On the Future, Americans Can Agree: It Doesn’t Look Good (NY Times)
[ed. Beyond depressing. Enjoy.] Here are a couple of comments:
I'm still an optimist. Things are not fabulous now but I think our future holds great promise. Not tomorrow or anytime soon but, in a few years, I believe, we will begin to see significant change. I am greatly encouraged by the strength and size of the protest that's taking place. The involvement of multiple generations in calling for fundamental societal change and the likelihood that they will vote in November could be the first indication of real and hopefully sustained progress toward the ideal set forth in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
There will be institutional resistance. It has happened before, it is happening now and it will continue grow to meet the ground swell for societal justice of all forms.
We older folks who took part in the protests of the 1960's had hoped that the changes that occurred due to all our organizing and protestations would lead to continued progress. This was naïve. I don't think that most of us understood or perhaps even saw the sophistication that the institutional establishment could muster to resist changes to the way of life in which they had become so comfortable.
Many of us got so distracted by and caught up in our own little day to day struggles battling for a place for ourselves that we didn't realize that the forces we were battling were man made with the intention of keeping us compliant.
~Byron, CT
Historians and many who have studied the Trump phenomenon are pretty unanimous in their conclusion in that he is just not a quirk of fate, but actually forty years in the making when Ronald Reagan decided in the early 1980's that government was an impediment rather than an asset to the country and proceeded to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations which started the ball rolling on the path to the worst inequality in over a 100 yrs. Of course during this period those that suffered the worst were working people consisting of all races including minorities and immigrants and every time a crisis of confidence occurred the "corporate masters' stated they were going to do something about it, yet, at the same time were spending tens of millions of dollars lobbying government against minimum wage increases, improved healthcare for all citizens and more affordable education.
Historians and many who have studied the Trump phenomenon are pretty unanimous in their conclusion in that he is just not a quirk of fate, but actually forty years in the making when Ronald Reagan decided in the early 1980's that government was an impediment rather than an asset to the country and proceeded to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations which started the ball rolling on the path to the worst inequality in over a 100 yrs. Of course during this period those that suffered the worst were working people consisting of all races including minorities and immigrants and every time a crisis of confidence occurred the "corporate masters' stated they were going to do something about it, yet, at the same time were spending tens of millions of dollars lobbying government against minimum wage increases, improved healthcare for all citizens and more affordable education.
All along Bernie Sanders has stated that the system was "rigged" in favor of those at the top and in order to start seriously dealing with theses issues, significant structural changes had to occur in the system for it to happen. Of course, the establishment and MSM did not want to hear about any of it and here we are.
My concern is, as happened in 2016 and now, by dismissing Sanders again, America has missed its final opportunity to really deal with the issues and have a President, unencumbered by lobbyists pressure, who was actually focused on doing something about it.
~Deus, Toronto
