American Denial: Living in a Can’t-Do Nation

from TomDispatch:



American Denial
Living in a Can’t-Do Nation

By Tom Engelhardt


Graduates of the class of 2010, I’m honored to have been asked to address you today, but I would not want to be you.

I graduated in 1966 on a gloriously sunny day; then again, it was a sunnier moment in this country. We were, after all, still surfing the crest of post-World War II American wealth and productivity. The first oil crisis of 1973 wasn’t even on the horizon. I never gave a thought to the gas I put in the tank of the used Volkswagen "bug" I bought with a friend my last year in college. In those days, the oil for that gas had probably been pumped out of an American well on land (and not dumped in the Gulf of Mexico). Gas, in any case, was dirt cheap. No one thought about it -- or Saudi Arabia (unless they were working for an oil company or the State Department).

Think of it this way: in 1966, the United States was, in your terms, China, while China was just a giant, poor country, a land of -- as the American media liked to write back then -- “blue ants.” Seventeen years earlier, it had, in the words of its leader Mao Ze-dong, “stood up” and declared itself a revolutionary people’s republic; but just a couple of years before I graduated, that country went nuts in something called the Cultural Revolution.

Back in 1966, the world was in debt to us. We were the high-tech brand you wanted to own -- unless, of course, you were a guerrilla in the jungles of Southeast Asia who held some quaint notion about having a nation of your own.

Here’s what I didn’t doubt then: that I would get a job. I didn’t spend much time thinking about my working future, because American affluence and the global dominance that went with it left me unshakably confident that, when I was ready, I would land somewhere effortlessly. The road trips of that era, the fabled counterculture, so much of daily life would be predicated on, and tied to, the country’s economic power, cheap oil, staggering productivity, and an ability to act imperially on a global stage without seeming (to us Americans at least) like an imperial entity. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175255/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_living_in_the_51st_state_%28of_denial%29___/#more (the story follows a brief intro)

people avoid science and mathematics and expect to have answers to problems in the world given on a silver platter.

that was some Truth.

Maybe there is something to that fluoride in the water????? Does it cause inaction? Paralysis of political will? Willful ignorance?

this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwVVpwBKUp0

Very edifying.

nt

during the VietNam war era

• When we allowed ourselves to be again intimidated by the RW's "Who Lost China" rhetoric of the 1950's
  
• When we continued Grad School deferments until 1968
  --- Flood of new Graduate Business Schools and new Law Schools (cheap to establish and get accredited)
  --- Flood of students for those new Graduate Business Schools and new Law Schools (easier to get good grades)
  
• When we granted critical skill deferments to unqualified teachers "teaching" in "Segregation Academies"
  

And when we rewarded investment bankers who "invented" new investment schemes better then we rewarded contributors.

And when we sat on our hands when Regan declared war on unions.

And when we deregulated the banks.

the Race began in earnest with the election of 1980.

Reagan was packaged as the common man/communicator. The gullible fell for it and swallowed all the bullshit the neocon/free market dogmatists fed them with the Reagan myth.

and I could see the unraveling of America during VietNam. That was part of the foundation for the "Reagan Revolution."

nt