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old america...
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You may not know it, but America is run by OLD PEOPLE.
Not all senators and Congress representatives are old, but they all come under the spell of the old charming PELOSI woman. She controls the loot. Even Biden cannot escape her clutches and she is the one who is making political prisoners squirm, hidden away from the media. Pelosi is the female who keeps torturing Trump publicly about the 6th of January. Trump is an OLD nobody these days who can do nothing against the vengeful witch.
And there, in the balance of power, there is the Old Dianne FEINSTEIN… Her cognitive abilities “are in decline”, we are told. In my days, old people were sent to one of the corner of the dinning room, next to the fireplace, in a rocking chair with a blanket on their knees. Fed with homemade pear brandy, the old folks would soon fall asleep, and you hoped they would not fall into the slowly cindering fire.
And I am not the only one thinking America is run by OLD people…
Yes, the old people can smell of wisdom and of unrestrained farts, like OLD Joe Biden sitting downwind from Camilla in Glasgow (she could hear the winds), but this isn’t good news for the future. Old people can say a lot of good/bad things, including pontificating crap, and achieve nothing because of their physical shape. I know. I have problems trying to open jars. I have shrunk 5.2 centimetres since my heydays riding a horse. I walk at a pace that would not win a race against a walking stick. I used to lift 100 kgs of potatoes (or someone looking like a potato bag), above my head, but these days, if I lift a 12.35 kgs bag of manure for the garden, my back goes into a spasm of arthritic lockdown... Even a full kettle demands high concentration as not to spill the hot content on my dicky knees.
My brains and ideas are actually more manageable: there are less of them. When I was young, a great number of genius-like thoughts would cram inside my pigeon-loft… Nowadays, I need to fossick through the ruins of my neurons to find one ordinary thingy...
So there, America is run by old people:
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is in the spotlight following a New Yorker report about internal concerns over her apparent cognitive decline. The story relies primarily on the testimony of sources on background, who spoke “with respect for her accomplished career” but believe “her short-term memory has grown so poor that she often forgets she has been briefed on a topic.”
Earlier this year, the California senator received backlash from progressives over her handling of far right Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s Senate confirmation hearing, and now faces scrutiny for an entirely different reason. As a result, Feinstein, who is the oldest sitting U.S. Senator at 87 years old, was reportedly asked twice by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to step down from her leadership position on the Judiciary Committee following Barrett's confirmation, but she forgot their first exchange, sources said.
Those familiar with her situation also told the New Yorker's Jane Mayer that Feinstein will forget “what she has said and [get] upset when she can’t keep up,” and while she seems herself at times, her staff added she is at “other times unreachable.” As one former Senate aide told Mayer, “The staff is in such a bad position. They have to defend her and make her seem normal.”
These comments paired with her recent stumble while questioning Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey during a Senate hearing last month — Feinstein posed the same question twice in a row — have many discussing whether it’s time for the Senator to step down altogether. But Congress’s aging problem isn’t really about Feinstein at all — it's not even really about her age, either. Rather, there is a long history of political leaders in U.S. government who outlasted their time.
Former South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, who served to age 100, was described as confused and unable to adequately perform his duties by the end of his term. Meanwhile, former Arizona Sen. John McCain, who served until age 81, struggled during his questioning of former FBI director James Comey during the 2016 investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. McCain went on to receive praise as an anti-Trump hero. Until her recent death in September, the entire fate of American democracy rested on 87-year-old former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who remained on the court through her battle with metastatic pancreatic cancer.
From the halls of Congress, to the White House, to the Supreme Court, some of the highest positions in U.S. government are held by people in their 70s and older. The core problem isn’t necessarily about age, either. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who both ran for president in the 2020 election, have arguably remained impassioned advocates for working class Americans, even at ages 71 and 79 respectively. Still, it is essential to recognize when our representatives can no longer effectively do their jobs, especially when those jobs include leading accountability hearings in the Congress and negotiating legislation that millions of people depend on.
But such a reckoning would also require a larger cultural conversation about Americans working while sick, and the fact that public health isn't typically treated as a priority by political officials. Look no further than the federal government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, as millions of people are forced to choose between going to work to make ends meet, and staying home as the deadly virus surges across the country. Such a change in work culture would also require an overhaul of the systems and policies that prevent people from leaving work due to illness. An October report from Robert Half found that 90% of American workers go to work while sick, either due to pressure from a boss or because they can’t afford not to.
“Our culture is reflected and reinforced by public policy,” Caitlyn Collins, an assistant professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis told the Washington Post in 2016. “We are the only industrialized country with no federally mandated paid sick days. When the federal government tells you that you have no right to sick days, they’re telling you that you have no right to self-care or to care for loved ones.”
And while most Americans don’t have a choice of whether or not to continue working — even through illness, age, or other conditions — there is an urgent need for change to the seniority system in Congress. Senior officials who hold some of the most important positions in government need to step down when they are dealing with, as Mayer describes, “disruptive health problems that clearly [undermine] the Senate’s ability to function.”
So rather than merely call out Feinstein, who very well may have outlasted the appropriate amount of time in the Senate, let's point to all the other leaders — current and past — who have done the same. Whether it be due to age, mental decline, or just an inability to represent the needs of their constituency, the crisis in American leadership is not relegated to Dianne Feinstein — it's much deeper, widespread, and deserving of real attention and action.
Read more: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/12/10220573/dianne-feinstein-age-congress-health-controversy
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- By Gus Leonisky at 11 Nov 2021 - 5:17pm
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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an old president...
President Biden will undergo a physical examination soon but no specific date has been set, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a news briefing Thursday.
Video from the briefing shows Psaki fielding questions from Playboy reporter Brian Karem as she donned a face mask and prepared to leave the White House briefing room after a session with a roomful of journalists.
"Hey Jen, will he take a physical anytime soon and report it to the American public?" Karem asked about Biden, who will turn 79 years old Nov. 20 and is the oldest man ever to serve in the Oval Office.
Read more: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-79-physical-exam-soon-psaki
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it was not an old hat...
BY Derek Thompson — a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he writes about economics, technology, and the media. He is the author of Hit Makers and the host of the podcast Crazy/Genius.
MARCH 5, 2020
When Joe Biden climbed to the stage in California to celebrate his Super Tuesday comeback in the Democratic primary, three things happened in a matter of minutes. He basked in the thunderous applause from the crowd. He mistook his wife for his sister. And he delivered the sort of confusing, intermittently slurry, and occasionally indecipherable oration that has defined so many of his recent public appearances.
One might expect a typical opponent to seize on these verbal slips by questioning whether Biden, who is 77, is too old to hack it. But his rival Bernie Sanders, who has already suffered a heart attack during this campaign, is a year older. In January 2021, the three people most likely to be the next president—Biden, Sanders, and the incumbent, Donald Trump—would each be the oldest president to ever give an inaugural address in American history.
We have now before us three candidates divided by ideology, but united in dotage. All three white men were born in the 1940s, before the invention of Velcro and the independence of India and Israel. Amazingly, each is currently older than any of the past three U.S. presidents. If, through some constitutional glitch, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama jumped into the 2020 race at this very moment, each would suddenly become the youngest man in the contest.
How did this happen?
One possibility is that it’s mere randomness. It’s only one election that’s been roiled by Trump, you might think, and younger blood is waiting in the wings. But old age runs deep in modern presidential politics. Elizabeth Warren would also be the oldest president-elect in American history. The losers of the past two presidential elections, Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton, were born months apart in 1947.
The mystery of America’s old presidential candidates is really two separate questions—one of demand, and one of supply. First, are there reasons today’s voters might prefer older candidates to younger ones? And second, why is the pipeline of viable presidential candidates so advanced in years?
The most obvious reason America’s presidential candidates are so old might be that Americans are getting older. Voters over 65 routinely go to the polls more often than young voters do, and political-science research has found that voters typically prefer candidates “who are closest to themselves in age.” This sounds like a universal formula: Older countries produce older politicians.
But since the 1980s, almost every European country has gotten older, while the typical European Union leader has actually gotten younger. In the United Kingdom, although people over 55 outvote people under 30 by one of the widest margins in the world, the current prime minister, Boris Johnson, is “only” 55. Biden, Sanders, and Trump are all older right now than the U.K.’s five previous prime ministers, going back to Tony Blair.
So the preference for very old candidates seems to be weirdly, specifically American. What’s that about?
Read more:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/why-are-these-people-so-freaking-old/607492/
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At least Joe did not mistake his wife for a hat...
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presidential moribundity...
BY Vladimir Odintsov
A year ago, a provisional count of US presidential election results identified Democrat Joe Biden as the winner, promising “massive construction and record investment at home, as well as a big American comeback on the international scene.”
Although Joe Biden emphasized his political experience during the campaign, he has been constantly haunted by setbacks in the months since coming to the White House. Those setbacks apply to the country’s stalled pandemic coronavirus vaccination; in addition, some areas of the US have been hit hard by a Covid-19 strain called Delta. Then there was Afghanistan when the White House underestimated the potential of the Taliban (a formation banned in the Russian Federation), which led to the chaotic and disgraceful withdrawal of American troops from Kabul in August. As for Taiwan, Biden has further strained relations with China by stating the US intention to defend the island militarily if necessary. In addition, Biden managed to provoke a diplomatic crisis with France, America’s oldest ally, by concluding the AUKUS military pact, which meant canceling a deal to build French submarines for Australia.
Now, as it turns out, Biden is failing to unite even his own party in Congress, European media noted. Moreover, the time slot for significant accomplishments seems about to close. Because if Democrats want to get anywhere after the 2022 mid-term elections, Joe Biden’s presidency needs to start recording victories, not missteps and miscalculations, as soon as possible. If the Democrats lose their majority in the House in 2022, Biden could be a lame duck.
Biden’s apparent policy failures are also pointed out by Germany’s Die Welt, noting that failures in the fight against the pandemic, the lack of a clear strategy on China, chaos in Congress, and the crisis on the border with Mexico have brought down the politician’s rating.
As a result of the current Administration’s failed policies on many fronts, Biden’s approval rating, from 57% when he took office, has begun to plummet in recent months. Judging by the latest opinion polls, only 38% of the population supports the current US President. According to the poll, 64 percent of respondents said they do not want the president to launch a bid for reelection, including 28 percent of Democrats, writes The Hill. A similar drop in Biden’s rating was confirmed by Gallup research and the results of a USA Today and Suffolk University poll.
As many analysts point out, the Democrats’ defeat in regional elections in several US states also resulted from Joe Biden’s critical fall in the ratings because he failed in economic and social policies. The most intriguing struggle was in Virginia, where various cultural controversies escalated in the months before the election, and Biden also lost: a Republican was elected governor of the state. The election outcome in Virginia is a sign that “A significant portion of the electorate is not ready to continue to tolerate the party’s turn to the left,” warns the New York Times Opinion Section.
Four anti-Biden ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ songs reach iTunes top 10, writes The Washington Times. All songs are called Let’s Go Brandon turning the phrase into a euphemism for all opponents of a sitting president after an NBC reporter at a race event failed to hear the crowd chant “F*ck Joe Biden.”
America’s position as a reliable ally has weakened markedly in the world. And, ultimately, the blame for the failures lies with the president, concludes The New York Times. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates hit the mark in 2014 when he said Biden was repeatedly wrong in making crucial foreign policy and national security decisions, the publication adds, describing the current US President.
Under the above conditions, as Newsweek notes, former US President Donald Trump has a good chance of taking revenge against Joe Biden in the 2024 election. Trump is supported by 45 percent of registered voters while Biden is backed by just 43 percent, the latest Emerson survey data shows. US President Joe Biden has senile dementia and is so wildly unpopular as to increase Donald Trump’s chances of re-election, Steve Hilton, a former political strategist for former British Prime Minister David Cameron, told The Daily Telegraph As The Daily Telegraph recalls, at a climate conference in Glasgow, the 78-year-old Biden, the oldest president in US history, apparently fell asleep. There have previously been concerns about Biden’s mental health and even physical abilities, as he often confuses and forgets names.
As for the possible consequences if Trump replaces Biden, the Former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill suggested that Donald Trump’s “populist” rise to power could lead to an explosive situation and civil violence in the country.
It should be recalled that when Donald Trump was the American President, Joe Biden criticized him just about every step of the way. Today, they have switched places, and all the criticism is already going to Biden, who has taken over the presidency. Thus, when Trump was recently asked on Fox News to evaluate the current administration’s performance, the former president did not hold back, calling Biden’s presidency the worst in American history, grading his performance an F.
Biden was hard to call the obvious leader of the US Democratic Party from the beginning. His candidacy was more likely the result of collaboration among Democrats: a familiar and predictable enough figure to suit different pressure groups equally and help defeat Trump, the Republican head of state with no alternative. However, it turns out that this “compromise” president still does not receive unanimous support even within his own party.
In addition, many Americans do not consider Biden to be a legitimate president: nearly one in three believe that Trump won the 2020 election, which means that liars and enemies of democracy are in power in the country. Hence the degree of hatred at the anti-Biden rallies: the participants holding Fuck Joe Biden banners echo the attitude that the liberal part of the country had exhibited for all four years when the Republican was President.
President Biden’s first year in office isn’t over yet, but it is already doubtful that he will be the leader of America that will lead a split nation to reunification. The split continues to worsen, showing that ordinary Americans are already tired of both Trump and Biden’s clownery, which only leads to the deterioration of the country’s social condition and confrontation with more and more of the world’s leading nations. However, even experts do not know how the USA will deal with this crisis.
Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Read more: https://journal-neo.org/2021/11/12/america-wants-neither-biden-nor-trump/
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a geriatric ward...
US President Joe Biden intends to run for re-election in 2024, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki has told reporters.
Mr Biden, 79, has suffered a dip in his job approval ratings in recent months, leading some Democrats to wonder whether he might not seek another four-year term.
“He is. That’s his intention,” Ms Psaki said on Monday as Biden flew aboard Air Force One for a Thanksgiving event with US troops in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Democrats were rattled by Republican victories in Virginia’s state elections earlier this month and a narrow Democratic victory in New Jersey.
Questions have arisen about the viability of Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 should Mr Biden decide not to run again.
A recent USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll found her with a 28 per cent job approval rating.
Mr Biden underwent his first physical examination on Friday since taking office in January and doctors found he has a stiffened gait and attributed frequent bouts of coughing to acid reflux. Doctors said he was fit to serve.
Mr Biden’s political prospects appeared to have been buoyed last week by congressional passage of a $US1 trillion ($1.4 trillion) infrastructure plan.
Still being debated is another $US2 trillion ($2.8 trillion) in spending on a social safety net package.
Read more:
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/us-news/2021/11/23/joe-biden-run-again-2024/
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oh boy!...
Polling institute director, Douglas E. Schoen, published a column in the Wall Street Journal conjecturing about Hillary Clinton’s return on the political scene [1].
The idea is that 79-year-old President Joe Biden, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, will not be able to run again and that his vice-president, Kamala Harris, has no chance of winning, and neither would Sen. Bernie Sanders (80, heart disease) or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (81). The way is therefore open for the wife of former President Bill Clinton and the former Secretary of State (74).
With former President Donald Trump hinting this weekend that he could also run again, we might be seeing a new Clinton-Trump duel in 2024.
Read more:
https://www.voltairenet.org/article215407.html
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fading feinstein….
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is the oldest member of the United States Senate and has faced questions about her mental health in the past.
A San Francisco Chronicle investigation has revealed that lawmakers and staffers close to Sen. Dianne Feinstein are fearing that she is losing her mental facilities, raising concerns that the lawmaker is unable to effectively carry out the responsibilities of her job.
The lawmakers and staffers would only speak to the Chronicle on the condition of anonymity, but they said of the four senators they spoke to, three are Democrats, and everyone who expressed concerns said doing so was painful because of the respect they have for the senator and her career.
While the sources say that some days she is as sharp as she has ever been, other days are extremely difficult for the people around her, and presumably the senator herself.
Colleagues who have known her for years have to introduce themselves to Feinstein, who is 88, before starting conversations, the report details, noting that the senator often repeats questions without any apparent recollection that she already asked them. The California lawmaker who spoke to the Chronicle said officials became so concerned that they have had conversations with other lawmakers about holding an intervention to get Feinstein to resign.
READ MORE:
https://sputniknews.com/20220415/its-bad-and-getting-worse-fellow-dems-voice-concerns-over-dianne-feinsteins-job-performance-1094772989.html
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hunger is not a game…...
Adult members of Generation Z are experiencing food insecurity at over twice the rate of the average American, according to our latest consumer food survey. In fact, about 1-in-3 Americans born from 1996-2004 have had trouble affording enough food in 2022.
That compares with fewer than 1-in-5 millennials and members of Generation X, and fewer than 1-in-10 baby boomers.
We run the Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability at Purdue University, and every month, through our Consumer Food Insights survey, we query over 1,200 Americans with the goal of tracking national food security as well as many other behaviors, attitudes and preferences related to food.
Food insecurity means having a lack of money or other resources for food. And when food insecurity surges, it can take a long time for affected populations to recover. After the Great Recession that ran from 2007 to 2009, food insecurity increased by 34 percent. It took a decade for food insecurity to drop to its pre-recession levels.
READ MORE:
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/08/10/young-americans-who-go-hungry/
MEANWHILE:
The Decline and Fall of Everything (Including Me)What Goes Up Must… Well, You Know…
BY TOM ENGELHARDTI find nothing strange in Joe Biden, at 79 (going on 80), being the oldest president in our history and possibly planning to run again in 2024. After all, who wouldn’t want to end up in the record books? Were he to be nominated and then beat the also-aging Donald Trump, or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, or even Fox News’s eternally popular Tucker Carlson, he would occupy the White House until he was 86.
Honestly, wouldn’t that be perfect in its own way? I mean, what could better fit an America in decline than a president in decline, the more radically so the better?
Okay, maybe, despite the Republican National Committee’s clip on the subject, when Joe Biden had to be guided to that red carpet in Israel, it wasn’t because he was an increasingly doddering old guy. Still…
I mean, I get it. I really do. After all, I just turned 78 myself, which leaves me only a year and four months behind Joe Biden in the aging sweepstakes. And believe me, when you reach anything close to our age, whatever White House spokespeople might say, decline becomes second nature to you. In fact, I’m right with Joe on that carpet whenever someone brings up a movie I saw or book I read years ago (or was it last month?) and I can’t remember a damn thing about it. I say to any of you of a certain age, Joe included: Welcome to the club!
It’s strange, if not eerie, to be living through the decline of my country — the once “sole superpower” on Planet Earth — in the very years of my own decline (even if Fox News isn’t picking on me). Given the things I’m now forgetting, there’s something spookily familiar about the decline-and-fall script in the history I do recall. As Joe and his top officials do their best to live life to the fullest by working to recreate a three-decades-gone Cold War, even as this country begins to come apart at the seams, all I can say is: welcome to an ever lousier version of the past (just in case you’re too young to have lived it).
Since the disappearance of the Neanderthals and the arrival of us, tell me that decline hasn’t been among the most basic stories in history. After all, every child knows that what goes up, must… I don’t even have to complete that sentence, do I, whatever your age? Thought of a certain way, decline and fall is the second oldest story around, after the rise and… whatever you want to call it.
Just ask the last emperors of China’s Han dynasty, or the once-upon-a-time rulers of Sparta, or Romulus Augustulus, the last head of the Roman Empire (thanks a lot, Nero!). But here, in the third decade of the twenty-first century, that ancient tale has a brand-new twist. After all that time when humanity, in its own bloody, brutal fashion, flourished, whether you want to talk about the loss of species, the destruction of the environment, or ever more horrific weather disasters arriving ever more quickly, it’s not just the United States (or me) going down… it’s everything. And don’t think that doesn’t include China, the supposedly rising power on Planet Earth. It also happens to be releasing far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any other country right now and suffering accordingly (even if the falling power of this moment, the United States, remains safely in first place as the worst carbon emitter of all time).
So, unless we humans can alter our behavior fast, it looks like only half our story may soon be left for the telling.
The Rise and Fall of Tom Engelhardt (and So Much Else)
To speak personally, I find myself experiencing three versions of that ultimate story: that of my own fall; that of my country; and that of an increasingly overheating planet as a habitable place for us all. With that in mind, let me take you on a brief trip through those three strangely intertwined tales, starting with me.
I was born in July 1944 into an America that had been roused from a grotesque depression, the “Great” one as it was known, and was then being transformed into a first-rate military and economic powerhouse by World War II. (My father was in that war as, in her own fashion, was my mother.) That global conflict, which mobilized the nation in every way, wouldn’t end until, more than a year later, two American B-29s dropped newly invented weapons of disastrous destructive power, atomic bombs, on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more or less obliterating them. In those acts, for the first time in history, lay the promise of an ultimate end to the human story of a sort once left to the gods. In other words, V-J (or Victory over Japan) Day instantly had an underside that couldn’t have been more ominous.
I was born, then, into a newly minted imperial power already exhibiting an unparalleled global punch. Soon, it would face off in a planet-wide struggle, initially focused on the Eurasian continent, against another superpower-in-the making, the Soviet Union (and its newly communized Chinese ally). That would, of course, be the not-quite-world war (thanks to the threat of those nuclear weapons, multiplied and improved many times over) that we came to call the Cold War. In it, what was then known as the “free world” — although significant parts of it were anything but “free” and the U.S. often worked its wiles to make other parts ever less so — was set against the communized “slave” version of the same.
In the United States, despite fears of a nuclear conflict that left children like me “ducking and covering” under our school desks, Americans experienced the hottest economy imaginable. In the process, an ever wealthier society was transformed from a good one into — as President Lyndon Johnson dubbed it in 1964 — the Great Society. Despite “red scares” and the like, it was one that would indeed prove better for many Americans, including Blacks in the wake of a Civil Rights Movement that finally ended the Jim Crow system of segregation that had succeeded slavery.
In the process, the U.S. developed a global system around what was then called the “Iron Curtain,” the lands the Soviet Union controlled. It would be anchored by military bases on every continent but Antarctica and alliances of every sort from NATO in Europe to SEATO in Southeast Asia, as well as secretive CIA operations across much of the globe.
As for me, I, too, was still rising (though sometimes, as in the Vietnam years, in full-scale protest against what my country was doing in the world), first as a journalist, then as an editor in publishing. I even wrote a version of the history of my times in a book I called The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation. Little did I know then quite how disillusioning the world we were creating would turn out to be. Meanwhile, in the 1980s and ’90s, during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, during what came to be known as the neoliberal moment, another kind of rise became more evident domestically. It was of a kind of corporate wealth and power, as well as a growing inequality, previously unknown in my lifetime.
In 1991, when I was 47 years old, the Cold War suddenly ended. In 1989, the Red Army had limped home from a decade-long disastrous war in Afghanistan (from which, of course, Washington would turn out to learn absolutely nothing) and the Soviet Union soon imploded. Miracle of miracles, after nearly half a century, the United States was left alone and seemingly victorious, “the sole superpower” on Planet Earth.
The former bipolar world order was no more and, in the phrase of conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, we were now in “the unipolar moment.” Uni because there was only one power that mattered left on this planet. Admittedly, Krauthammer didn’t expect that uni-ness to last long, but too many politicians in Washington felt differently. As it turned out, the top officials in the administrations of Bush the elder and then Bush the younger had every intention of turning that moment of unparalleled global triumph into a forever reality. What followed were wars, invasions, and conflicts of every sort meant to cement the global order, starting with President George H.W. Bush’s Operation Desert Storm against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991, which (sadly enough) came to be known as the first Gulf War.
Hence, too, the missing “peace dividend” that had been promised domestically as the Cold War ended. Hence, too, after “peace” arrived came the never-ending urge to pour yet more taxpayer dollars into the Pentagon, into a “defense” budget beyond compare, and into the weapons-making corporations of the military-industrial complex, no matter what the U.S. military was actually capable of accomplishing.
All of this was to be the global legacy of that sole superpower, as its leaders worked to ensure that this country would remain so until the end of time. A decade into that process, horrified by the response of Bush the younger and his top officials to the 9/11 attacks, I created TomDispatch, the website that would see me through my own years of decline.
Bankruptcy, Inc.
Keep in mind that, in those years of supposed triumph, the third decline-and-fall story was just beginning to gain momentum. We now know that climate change was first brought to the attention of an American president, Lyndon Johnson, by a science advisory committee in 1965. In 1977, Jimmy Carter, who two years later would put solar panels on the White House (only to have them removed in 1986 by Ronald Reagan), was warned by his chief science adviser of the possibility of “catastrophic climate change.” And yet, in all the years that followed, remarkably little was done by the sole superpower, though President Barack Obama did play a key role in negotiating the Paris Climate agreement (from which Donald Trump would dramatically withdraw this country).
In its own fashion, Trump’s victory in 2016 summed up the fate of the unipolar moment. His triumph represented a cry of pain and protest over a society that had gone from “great” to something far grimmer in the lifetime of so many Americans, one that would leave them as apprentices on what increasingly looked like a trip to hell.
That narcissistic billionaire, ultimate grifter, and dysfunctional human being somehow lived through bankruptcy after bankruptcy only to emerge at the top of the heap. He couldn’t have been a more appropriate symptom and symbol of troubled times, of decline — and anger over it. It wasn’t a coincidence, after all, that the candidate with the slogan Make America Great Again won that election. Unlike other politicians of that moment, he was willing to admit that, for so many Americans, this country had become anything but great.
Donald Trump would, of course, preside over both greater domestic inequality and further global decline. Worse yet, he would preside over a global power (no longer “sole” with the rise of China) that wasn’t declining on its own. By then, the planet was in descent as well. The American military would also continue to demonstrate that it was incapable of winning, that there would never again be the equivalent of V-J Day.
Meanwhile, the political elite was shattering in striking ways. One party, the Republicans, would be in almost total denial about the very nature of the world we now find ourselves in — a fate that, in ordinary times, might have proven bad news for them. In our moment, however, it only strengthened the possibility of a catastrophe for the rest of us, especially the youngest among us.
And yes, recently West Virginia coal magnate Joe Manchin finally came around (in return for a barrel full of favors for his major donors in the oil and gas industry), but the country that created the Manhattan Project that once produced those atomic bombs is now strangely unrecognizable, even to itself. During World War II, the government had poured massive sums of money into that effort, while mobilizing large numbers of top scientists to create the nuclear weapons that would destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To this day, in fact, it still puts staggering sums and effort into “modernizing” the American nuclear arsenal.
When it comes to saving the world rather than destroying it, however, few in Washington could today even imagine creating a modern version of the Manhattan Project to figure out effective new ways of dealing with climate change. Better to launch a dreadful version of the now-ancient Cold War than deal with the true decline-and-fall situation this country, no less this civilization, faces.
Admittedly, though I recently stumbled across something I wrote in the 1990s that mentioned global warming, I only became strongly aware of the phenomenon in this century as my own decline began (almost unnoticed by me). Even when, at TomDispatch, I started writing fervently about climate change, I must admit that I didn’t initially imagine myself living through it in this fashion — as so many of us have in this globally overheated summer of 2022. Nor did I imagine that such devastating fires, floods, droughts, and storms would become “normal” in my own lifetime. Nor, I must admit, did I think then that the phenomenon might lead to a future all-too-literal end point for humanity, what some scientists are starting to term a “climate endgame” — in other words, a possible extinction event.
And yet here we are, in a democratic system under unbelievable stress, in a country with a gigantic military (backed by a corporate weapons-making complex of almost imaginable size and power) that’s proven incapable of winning anything of significance, even if funded in a fashion that once might have been hard to imagine in actual wartime. In a sense, its only “success” might lie its remarkable ability to further fossil-fuelize the world. In other words, we now live in an America coming apart at the seams at a moment when the oldest story in human history might be changing, as we face the potential decline and fall of everything.
One thing is certain: as with all of us, when it comes to my personal story, there’s no turning around my own decline and fall. When it comes to our country and the world, however, the end of the story has yet to be written. The question is: Will we find some way to write it that won’t end in the fall not just of this imperial power but of humanity itself?
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, and Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars: The Untold Story.
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Yes, we are old kooks in decline, but I know some young people who never made it into our rarified stratosphere of asking youthful questions. Despite what we've done and what we're doing to the planet, the future will continue in whatever format.... One of my large most famous painting (amongst my friends), expresses this premise that we're passing and will be replaced by others who will do their own things, either in accordance with the "system" or not. The ball keeps rolling...
In consumerism sickness…..., our own obsolescence is shown to be used to promote change via consumerism that can delay our decline into staleness or senility. It's the shock and excitement of the new and of the better (when it is not crass-degenerated)... Yet hunger is not a game. So some people will find a way to go around the systemic failure that gives them stomach pains — some designed by our liars in chief, others by accidental change and some by natural decay — like our arthritic joints.
But I still hope to see more stuff and contribute to the general cacophony. I know some young people who have dementia... This is the time when our mind has lost the ability to ask questions and regress into nothingness before time. Sad and challenging for those around.... In regard to Jo Biden, he's going gaga....
I hope to ask a lot more questions — whether there are answers or not.
GusNote: it was Benjamin Franklin who said: "Eat to live, and not live to eat. ... mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eat about twice as much as nature requires." Yet the pleasure of good food should not be denied as long as we eat in moderation.... Happy cooking.
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