\u201d that America is becoming a failed state or close to becoming one. Once an economic superpower, for instance, Real America is on the way to economic ruin according to Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration.6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

(b) Civil War<\/strong><\/p>\n

The conditions and discontent of the working class and the unemployed conceivably could explode into a civil war. The government undoubtedly has a contingency plan to combat armed revolution and is already training for the possibility of it happening. That may be why swarms of Black Hawk helicopters were flying over Minneapolis in the summer of 2014.7<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Any civil war would probably be followed by a dictatorship, which in turn would eventually deteriorate into a state of dystopia and ultimate collapse. That has happened to a few nation states in the history of civilization and there is no guarantee it won\u2019t happen to Real America.<\/p>\n

(c) Escalating Blowbacks<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unless Real America\u2019s endless warring and spying ends more blowbacks besides the monumental one in 2001 are inevitable and intuitively obvious. Some very authoritative people agree. Four-star Marine General James Cartwright, for example, a confidante of President Obama for years, warned that U.S. drone strikes \u201care begging for retaliation,\u201d and Ralph Nader has warned that there must be \u201csmarter foreign policies\u201d or we risk \u201cbigger blowbacks.\u201d8<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

(d) Global Calamities<\/strong><\/p>\n

The adage, \u201cthings will have to get worse before they get better\u201d is a fallacious, self defeating and potentially fatal one. It awaits possible refutation by one or more of four global calamities that threaten our species; ecocide, genocide, manufactured plague, and nuclear Armageddon.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Ecocide<\/strong>. Mother Nature may have the last laugh, or blowback, if we don\u2019t start placating her instead of plucking her. The planet, offering finite, not infinite resources for human use and having exceeded its carrying capacity for nearly seven billion humans and counting almost exponentially, could very well become unlivable eventually with air that is un-breathable, with soaring temperatures that are unbearable, with water that is undrinkable, with food that is toxic, and with no oil to lubricate and combust. Before those extreme conditions would happen there very likely would be an outbreak of \u201cresource wars.\u201d9<\/a><\/sup> And we can \u201cdepend\u201d on our military being in the thick of it.<\/li>\n
  2. Genetic Engineering<\/strong>. The military has discovered that it could make its arsenal of biological weapons more effective by genetically altering them.10<\/a><\/sup> Since there are very few natural pathogens that lend themselves to biological warfare, the genetic engineering of unnatural pathogens is where the military is apparently staking its future in remaining a superpower and threat to uncooperative nations. The military\u2019s secretive research arm, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency), has launched an expensive program called \u201cLiving Foundaries,\u201d a misleadingly innocent name if there ever were one. \u201cThink of it,\u201d says journalist and editor Katie Drummond, \u201clike an assembly line, but one that would churn out modified biological matter \u2014 man-made organisms \u2014 instead of cars or computer parts.\u201d11<\/a><\/sup> Just think, too, of what might happen if a psychopathic warrior-in-chief, unrestrained military and political advisors, and mad scientists all came together to plot and unleash an explosion of unnatural pathogens on their adversaries. Can\u2019t you just picture it sometime in the future; our one-eyed, two-headed, three-legged species walking down the street, if any streets are left?<\/li>\n
  3. Manufactured Plague<\/strong>. The recent scare of a spreading Ebola epidemic has heightened concerns about biological warfare and Ebola terrorism in particular. \u00a0A journalist writing in Scientific American<\/em> reports that \u201cNational security and infectious disease experts agree the obstacles to a large-scale assault with Ebola are formidable.\u201d \u00a0She concludes that \u201c\u2014the possibility of rogue organizations sowing this terror on a similar scale seems largely out of reach.\u201d12<\/a><\/sup> But the journalist and the experts may be too sanguine. Several readers using their imagination in commenting on the article described some very plausible and easy ways for suicide carriers of Ebola to \u201ccarry\u201d it to populated areas.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That journalist, moreover, apparently was not referring to any \u201crogue organizations\u201d in America deliberately manufacturing a plague in various parts of the world. If the following news item is authentic, there should never be any doubt about how fiendish an American regime can be. Dr. Cyril Broderick, a Liberian scientist and a former professor of Plant Pathology at the University of Liberia\u2019s College of Agriculture and Forestry, claims that the US Department of Defense had been funding Ebola trials on humans in Guinea and Sierra Leone just weeks before the Ebola outbreaks there.13<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Nuclear Armageddon<\/strong>. It may someday be a reality, not just a scriptural prophecy. Humanity has had the capacity for total self-destruction ever since Real America introduced nuclear bombs to the world. Armageddon could happen by accident rather than by intent, and there have indeed been several \u201cnear misses.\u201d14<\/a><\/sup> Or it could easily happen if there were escalating blowbacks or confrontations among one or more warriors-in-chief and one of them had the mentality of the late General Curtis Lemay, who seriously proposed dropping \u201cthe entire stockpile of atomic bombs in a single massive attack\u201d on the Soviet Union during the cold war.15<\/a><\/sup><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Nine countries thereabout currently possess nuclear weapons.16<\/a><\/sup> Not all of them have signed a treaty agreeing to discontinue expanding their nuclear weapon capability. The U.S. has the most adversarial relations with three of those nations, China, North Korean, and Russia. Sometimes the disputes become overheated and high-level warnings by one or both parties are issued. Whether these verbal exchanges would ever culminate in an exchange of nuclear bombs hurling back and forth remains to be seen. Some pundits argue that U.S. militarism is heading it toward WWIII, and an international group of world renowned scientists has moved their \u201cdoomsday clock\u201d from five minutes to three minutes until midnight doom.17<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

      An Alternative: Alter America<\/strong><\/p>\n

      That clock can be stopped. None of the foregoing scenarios is inevitable. A very different \u201cAlter America\u201d without the corpocracy and without the sadtistics can be built. For several years now I have been making detailed proposals toward that end.18<\/a><\/sup> Nothing has come of them. Neither though, has much happened of any significance nationwide to begin reversing the sadtistics. And nothing but continued deterioration toward an abysmal future will come out of the general election of 2016; the twin parties are the two sides of the same corrupted coin. Consequently, I will briefly sketch in the remainder of this article a revised initiative, one that I will call here the \u201cAlter America\u201d campaign.<\/p>\n

      For the campaign to be successful there must be a shared vision; leadership in the form of stewardship; an organized and strategically guided effort with follow through; and a mobilization of public support.<\/p>\n

      (i) Shared Vision<\/strong><\/p>\n

      To Einstein imagination was more important in life than knowledge. Knowledge is limited to an understanding of what already exists. Imagination is an envisioning of an Alter America with the following attributes:<\/p>\n