Euro Versus Dollar

PART 1 of why reserve currencies are now fighting to the death. The road that led to Washington's attempt to slow down USA's collapse by collapsing a rival for reserve currency



It appears that the American regime believes that its geopolitical survival through postponement of structural economic collapse depends on collapse of the Euro zone first. This involves making sure that the financial gambling elites around the world prefer the dollar over the euro as the safety reserve investment of choice. Within the global monetarist system that is collapsing on itself (drastically more debt than money in the world), this course of action makes temporary "sense". Although a lot more states within American Union are severely more bankrupt than states in European Union, having E.U. "pop" first would artificially prolong the existence (and therefore looting by Wall Street) of regions like California and U.S. in general.

In the 1990s, Washington was always split between promoting the EU monetary union (thus weakening Russia by absorbing and transforming her neighbors in a neoliberal NATO dominated oligarchical structure) and retarding EU as a project itself (thus maintaining dollar as primary reserve so Washington's money borrowing could continue). United States chose the middle path of trying to weaken EU and Russia through destabilization campaigns to demonstrate the impotence of both. An example was the Anglo led Yugoslavian bombardment and occupation that showed Germany, France, and Russia that the Balkans was now an American backyard. The regional players were too self absorbed to meaningfully deal with such shocking behavior that was not the business of a player thousands of miles away (imagine EU bombing Mongolia for supposed human rights abuses).

Post-Soviet world saw frantic efforts to peddle dollars everywhere, even if it meant creating propped narcostates like Kosovo to do it. As US was busy stripping and cannibalizing the economies of Eastern Europe (and pumping dollars into the region to preemptively compete with the Euro), Germany was an introvert and consolidating its now united territory. Meanwhile Russia was totally focused on inner management of its 1998 controlled national bankruptcy (US, UK, Greece, Spain, etc can take notes on how to say no to financial overseas parasites and then recover).

Just a few years after euros appeared in the hands of Europeans and gave a glimmer of competition to the dollar, Germany was able to shrug off its imperial masters in DC. Berlin now took a proactive role in expanding the Eurozone eastward (thus becoming coequal with France in the continental project), began close bilateral economic cooperation with Moscow, and actually said no to the heavy pressure to participate in the aggression against Iraq in 2003. There was an attempt ("new Europe" vs "old Europe") by Washington to gain a permanent foothold in central Europe but that possibility began to rapidly erode during the international financial crisis (more on dangers of potential power vacuum in the area).

In the last 10 years every course of action in Europe, that was suggested in 1997 by Zbigniew Brzezinski in The Grand Chessboard (in regards to maintaining American imperial base for expansion in Western Europe), was not done or done very poorly. Peddling dollars could only go so far. The fruits of Bush administration's total geopolitical incompetence was recently seen in 2010 with France declaring the same desire to engage in cooperation with Russia as Germany was doing for years. The recent agreement to sell NATO Mistral carriers to Moscow was just a beginning. Recently there has been talk of Russian Federation being able to sell its weapons to NATO countries in exchange for help in Afghanistan. Cooperation in weapons trade and perhaps eventual cooperation in development would further marginalize American influence on the continent (and cut into profits of the only U.S. lobby stronger than the financial one, the military-industrial complex). Major NATO allies taking matters into their own hands, bypassing Washington, and independently managing the continent with Moscow is unacceptable to the pentagon (even though that is desperately needed right now to maintain security).

Such a combination of factors may now create a consensus among US power elites (military and financial) to start pushing for a severe economic collapse in Western Europe. It would have been unthinkable to do this to NATO allies before but desperate times call for desperate measures. For this, Washington has amazingly effective historic weapons at its disposal. Primarily, they are the three major credit rating agencies that are all based in United States and which have always given Cold War NATO allies best triple A ratings while suppressing investment ratings of geopolitical enemies and collapsing entire nations so they can be looted by Washington's allies on Wall Street. More on the absurdity of these organizations here. The mere fact that instruments of the Anglo international financial oligarchy such as IMF, World Bank,  Moody's, and Standard and Poor's are still effective at shaping reality (and psychologically influencing entire governments and mobs of gamblers) is an absurd phenomenon that is on its last legs.

It would be too obvious and blatant for the Washington-Wall Street complex to order credit rating agencies to sink Greece, Spain, Portugal, and others all at once. To maintain an illusion of competence and wage effective informational warfare, the totally discredited (no pun intended) and fraudulent credit agencies need to subject their target countries to a death by a thousand cuts stretched over months. Allies in the corporate media do everything possible to help in the project of building mass perceptions of reality. Although the US and UK have become very skilled at cannibalizing entire societies, the current project is curious in that the legalized organized crime that is the Anglo financial houses is also destroying last life support systems of the very societies that maintain it. That doesn't really matter for organized thieves who deal internationally who in time will try to find new hosts in Brazil, China, or Russia.

Part 2 will focus on pros and cons of both the American and European unions to try to see who will prevail in achieving monetary collapse last.

New Constitutional Convention for United States (ConCon)

Practical Plan to Really Restore United States Economy (by late 2020s): 

Part 1: Road to Constitutional Convention and a proper message to unite factions of the tea party with urban progressives in an alliance of convenience



Situation in United States has deteriorated to a point where we are not looking at a gradual and peaceful slide into Brazil level international status (with similar domestic social conditions) anymore but at a Soviet style nasty imperial disintegration when the next inevitable financial shock occurs.

We've heard many exciting proposals recently such as "abolish the fed", "end corporations as legal entities", "default on the debt", "wipe out the financial parasites and rebuild FDR style", etc. Structurally however, none of those can be accomplished due to oligarchy's aging personal lawyer/butler (supreme court/congress) and their guard dog (the president) being on a tight leash. Needed changes cannot come from the federal center of force unless the situation dangerously deteriorates. It'd be too late then.

As such, a moderately radical (compared to fascist, bolshevik, and secessionist proposals we'll be hearing after the upcoming second dip of the depression) but doable and pragmatic plan needs to begin to be implemented immediately if United States hopes to start a long multi-decade road to recovery. This plan has been distilled from previous long articles such as the ones dealing with unpayable national debt, pinpointing need to prevent braindrain, problems of a sold out senior citizen home that is US congress, and nurturing some industries to compete with China's mercantilist practices.

The plan has to be appealing to a vast majority of the US public across the political spectrum (fringes included) which means utilization of emotional triggers that people had ingrained into their consciousness since childhood. Believe it or not but a 21 year old progressive from Boston and a 70 year old rural man from Alabama both share nearly identical life long propaganda indoctrination by the ruling oligarchy. The trick for realization of a movement towards recovery is mobilization of a broad coalition to displace the ruling regime by flipping regime's own propaganda against them. 

Only a plan that:

a) plays to rural genuinely constitutionalist factions within the tea party movement (those not misdirected or bought off by corporate infiltration of the movement's phony "national leadership")
and  
b) unites them with younger urban unemployed/underemployed via a common, very consistent, and rather simple message

can achieve a breakthrough. Uniting some tea partiers and disenchanted progressives in temporary marriage of convenience against a common foe will be the hardest part. However when anger is up and emotions are running high, such unthinkable political bedfellows become possible if extroverted emotional waves join at a proper time. It has happened numerous times before in other societies.

[Message building]

1) Call for a Constitutional Convention  (34 states needed to have one and 38 needed to ratify)

Now that the federal and most state governments are broke and running budget deficits that require physically unacceptable austerity measures (on top of decades of already declining infrastructure and social services) popular anger can readily be channeled into a ConCon. Americans of all ages have positive associations with this concept from childhood schooling. ConCon can happen through bypassing presidential and congressional power (it is key to isolate the federal center of oligarchic force).

People like South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer are already talking to high level republican state politicians to have a ConCon. For disenchanted progressives, a desire for a ConCon can be the best outlet for their frustration as well. Nobody knows what ConCon will bring and it therefore serves as a point of contact for a diverse spectrum of political factions. The idea can also excite the imaginations of young and old alike due to their association of it with national greatness and renewal after a difficult period. What is more, it is a legal idea that appeals to the majority of people who are psychologically not predisposed to radicalism. The slogan should be "Convention not Revolution". At the same time, the potential of convention is so full of radical restructuring promise that for the more passionate of tea partiers, the slogan can be reworked to be "revolution through convention". Call for ConCon is a protest vote against current national elites, a call for dramatically different direction, AND meaningful legal activism all rolled up in one.

It is key to get regional elites on board by playing to their pathologically narcissistic egos and sense of importance. There is so much negativity now that controlled positive attention/affection can really puff up the psyche of small state legislator. People in every state must divide their state politicians among themselves by passionately asking their favored ones to be a ConCon supporter and "a delegate to the convention" and sharply ridiculing and alienating those who don't support it. State politicians are all former political science/history geeks and many would get a kick from the masses thinking they are worthy to represent them at a historic event of such magnitude. ConCon should be made an issue in upcoming state and local elections as well. If a dedicated minority of state politicians get excited by the idea, they'll drag many of their drinking buddy legislators along for the ride via simple social psychology. Their corporate masters should not immediately have a problem with this since ConCon isn't specific enough.

It is inevitable that activism for Convention will begin fierce polarizing debates about the key constitutional changes that need to be done at the convention itself. This is where, paradoxically, our budding city/country coalition will find additional points of contact through agreement to disagree. They will realize that the federal union needs to be loosened up into a more confederal structure with states and entire regions pursuing their own modes of popular development. Thus the more confederal structure becomes perhaps the first goal of convention. This first goal needs to be stressed because it will reenergize the diverse political spectrum by creating pseudo nationalism and lively brainstorming among regional factions. Mass reactivation of the apathetic and disenchanted young democrats and progressives can even occur if emphasis on possibilities of states rights (for northeastern states) is combined with emotional need for revenge against Obama. 

Additional regional and state elites may now join the call for ConCon since they will realize how dramatically their power will increase within a more confederal America. Unfortunately but perhaps inevitably we can expect some oligarchic corporate interests to begin supporting ConCon with the expectations of profit in the more libertarian post ConCon Southeastern region of US. Opposition to ConCon should be actively painted as federal (based in the hated congress to not alienate pro-Obama ConCon supporters) AND corporate in nature to maintain emotional focus and factional unity in the ConCon coalition.


2) Building mental associations of United States with Soviet Union, time of troubles before the Last Constitutional Convention, and/or rotten oligarchic regimes that have collapsed in the past due to a diverse and peaceful political coalition 

What helps any movement is belief that regime's collapse is inevitable and that the activists are just helping history along. What helps even more is all the recent data showing that this belief is grounded in reality. I have written how all the key structural and social problems that Soviet Union had are being experienced by present oligarchic imperial socioeconomic model in United States. It seems this society reached Soviet level of decay and dysfunction via a seemingly different ideological path (the inflexibility of which inevitably began leading to mistakes on all levels of management).

Since Americans are very educated about Soviet problems and failure, it would be very easy to begin comparisons between the two former superpowers in the minds of the tea party movement. The more they would look, the more similarities they will discover to their horror. This will help movement towards ConCon by providing an aura of inevitability when it comes to ending federal power in its current form.

When it comes to young progressives, such suggestions of comparison (USSR to USA) will prove to be more difficult due to their laughter and derision of tea partiers calling Obama's policies socialist. Some may of course see the blatant similarities but they are not likely to see USA in the same light as the rural ConCon supporters. Thus it seems better in their case to compare United States to post WW2 regimes in Spain and Greece before they were ended by a broad coalition (where liberal college educated youth played a key role). Unfortunately Franco's regime and similar rich man's regimes in Portugal, Brazil, etc are not well known to the US public (due to their rot having a more common capitalistic source with US) and don't provide the same association with inevitable decay and collapse. Therefore, a hodgepodge of societies should be utilized when comparing problems of US to similar problems that other countries had. This will show demoralized progressives that America's problems are not unique, how such things were solved abroad, and how ConCon is the best legal way of bringing about the end of the current regime.

This is it for now and later sections of the recovery plan will deal with the debt situation, military industrial complex, and additional political solutions as truly bipartisan coalition builders.

What is meant by recovery is putting the country on a road back to the level of dynamic ability, social strength, and international role model status that existed at the peak of American power in 1960s (before it was gradually and systematically ground into a large banana republic by a neoliberal oligarchy). When US returns to that level of confidence, government responsiveness, and hope for a better tomorrow then new plans can be implemented that work with the the drastically improved tools at hand.

American Identity Crisis

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The artificial "American" nationality created as an assimilating force is beginning to break down due to inequalities of education within the dominant ethnic coalition.





Many Americans are humorously reluctant to even approach the topic of race and cultural integration. When the French and Swedes (with far lower % of non-whites and immigrants) are actively discussing these issues, the citizenry within Home of the Brave runs for the hills. That's not necessarily an issue of an elephant in the room or fear of seeming offensive. There is a sustained historical reason for every American citizen to suppress his own thoughts on ethnic/racial groups. That reason is state ideology.

Lets briefly review the ideological process that has so far driven national integration in this country.  Ideological "equality" until 2009 has referred to cultural assimilation that expanded beyond Germans and Irish and moved onto all whites as well as select ethnic groups like Jews and Asians. For most of the 20th century, as long as whites remained the vast majority of the total population, neutral terminology like "American" (that didn't refer to any tribal/national origins) could be used to try to consolidate the vast geographic territory into one national fabric. Creation of a neutral national identify to serve as an umbrella nationality for many diverse peoples is standard practice for leaderships of very populous states. In this sense American is no different than the terms Chinese, Soviet, Indian (and these days European).

However, even in very diverse federal states like China or the Russian Federation, there is a ruling ethnic group or a coalition of a few groups that make smaller nationalities cluster around them by the use of force. In China it is the Mandarin speakers and in RF it is of course Russians (with 75% of the population). In US, the native Englishmen have long stopped being numerically dominant in the 19th century (although they remained qualitatively dominant in wealth and education). This pushed them into gradually expanding the ruling coalition by accepting Germans, Irish, Poles, Italians, and so on. Since "English" could not be used for numerical reasons for national identity building the way "German" or "French" is used today, the artificial concept of American had to be bolstered and gradually strengthened.

The power of the artificially constructed nationality rests on the ideology/reality that backs up its promises (how equal are all Europeans in EU, how equal are all Soviets, etc) as well as how much physical power those assimilated into the idea of the umbrella nationality really have. For most of the country's history, there were certain minority populations with whom assimilation was never tried (integration of relatively recently freed slaves and conquered ethnically cleansed natives). This was because it would drain national energies and political capital of elites within ruling ethnic groups and deprive them of divide and conquer tools for new arrivals (gradually offering the umbrella "American" and its promise of equality to some new immigrants like the Germans, Irish and Polish first but not to Italians and Jews until much later). This was not any conspiracy but a natural path of least resistance and an organic way for concept of American to really put down its roots (as opposed to just covering everybody with a term American right away). The gradual and imperial manner of rewarding the title of "American" allowed US leadership a tighter leash than the one Soviets possessed since the term felt and was more real psychologically to those who "earned it" (see the number of Irish and Germans who died in US Civil War, WW1, etc).

In the past few decades a couple of things began to strain the process of national integration that has worked well so far in terms of political stability:

A) Emergence of new culturalism for 20%-25% of the population which is based more on higher education and less on racial/ethnic affiliation.

This first factor was the increasing division amongst assimilated Americans in terms of education and consequently wealth. There was always a large wealth gap between tycoons/descendants of British elites and the rest which was heavily correlated with ethnic lineage. However the GI Bill and mass access to college in second half of the 20th century (particularly by 1960s) really gave a large number of whites of all stripes a way to leap into the power demographic. "Middle Class" as a term actually began to partially stop being an early 1950s cold war propaganda tool to mask and ease class tensions (by putting into peoples minds the idea that wealth is on a continuum with a fatty middle rather than a narrow pyramid with a wide base) and began to become a reality for a number of white Americans.

Higher education put pressure on the previous method of rewarding the title of American. It brought about higher states of consciousness that:

1) Increased perception of physical material national inequality within dominant ruling white coalition on the one hand

2) Brought a new form of knowledge based culturalism as prejudice to increasingly large amount of people within the ruling coalition on the other

Old culturalism (in place for most of the nation's existence) consisted in acceptance to assimilate some select ethnic groups and view them as co-equal Americans while rejecting non-whites and natives as other/excluded/subjects. Until 1950s, vast majority of the population was technically illiterate and racial physical differences made it easy to have rule of thumb for the masses. Lack of higher education for the assimilated really compounded old culturalist prejudices. The old culturalism as a tool of control, although undermining national integration for some ethnic groups, made up for it in the minds of US leadership by accelerating assimilation amongst other groups. For example it was politically easier to betray the interests of blacks at say, 5% of population, to gain an Italian voting block of over 13% and sell this idea to older Anglos/Irish/German majority in a specific area. The divide and conquer routine for electoral politics was of course an organic and natural outgrowth of British rule.

[note: Racism as a concept is a new phenomenon in Britain because classism was so strong there historically. To the elites it never made any difference what color the poor peasants were. It seems the current American oligarchic leadership emulates old Britain in that regard.]

The new culturalism is more individual based and springs from a person's access to information that most lack. Currently its physical manifestation is one of educated whites (20-25% of the population who went to college) migrating to urban areas (reasons for migrations are outlined in Death of Suburbia) and the socioeconomic power increasingly concentrating in their hands. When vast majority of ruling ethnic group's population are undergoing a split between those with basic literacy and those with more advanced tools for political influence, when that manifests into real inequality of opportunity (which always existed but is now underlined by educational background), then the "equality" offered by the idea of being an "American" begins to lose its strength. When a college educated white has more in common culturally with his/her counterpart in France or Australia than with a rural religious white in his own country, then the term American begins to lose its strength as a tool of national integration just like the terms Soviet or Yugoslavian did. Sub-American identities thus begin to gain power as they are at least connected to tribe, blood, and cultural/regional peculiarities. The bonds of a federal national structure and control from above begin to weaken.

B) Demographic shifts due to migration and same as before fertility resulted in greater number of people (proportional to the overall population) who were always excluded.

Non-white Hispanics and blacks combined at 25% of the population ( and burdened in large parts not only by original cultural prejudice but also the newer overlapping culturalism from urban educated). The culturalism against these two groups is rarely manifest by hostile acts or words but by typical and effective way of depriving anything of power, which is excluding and ignoring.

In recent times, racial solidarity and inclusion began to truly occur amongst the equally educated with mostly the cultural inertia of the older first form of culturalism hampering the process. Higher education brings its own cultural soldiarity and identity that can be much stronger than having similar physical likeness. There is little incentive for educated whites to break unity with equally educated non-whites for the political, economic, and cultural benefit of uneducated rural whites. Educated blacks and Hispanics are not numerous enough proportional to their population and too geographically splintered to really form their own communities so there is little option for them but to assimilate into expanding white dominated urban educated class. The most similar people conspire for power.

[note: Poor rural whites, blacks, and Hispanics have a lot more in common than they think and future American populist movements will have to tap into that if they are to be successful. GOP of course blew that chance due to regional and internationalist oligarchic controls over their party.]

Obama's election has shown these emerging rifts and alliances with remarkable clarity. The new updated integration with an educational filter is not confined to ethnic/racial groups and creates enough new inequalities to start to rot American ideology from within. Concepts such as equality of opportunity, rags to riches, free farmer individualism, and self government begin to not work as effectively as state propaganda if country is sufficiently culturally and ethnically splintered and increasingly ruled by one tiny successful multi-ethnic urban faction with PhDs. With rural ghost believing evangelical whites at 25%, blacks and Hispanics each at roughly 13% each, whites at 70% (and dropping due to lower birthrates compared to other groups), those with Bachelor's at roughly 25% (obviously the factions overlap often), we begin to see the serious splits occurring that cannot be rapidly or practically cured with higher education for all (due to these splits preventing effective political national action).

Politics increasingly becomes a matter of what faction will make enough alliances with others to dominate the rest. Obviously that's how it always works but with the national identity of "American" weakening, each election increasingly brings a sense to the loser that the winner is illegitimate and is a cultural interloper. The hysteria of the opposition will increase every time with elites on each side undermining the other in nationally unhealthy ways seen in unstable states.

This has slowly turned United States into an increasingly weak splintered federal state like Brazil or a few other South American countries.

The educated and wealthiest 20% (who are in their own battle with the richest 0.1% internationalist faction) increasingly rule through corporate power from the cities and create blatant cultural exclusion internally. The last American frontier ended in suburbia. Now American people will have to finally face each other and grow up. The country is still spending enormous resources on promoting an ideological agenda around the world with no equal opposition to counter it. The rest of the world is becoming more pragmatic while American society sharpens its ideology (recently demonstrated by rising popularity of libertarian ideas amongst educated whites and amongst defeated republican opposition) and continues to rot from within.

The current process of United States transforming itself from an ideological society into a pragmatic realist society will be gradual and painful.

The rot, so far, is effectively masked by America being an ideological empire and focusing its people on spreading and defending a rigid one dimensional point of view that obviously cant be one size fits all for all societies in the world. Although the process of decline sped up and slowed down at times, discussion and assessment of the situation was muted by how gradual it has been. Societal inability by politicians to address race and ethnic factionalism is a sign of how important the issues are (as if mere utterance of the issues will create social disorder). Soviets were also unable to really discuss the simmering ethnic problems in their midst until too late for similar reasons. Violence is unlikely as American artificial nationality had enough time to partially infiltrate the consciousness of residents living here and as the various American peoples are not specific to certain states.

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What is very likely however is America beginning to mean no more than what Brazil or Argentina means when the price of the military catches up to economic realities. When that occurs and contradictions of state ideology and social reality are exposed to the world (Obama's election has done a lot to slow the process and repair the international image), there will be probably be a painful multi-year period of re-organization from super-power into a normal power. It should all be over by 2020s within our lifetimes. Who knows? If a radical solution is not found to reverse the decline then perhaps we could be a good source of raw materials, religious hardworking immigrants, and weaponry for United States of Europe.

All Major Problems that Affected Soviet Union also Affect United States Today

United States did not have any serious national introspection when its rival for hegemony collapsed. It thus found itself trapped in a very Soviet ideological bubble and economic difficulty. 

When the world's only supposed superpower starts coughing up blood and seems to not even have the political will to provide 1/6th of its citizens with healthcare, it's hard to not compare it to another federal union whose multitudes of small problems led to a spectacular demise. It may seem counter-intuitive to say that USA has Soviet Union's ailments (due to supposed enormous differences in the degree of state capitalism) but comparisons become eerie once they start being made.

1) Structurally and logistically determined inability to satisfy consumer demand for better and more accessible healthcare, education, and healthy food. Economic priority is on building, maintaining, and expanding vast conventional and thermonuclear weaponry rather than on improving quality of life for all Americans. Political leadership tolerates increasing suffering of the citizenry and deterioration of infrastructure to maintain military power projection capabilities abroad.

2) Rigid ideological indoctrination of most of the population and public officials that prevents pragmatic discussion on the highest levels concerning modernization efforts. All serious talk of modernization is instinctively seen as treasonous by military and major party leadership who have vested personal interests in perpetuating the status quo. Not only is state orthodoxy not questioned by major media but there is full support of efforts to violently spread American style socioeconomic organization abroad.

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3) Deteriorating food quality due to the architecture of means of food production and distribution. Inability of subsidized state capitalist enterprises to provide fresh non-adulterated produce. Rise in popularity of decentralized small farms to fill holes in supply by large, inefficient, and increasingly hazardous state supported large farms. Situation is still not bad enough for homeowners to grow food on small plots of land yet.

4) Severe military overexpansion overseas. The state is going broke supporting numerous satellite regimes in South America, Asia, Central Europe, and Middle East through maintenance of hundreds of bases and conventional deployments.

5) Lack of frank discussion on national problems since they are not allowed by a handful of state subsidized media conglomerates that provide most of the information to the citizenry (they have vested interests in the status quo just like political and military leadership does). Severe self censorship by news outlets that do not deviate from the party line in any meaningful way.

6) Inability to project soft power due to serious erosion of economic strength. Utilization of the only tools left that elites can use to project global power, namely military force and threats of force.

7) Ideological stagnation, exhaustion, and moral bankruptcy. The average educated citizen does not believe in the party line about the American dream anymore or that United States is the wealthiest and freest society and a force for good in the world. The ideological exhaustion and disbelief is increasingly present among public officials who just mouth the party lines. Spread of fatalism and apathy among the general population. Some of the educated now become rabid reactionaries and try to go back to the days when the ideological fervor was more present (libertarians, imperial reformers who want to go back to the days of state capitalism in the 1950s, elderly who remember when economic base was expanding rather than shrinking, etc). Efforts to "improve" or "fine tune" American state capitalism increasing as well as efforts to scrap it altogether.

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8) The biggest and most advanced gulag prison system that is still expanding and increasingly relying on prison labor for manufactured goods. Mass arrests are made for non-violent consensual acts even in the face of enormous economic costs and violation of human rights. Disregard for human rights as a blind eye is turned towards the prison system (now the biggest in the world) that is dangerously overcrowded and where torture (inmate rape and other abuse) is allowed to continue. Human rights violations as some ethnic groups are arbitrarily and disproportionately targeted for imprisonment (higher arrests for drug possession among blacks/Hispanics than whites disproportionate to the reported use).

9) The politically active young people do not believe what they see in mainstream media anymore. They increasingly turn to alternative or foreign sources for information about their own country rather than continue to listen to the blatant lies and propaganda on major news networks. Major news increasingly focusing on problems of other countries, trivial entertainment, and support of military establishment than introspection on declining national strength and health.

10) Increased reliance on middlemen (Wall Mart) that connect the American consumer with goods made in other countries (Japan, South Korea, Germany, etc) since quality of domestic industry and workforce is declining. Domestic industry can't satisfy the consumer demands of society even if the state officials found political will.

11) Deterioration in the quality of the American worker that cannot be reversed due to political structure's inability to provide modern education for most citizens. Education system itself is tainted by state propaganda.

12) Most of the population is isolated from the outside world and has no idea what it's like to live in an advanced society. The elderly are particularly affected. Only 1/3 of population have passports and have been abroad (mostly state officials/businessmen/educated/urban/suburban upper classes and their families). Increasing psychological restlessness among the young and escape from cities in the rotting industrial heartland. Increase in mindless hedonism and drinking as a form of escape.

13) Western Europe is now seen as a model civilization to emulate and aspire to rather than just a different system of development. Psychological and moral surrender in trying to conceptualize and evolve American state capitalism towards greater heights. Western Europeans increasingly looked at as more fun and developed in terms of knowing how to live and what values to have.

14) Both wings of the pro-oligarchic political establishment (The more nationalistic and introspective Democratic wing that wants to fine tune American style state capitalism and the more internationalist Republican wing that wants to spread it abroad) suffering from gerontocracy rule. Elderly and mentally infirm now predominate in the legislative like they did in the 80s in China and Soviet Union. They are unable to effectively conceptualize modernization efforts and thus defer to reactionary defensive mindset while suppressing more youthful reformers. The two political wings were always nearly identical at the center but are now practically merging as a result. Younger knee jerk reactionary militarists, regional politicians, and EU leaning reformers increasingly find themselves completely without an outlet for expression.

15) Increasing physiological and psychological suffering in the land of plentiful natural resources. Insufficient provision of livable shelter due to structural inefficiencies of the economic and political system. Collapsing infrastructure that is decades behind the most developed countries on the planet (and often even behind developing nations) and that is not designed to meet the demand placed on it.

16) Serious and irreversible budgetary gaps between collected money to fund the functioning of the country and the money needed. Irreversibly large debt from military commitments and ideologically based management of society.

17) Restlessness in the satellite countries, desire of military allies to choose their own developmental path, and Washington DC's decreasing international credibility.

18) Inability of the top leadership to integrate the diverse ethnic groups of the Federal Union. As Emmanuel Todd (who predicted collapse of the Soviet union accurately) has pointed out, the child mortality of blacks has actually risen while the white child mortality declined. Demonstrative lack of national ethnic consolidation and thus lack of emergence of a unitary American nationality. Ethnic and regional groups still looking out for themselves rather than the whole of society.

19) Slow trickle of educated elites out of United States to countries where they can get better opportunities to materially expand.


20) Militarization of police to keep social order. Blatant suppression of genuine reformist political candidates from having any airtime. Increase in power of the intelligence organs.

21) History of violent belligerence abroad as well as continuing abuses and occupations (Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia). Militarized, warlike, and often xenophobic mindset of the population that is more concerned about imperial glory than peace, development, and human rights. After WW2, United States actually killed a lot more foreign peoples directly and indirectly than Soviet Union (which was under siege for decades by NATO armor).

The list can seriously be expanded to have 40 items. The reader is free to think of other key things that caused the slow rot and inefficiencies in Soviet Union and find an American equivalent. In the end, the summary of the cause of decline can be that the contradictions in the social fabric of United States (ideological emphasis on equality even though there is horrid ever increasing inequality) combined with the decades of state propaganda to create a serious inability to adapt and cope with national problems.

All the problems that Obama is now facing Gorbachev has also faced. He is seen as not moving fast enough when it comes to reform or is seen as moving too fast. In the meantime, he is constrained by status quo entrenched political interests and elites in almost every major organizational hierarchy. Historically, this is a very dangerous political situation since major social discontent begins when things start to improve but aren't seen as improving fast enough (or there is a bit of a reversal). We've seen this in late 19th century China, in late 18th century France, and of course Soviet Union itself. It seems United States has only postponed serious economic difficulty due to the collapse of its rival and by flooding Eurasia with dollars in the 1990s.

International Subway Station Comparison

After exploring the state of one subway station in Manhattan, I decided to scout the internets for subway station aesthetics of regions that are not yet considered first world. As various research explains to me, the New York Subway is in its third world state of disrepair and neglect due to the huge amount of people living in poverty and severe budgetary mismanagement/corruption by public officials and elites. So I decided to explore the visuals of subways and metros from the key cities in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) block of developing nations since they are affected by similar problems to a larger degree.

CHINA SUBWAYS:

Beijing Subway (no this is not a set from a science fiction movie but an ultra sleek subway system that makes you feel that you're in an airport or a spaceport)

Shanghai Metro

Nanjing Metro

Guangzhou Metro

RUSSIA SUBWAYS:


Moscow Metro ( not this is not a modernist museum or some ancient castle but a subway system started in the 1930s)

Saint Petersburg Metro

Kazan Metro (capital of Tatarstan, a Muslim flyover province)

BRAZIL SUBWAYS:

Rio De Janeiro Metro

Sao Paulo Metro

INDIA SUBWAYS:


Delhi Subways

OOOPS!! Turns out that was not some slum in India but actually New York City stations in United States of America. Lets try this again.

INDIA SUBWAYS:


Delhi Metro

Well turns out Mumbai and Bangalore don't have an active metro system just yet but are building it. When it is completed, Bangalore for example, will have metro stations that look something like this according to the conceptual art:

Ah! My mistake again. I mixed up the conceptual art for Bangalore with 1990s designs which envision how Bronx and Queens stations will look like in 2009. The above are actually already built state of the art New York metro stations. Bangalore is in the process of building more third world type stations like these:

Thus concludes our quick tour around the developing world. Turns out that third world is focused too much on self respect, beauty, modernity, quality of life, and being in the 21st century. It'll never catch up with United States if it keeps building for its people and having pride. We need to explain to Chinese, Indians, Russians, and Brazilians that you can't nation build domestically like this. It is too expensive or something or other.

Either that or it is time for B.R.I.C. to become B.R.I.C.A.

P.S. Sweden beats all of them.