Comments on: 60% of Americans say the country is on the wrong track https://www.habitablezone.com/2024/09/09/60-of-americans-say-the-country-is-on-the-wrong-track/ Tue, 12 May 2026 20:11:45 -0700 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: ER https://www.habitablezone.com/2024/09/09/60-of-americans-say-the-country-is-on-the-wrong-track/#comment-53467 ER Tue, 10 Sep 2024 05:52:09 +0000 https://www.habitablezone.com/?p=104490#comment-53467 ...the scary thing is we're still better off than most of the rest of the world! So who do you think they're going to blame? We have a growing threat of a major war, possibly thermonuclear, arising from three major trouble spots--Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the Western Pacific. We have a growing population that is consuming the planet's limited resources at an alarming rate, and polluting and devastating the natural environment. Fascism is on the rise all over the planet, and especially here in the good ole USA. Whole populations are being uprooted and are on the move. And even though we have (at least temporarily) solved the hunger crisis with advanced agricultural techniques, war and political unrest are starving millions in the third world. And then there's the climate crisis. That alone is a planet wrecker. And what is the American electorate worried about? The price of gasoline and real estate. So get rid of the SUV and buy a Fiat, dude, or better yet, move to a flat in town and ride the bus to work. America isn't without blame, either, its our appetite for drugs that is causing governments all over south and central America to fall to vicious drug lords that we our financing with our addictions, and arming with our gun sales. American meth and coke heads, pillbillys and the NRA are solely responsible for our "border crisis". Besides, its all those little brown people that are keeping our economy afloat by working for peanuts in non-union jobs "no American wants to do". Rant on, MacBuck <blockquote>This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living and hard dying… but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and rapine, culture and vice… but nobody admitted it. This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks… but nobody loved it. ,,, It was an age of freaks, monsters and grotesques. All the world was misshapen in marvelous and malevolent ways. The Classicists and Romantics who hated it were unaware of the potential greatness of the twenty-fourth century. They were blind to a cold fact of evolution . . . that progress stems from clashing merger of antagonistic extremes, out of the marriage of pinnacle freaks. Classicists and Romantics alike were unaware that the solar system was trembling on the verge of a human explosion that would transform man and make him the master of the universe. "The Stars my Destination", Alfred Bester, 1957</blockquote> …the scary thing is we’re still better off than most of the rest of the world! So who do you think they’re going to blame?

We have a growing threat of a major war, possibly thermonuclear, arising from three major trouble spots–Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the Western Pacific. We have a growing population that is consuming the planet’s limited resources at an alarming rate, and polluting and devastating the natural environment. Fascism is on the rise all over the planet, and especially here in the good ole USA. Whole populations are being uprooted and are on the move. And even though we have (at least temporarily) solved the hunger crisis with advanced agricultural techniques, war and political unrest are starving millions in the third world.

And then there’s the climate crisis. That alone is a planet wrecker.

And what is the American electorate worried about? The price of gasoline and real estate. So get rid of the SUV and buy a Fiat, dude, or better yet, move to a flat in town and ride the bus to work.

America isn’t without blame, either, its our appetite for drugs that is causing governments all over south and central America to fall to vicious drug lords that we our financing with our addictions, and arming with our gun sales. American meth and coke heads, pillbillys and the NRA are solely responsible for our “border crisis”. Besides, its all those little brown people that are keeping our economy afloat by working for peanuts in non-union jobs “no American wants to do”.

Rant on, MacBuck

This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living and hard dying… but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and rapine, culture and vice… but nobody admitted it. This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks… but nobody loved it.

,,,

It was an age of freaks, monsters and grotesques. All the world was misshapen in marvelous and malevolent ways. The Classicists and Romantics who hated it were unaware of the potential greatness of the twenty-fourth century. They were blind to a cold fact of evolution . . . that progress stems from clashing merger of antagonistic extremes, out of the marriage of pinnacle freaks. Classicists and Romantics alike were unaware that the solar system was trembling on the verge of a human explosion that would transform man and make him the master of the universe.

“The Stars my Destination”, Alfred Bester, 1957

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