Can America be Fixed?

Is America fixable?

The question isn’t whether it is broken. We all know that. The question isn’t where it is broken, when it broke, or even how it got broken.

It is which broken it is that should concern us. Is it broken like a fence—which can be mended? Or is it broken like an egg—which can’t?

Here are the facts, as far as I can see.

The rule of law is in complete breakdown in America. Americans have ceded many, if not most, of their basic Constitutional rights: speech (which is surveilled, stored, tracked, not “free” in any sense)… privacy, assembly, trial, Habeas Corpus. And all that’s just over the last decade. And so now you will face one set of laws if you are less than rich, or a minority — and if you are a poor minority, you will almost certainly, at some time in your life, be jailed and beaten, or at least tried and convicted, for victimless “crimes”. Consider the situation in Ferguson. It’s possible for America to utilize sophisticated weapons of war, tanks, sniper rifles, machine guns, software, body armor — to subdue entire towns; but it can’t jail a single banker.

American democracy is in complete breakdown. Congress is incapable of passing laws that the people have long been demanding; it’s true constituencies are the lobbyists that pay for its campaigns. The Executive Branch of Government is stymied by Congress; and appears unwilling to use the simple tools of leadership — speeches, grassroots pressure, movements, new ideas — to challenge it effectively.

The American economy is in complete breakdown. The jobs created during the “recovery” pay 25–50% less than the ones lost during the recession. The middle class, as a result, is a memory. Since incomes aren’t rising, the economy is stagnating; and it’s main purpose appears to be merely funneling the savings of the people that were once a middle class to the super-rich; who are getting super-richer for…building value extraction machines (Pay4Gold!!! PawnShopNation!!)…instead of anything that makes life better for anyone in real terms.

American society is in breakdown. It is fractured and split. In ways that the rest of the rich world isn’t. It cannot agree on a working model for…healthcare, education, transport, schools, finance, insurance, jobs, safety nets…almost anything. And so it simply doesn’t have them; at least to a degree which every other rich nation does. Perhaps that is because it cannot get “news”; mostly just partisan rambling designed to persuade people what is false…not what is true.

The American Dream has been trashed. This is the first generation in history which already enjoys lower living standards than it’s parents. What does that really mean? Today’s young won’t have pensions, raises, savings, healthcare, mobility…stability, “opportunity”, safety, prosperity. They are already buried by debt, and the economy offers them few prospects. What is their likely future? The “Service Industries”. Translation: being an army of butlers and maids to the super-rich. Needless to say, that is not a dream anyone aspires to. It is merely a dismal, grim reality.

I could go on. But I won’t.

The question all this raises is simple. And that question isn’t: when will America’s “recovery” truly take root?

The real question is this.

Is America broken like a fence? Or like an egg?

Is America Fixable…at all?