I read a very good article on the decline of America prosperity a few weeks ago (can't find the source atm)
In it the author described the economic expansion we experienced after WWII was an anomaly brought about by the neccessity to rebuild after such an excruciating time. Since money was flowing so freely and there was so much work to be done, Americans in the previous generation became complacent and assumed that this was the norm in America. Unlimited economic expansion is an impossibility which no one ever stopped to consider back in those days. When things did start to run dry and any sort of economic downturn started to creep in, to sedate the American people our leaders decided to engage in rampant borrowing and estabilishing the Federal Reserve as a way to keep the illusion of economic growth prominent in the people's eyes.
However all of these temporary economic band aids that have been going on for decades now has been an absolute farce. The mortgage bubble is an example of this. When times looked so good it was encouraged to live outside of your means because the mentality was 'well one day things will get back to normal and we'll be all set'. Again, this goes back to a delusion in our country where we think unlimited economic expansion is a given in a free country. The current recession IS the norm now... there isn't a way to go back to that level of growth without another world war that pretty much devastates everything.
I won't bring up political consipracy theories, but any rational mind would assume that those at the very top are well aware that the proverbial shit is hitting the fan and are preparing to do whatever it takes to exploit our populations as long as possible. Thus the NDAA act, the Patriot Act, Internet piracy laws, etc. All ways to restrict our ability to see for ourselves what's happening until it's too late for us to do a damn thing about it.
The old saying applies 'those that do not learn from the mistakes of history are bound to repeat them'. Think of Terence McKenna's timewave zero application. He said 'Rome falls 9 times a day', meaning history repeats itself in cycles. Alexander's empire rose to great heights, then fell to pieces. Rome in it's era was the most powerful civilization of our ancient past, and they too fell to ruin. In more recent years, our closest parallel both economically and militarily the Soviet Union disintegrated practically overnight.
I'm with Vovin about the sheer lack of disbelief people have that this is a reality. I've tried to explain to my own father how we are not any different then the Soviet Union and we could collapse just as easy. He always argues with me, saying that can never happen in America cause we are a free country. Free country my ass!! Are we really all that better then soviet era Russia? Have we learned that we can't police the world or else we'll fall apart, as Rome had to learn years ago? What makes America different than any other empire in antiquity? The answer is NOTHING.
(PS. Actually after having posted this I remembered a conversation my dad and I had recently about the mentality of 'manifest destiny' that was pushed on him in his generation. In his day he told me the world was considered untouchable. You could travel from one end of this country to another but that was it. Running out of resources was an impossible idea because of how untouchable the world was. Now the world is a like a global community for all of us, especially considering the internet, but decades upon decades of believeing that we could never really impact the earth in any way leads us to a lot of our current predicament. Nobody started us down this road because they had specific evil intentions, they were just blind and ignorant of their own choices and actions. My dad says a lot of his generation see that today and he's even apologized to me on behalf of his generation for 'fucking it up for the rest of you')
