It Can't Happen Here

Current events, politics and economics point toward dangerous instability for our Republic. We need to look forward in the world's new conditions, rather than hold on to failed ideas and policies.The existing finance/tax code rule set is wrecking our long-term real wealth in favor of evanescent paper profits, and worse yet, stripping the poor to profit the rich. In parallel, a calamitous policy that repeats the error of failed alcohol prohibition, our War on Drugs is a hundred billion dollar subsidy for the terrorists, and debases our society with a criminal money culture. These economic structures...the finance/tax/corporate globalizations, and unregulated dope billions...combine to make heartless greed ascendant. Legal or not, inhuman values permeate too much.Any democracy is far more vulnerable than most of us realize, and carries within the seeds of its own destruction. Even the original Greek version of 2500 years ago was felled by excesses of demagoguery and populism. People are easily manipulated to vote against their own interests, something Hitler proved so notoriously, but the mechanisms are active in American politics. Psychopaths, PACs, media, fanaticism, fears, ignorance and more can combine in new ways to grasp power for its own sake. Today,America's population is triple the whole world's in 500BC, a fact that should give us perspective on the accelerating complexities. But this is a country that can turn on a dime, throw off outdated habits and remake itself in a shining new image. We must change direction or fall.