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LadyEllen -> RE: Russian professor predicted 2010 demise of US (1/2/2009 7:21:01 AM)
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The map thing is a little whacky, but the guy has a point as long as we dispose of the geography and transfer his ideas to demography instead.
The US (and the UK for that matter) is being undermined and its being- insomuch as it arises from its people rather than its territory - is at risk of disintegration. Our Russian friend points this out in his comments about immigration, economic woes and moral degradation which have already brought disunity, loss of national ideation and belief and widening socio-economic gaps between individuals, groups and states.
We are not likely to see the sort of map proposed, but we are likely to see these negative traits enhanced and deepened, with the end result being a demise of the US every bit as dramatic in that its people will no longer see themselves as Americans but rather describe themselves according to ethnic, socio-economic or geographic denominators. And once such division is in place, without the glue of a common national identity, the prospects for unrest between groups described by such denominators become far higher.
However this is not a doom to which we are necessarily condemned any longer, as we most certainly might have been without the sharp arrest we have experienced economically in the last year. Whilst these present conditions and what shall be announced shortly about the situation do not bode well for us in the short to medium term, they represent an opportunity in the medium-long term to get back on track not only economically, but individually, socially and nationally.
In this, leadership of the highest calibre will be required, to make us all understand that there is no such thing as an easy life, that our success is directly related to the success of our neighbour and to the aspiration and application of all according to their capacities and inclinations, and that the continued celebration of the easy dollar and the betrayal of one's neighbour and one's country that this so often means be replaced with the promotion of the excellent and the seeking of new heights of achievement at home which builds more reliable wealth albeit over a longer period. And from that we must replace the notion that quick profit and rapacious greed are the co-arbiters of excellence and achievement.
But to do that requires first the restoration of national identity - not in some high blown patriotic jingosim but in the recognition that we are all in this together and each a part of a whole. Most especially, the likes of the rich and powerful need to understand this the most, and it must be a culture wide phenomenon embracing the media, the home, the workplace and the social sphere such that everyone is playing for the team and the star players most especially know that their star status is nothing without the rest.
Our problems as they stand are as described by our Russian friend; immigration without integration, economic woes brought about by the short term thinking represented by outsourcing alongside low cost immigrant labour and a financial sector out of control, moral degradation - not in some religious way but rather in our notion that we ought to aspire to the unthinking decadence of the consumer culture, financed not by our own toil, achievement and investment but by easy credit.
So, I rather see this prediction - and it applies equally to the UK - as a warning and a wake up call, to end what is left of the ways that have obtained these last years (and we might trace these ways to the early 80s as easily as the late 90s), and replace them with ways not as attractive perhaps but certainly more realistic, and so avert the explosion of the timebomb ticking in our midst.
E
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