On Governing: Asking the Right Questions

Here is a bit from a post by the eponymous Fabius Maximus blogger:

Summary: Riots in France and Greece. Calm in the United States. Which shows clearer vision and greater willingness to institute reforms? As usual, the media coverage gets it backwards. First in another series about the end of the post-WWII era, and our preparations for it.

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In the United States we have an electorate almost delusionally complacent, conducting a boring election. Are elections useful if we do not discuss serious issues? Almost every critical problem is MIA:

• Almost no discussion about the foreign wars draining our Treasury and breaking the Army.


• Little serious discussion about reform of our financial system, which has imploded like clockwork every decade since the early 1970′s.
  
• Bogus discussion about the governments’ (all levels) precarious financial condition (wide agreement about no tax raises plus cutting waste and foreign aid).


• Little mention of our insanely expensive and counter-productive prison system, locking up a far higher fraction of our people than any civilized nation.


• No mention about the cost and benefits of the American empire, or of our self-appointed role as global police.


• Not only is there no mention about the rapidly declining educational performance of boys, but programs continue to focus on girls (see this series in Canada’s Globe and Mail).

Strong government actions and rioting in the streets at least would display signs of life. Response to the environment — even screams of pain — is a primary sign of life. Our delusional complacency (i.e., senescence) reveals much about the condition of the American republic.

What’s our problem? See the next post for an answer.

Well... I'm eager to see the answer. Even more. I'm eager to see something that goads Americans back into life. If is astonishing to hear of people who sleep as robbers ransack their house. Well... that is happening just south of me.