Bob LORD
We’ve all seen the stats on America’s extreme inequality. Over 20 percent of our nation’s income flows to the top 1 percent. The top 1 percent’s share of our country’s wealth is approaching 40 percent. Our top 0.1 percent hold roughly the same share of our wealth as our bottom 90 percent.
All eye-popping numbers to be sure. But don’t be fooled. These numbers understate our problem. And not by just a little.
Now, as we enter the final month of the U.S. election, the expected climax to long-buried animosities is at hand. It is unlikely to be brief or decisive. The internal convulsions of the U.S. however, are one thing. But the implosion of social trust in the U.S. is radiating out, and its effects are radiating out across the globe. If the imprecarity of our times – compounded by the virus – is making us nervous and tense, it may be because we intuit that a way-of-life, a way-of-economics, too, is coming to its end.
On October 5th, The Atlantic, a pretentious American popular ‘big think’ magazine (selling 552,242 copies per issue), headlined an 8,500-word essay from the New York Times columnist and PBS NewsHour commentator David Brooks, “America Is Having a Moral Convulsion: Levels of trust in this country — in our institutions, in our politics, and in one another — are in precipitous decline.” This article documented that levels of trust in America have plunged; distrust has s
Caitlin JOHNSTONE
“We are led by the least among us – the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are led by the least among us and we do not fight back against the dehumanizing values that are handed down as control icons.”
~ Terence McKenna
Caitlin JOHNSTONE
When you look at US politics, it appears as though there are two mainstream political factions that very strongly disagree with one another. “Divided” is a word that comes up a lot. “Polarized” is another.
It is of course true that a whole lot of emotion flows between these two factions, and most of it is indeed negative. The hot topics of any given news cycle in America will typically involve more than one story pertaining to the vitriolic enmity between them.
According to the UN’s “Human Development Report 2019”, which is the latest available global information (published on 9 December 2019), the United States is the only country that ranks in the top 15 on “Human Development” in which the life expectancy at birth is now below 80.0 years.
Egon von GREYERZ
The Chinese understand the long game and they have infinite patience. They have always known that they never needed to attack the US, financially or militarily. Because China has invariably understood that the US would self-destruct.
Watching the network news on television or reading about current events in the newspapers seemingly transports one to an alternate universe where nothing seems to make sense.
This month, the US leader instructed his government to end federal training programs that stereotype and scapegoat white people for being “inherently racist” and natural-born oppressors. While a necessary first step at combatting what is essentially another form of racism, Trump’s plan falls short of addressing the problem where it matters most, at the university level.
The Washington Post was first published in 1877 and is a fine newspaper in spite of its sometimes swivel-eyed intolerance of all things Russian. Its admirable motto is ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ and it often succeeds in throwing light on domestic and international affairs that might otherwise remain shrouded in veils of official secrecy.
