Reply #5: You make extremely valid points. It is implicit in Jungian psychology... [View All]

that dreams (and especially children's dreams) are important clues to the future, and by the very nature of childhood, children are in much closer touch with their dreams than adults are. Thus -- in Jungian terms -- children's dreams and overall behavior as a collective compass: which means the behavior you describe is ominous indeed.

Nor are your concerns isolated.

One of the major newspapers -- I believe The Washington Post -- ran a series last spring focusing on the wildly varying expectations within several generations of the same family. The elders -- people who had come of age during the Depression and the New Deal -- had been superbly optimistic all their lives. The children were not only pessimistic but bottomlessly so: "unless you're rich -- and we're not -- there's no hope: life will only get worse -- much worse."

Thus it's not that we "will be a Third World country." We already are: not only psychologically (as proven by observations such as yours and The Post's), but also economically -- as undeniably (and horrifically) demonstrated by the aftermath of Katrina.

This is why -- as John Edwards says -- it is so vital we restore the New Deal. The elections of 2006 and 2008 are literally our last chance to rescue American liberty -- and save ourselves from serfdom.