Signs of Decline
Many people feel that the US is in a period of decline.
Do you sense it too?
First
In my mind, the most important thing has been the radical change in journalism and news reporting that has taken place during the past 40 years. This industry used to take its ethics seriously and follow a high code of standards. They pursued the truth and reported it. Truth was king.
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Then came the 80’s, when every major newspaper and TV news company sold out to conglomerates. Unfortunately, that was the “beginning of the end”. News companies no longer stood on the principles of true investigative reporting. Profit was now the primary motive, which meant pursuing ratings and advertising revenues. As a result, news content moved towards entertainment; anything to attract readers and viewers.
In addition, a secret department in the CIA was created to oversee the news companies and prevent the release of sensitive information. As a result, there was more sterilized reporting of the Iraq war as compared with the Vietnam war. Indeed, prior to (and during) the Iraq war, almost every news company fell in line with the administration’s propaganda and agenda.
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At this point, government officials and powerful businessmen could get away with foul deeds and the dissemination of lies, two big examples of which would be 9/11 (history’s most heinous deception) and the lies that we were told during the build-up to the Iraq invasion.
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The magnitude of this loss cannot be overstated. The loss of true journalism means the loss of truth. Prior to this transition, presidents like Nixon and Clinton got into trouble for their misdeeds. Remember the Iran-Contra affair? Congressmen and military officers were called on the carpet for misuse of their position and power. But no more. Now they can get away with anything. (Unless, of course, someone else with more power decides to “out” them.)
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And now you have news companies taking sides along partisan lines, fanning the flames of division. One stands on Biden's side, another against, and you have an emotionally charged “boxing match” – a boxing match that draws in great numbers of people on both sides – perfect for the ratings and, again, the profits.
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The loss of true journalism is an incalculable loss. Please consider what these important men have said about “the press”:
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“Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control. Wherever the cause of liberty is making its way, one of its highest accomplishments is the guarantee of the freedom of the press.”
-Calvin Coolidge
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“Our democracy depends on an informed citizenry to survive, Your Honor. Besides the advancement of truth, science, and morality in general, the freedom of the press is a backbone of democracy. It exists to keep the government transparent, and the human instruments of government honed.”
-Kenneth Eade
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“Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.”
-Walter Cronkite
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“Democracy dies in darkness”
-Judge Damon J. Keith
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Second
Publications have become sloppy in terms of proofreading as well. I have noticed increasing numbers of typos in print media of all kinds. Proofing used to be important; not anymore, apparently. I see badly worded statements and typos in prominent newspapers, prominent websites, and in the instructions that may come with a new TV, computer, or appliance. In the rush to get information out to people, companies seem to be asking some individual to write something and have it sent directly out – so easy to do in this new age. Recently, I purchased a new Samsung tablet. The instructions that came with it, on a 2”x3” piece of paper, were in such fine print I had to get a microscope to read it.
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I think something else that happens is that a foreigner writes the original draft, then it gets run through a computer translation program, and it gets sent directly out for publication without anyone else checking it.
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Third
Sloppiness is evident in the spoken word as well. The English language is rapidly changing, as young people adopt NSE (New Slurred English) and older folks are left behind, unable to understand what the young people are saying. The ancient Greeks emphasized good pronunciation as one of the important disciplines. I believe that when a person has something to say, the burden is upon the speaker to express himself as clearly as possible. It is not right to slough this burden off upon the listener. But when someone shortcuts their elocution, that is exactly what he/she is doing. Therefore, I take NSE as a sign of sloppiness and decay. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that young people seem to have no awareness of the change that has taken place and the problem that this causes for older people.
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Fourth
This one is not really a decline, as it has been a problem for a long time. A great many Americans are willingly blind to the truth about the US’s involvements in the world. For example, with 200+ military bases throughout the world, many (if not most) Americans believe that this is necessary in order “to preserve our freedoms”. Having been so indoctrinated, they don’t understand that the true reasons are something else entirely. We citizens need to understand of the true reasons and find out how people in other countries view the US.
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By and large, the presence of a US military base is to support the US’s commercial interests in that country. For example, oil from the Middle East and opium from Afghanistan. There have been several instances in the past when the US violently replaced a democratically elected leader who stood in the way of US commercial interests. Four examples would be Guatemalan president Guzmán in 1954, Lumumba in the Congo (1961), and Allende in Chile (1973), and Saddam Hussein in (2006).
Being such a militaristic country, with such a high priority on the maintenance and growth of the military, it is a shame that other priorities take a back seat – other imperatives such as education, health care, environmental conservation, care for the elderly etc. These should receive higher attention than the “killing machine”. But, of course, changing this will be difficult, knowing that such a high percentage of the US population loves guns and owns them personally.
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Fifth
People are leaving the churches. No longer sensing the importance of God and Godly principles in their lives, they are drifting away. Scientists are almost unanimous in their conclusion that life evolved on its own and advanced to higher forms on its own, which has not been proven substantively. This can be shown, scientifically, to be false. There is a creator God. However, now that much of the general population believes otherwise, it has led many to become atheists, which leads, in turn, to lower of standards of behavior, allowing for moral and ethical decay. According to an article in the March 6th edition of The Economist, the percentage of Americans who say they are Christians declined between 2009 and 2019 from 77% to 65%.
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Sixth
The movie and video games industries have gone heavily into violence, as well as the bizarre and the supernatural, with the result that young people take in sizable amounts of this awful material, and it has desensitized them. Movies used to be more about real life and its challenges. They had moral and ethical overtones. Now, so much of it is just pure action and violence, with little to no character development, sometimes even void of logic or motives. I watched a portion of a movie series the other day. Every good story has a few “twists and turns”, but the unexpected turns in this case were coming rapid-fire, and each one seemed terribly contrived.
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Only just a few years ago, parents used to resist these kinds of movies and shield their kids from it. But no longer. And this could be what has led to one of the most shocking developments of all: the horrible school shootings and other mass shootings. Schools, these days, must post security guards! Churches also have certain people (usually in disguise) carry a concealed weapon to church with the idea of heading off a mass shooting. These kinds of developments would have been unimaginable years ago. And to my knowledge they only happen in the US.
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Occasionally, you can catch a replay of one of the movies from the 90’s. It seems to me that this is when some of the best movies of all time were made. E.g.: Dances with Wolves, Gladiator, Titanic, The Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption, A Few Good Men, Mrs. Doubtfire, Apollo 13, Braveheart, and Forest Gump.
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About violence again. The April 2, 2021 edition of The Economist reported that there has been a 30% increase in city murder rates across the nation (2020 vs. 2019). And outside of the cities, a substantial increase there as well. Again, I believe this can be attributed to violence in movies and video games, mainly. In movies, today, people expect to have their nerves jangled – see a person die a gruesome death, like in the Roman coliseum – see a fantastic supernatural creature appear and go on a rampage.
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Many movies contain bizarre “twists” – for shock factor evidently. On August 21, 2021, I watched a Netflix movie “The Whole Truth”, w/ Keanu Reeves and Rene Zellweger. The story is based upon a murder that takes place early in the film, followed by a lengthy process of determining who did it – whether it was the man’s wife or his son. The entire theme of the movie is based upon the fact that the man was killed. The police who took away his body did not contradict this fact. And yet, in the final minutes of the movie, the man appears – still alive! And this is somehow supposed to make sense? It seems that story lines have gone completely over the top -- needlessly extreme -- beyond bizarre. Do viewers no longer care if something makes sense? Piling on even more, it was revealed that Keanu Reeves’ character and Rene Zellweger’s character had an affair. This, even though during the movie these two adults never acted as if they had such a relationship.
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One more thing. Can you remember a class of movies called comedy? It’s a thing of the past, unfortunately. Comedies were great fun. I laughed and laughed at The Naked Gun series. Why have comedies gone away? Something must have changed – seriously. Why, just the other night I watched a couple of the early episodes of The Simpsons and laughed out loud many times. However, recent episodes of the Simpsons are just bizarre, meaningless rambling.
Seventh
Music. There is a sizable and growing segment of the music scene that is overtly caustic, edgy, and explicit. It is odd that this stuff is even called music, as there is almost no music involved. The negative sentiment of this media is representative of the times, I think.
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Eighth
Cell phone and computer games addiction. Enormous amounts of time are being consumed, subtracting from more constructive activities, like real and constructive relationships, building or making things, music or artistic endeavors, community events, etc., etc.
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Nineth
Surveillance. One of our country’s foundational principals is the concept of the individual’s right to privacy. The 4th constitutional amendment speaks of this: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches...”. However, with the rise of big intelligence gathering companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) and government intelligence organizations (NSA, CIA etc.), privacy is rapidly being lost. Soon, these companies and the government will know everything about every citizen, including our beliefs, our associations, our health records, our bank accounts, and even where we are located at any moment. We have allowed this to happen, and it is bound to be detrimental in the end. So determined is the government in this pursuit of information control that they vigorously defend their right to do so. For example, the pursuit and vilification of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, whose bravery and sacrifices are worthy of every free person’s admiration and gratitude, and yet no one stands up for them.
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Another individual right, established in the 6th constitutional amendment, is the right to defend oneself and the right to a fair trial. And yet, in December of 2011, a little-known rider on the defense appropriation bill gave the US military the power to approach any person, accuse them of terrorist activity, and take them into custody indefinitely and without recourse. Reportedly, then President Obama had misgivings about the rider but signed it into law anyway. Read more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012
Again, Americans are fond of thinking that the US’s vast military presence throughout the world exists to defend our freedoms. But ironically, right here at home since 9/11, Americans have allowed themselves to be robbed of their freedoms more thoroughly than any possible foreign enemy could have accomplished.
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Tenth
In the past, technology became better and better. Now, I sense technology becoming steadily worse – not better. Apps and web pages contain a great many bugs, omissions, and pop-up choices with wording so poor you have no idea how to respond. In my own experience, there are more than a dozen snags encountered each day – situations where it is not clear how to proceed. As a result, I often feel that I must digress and go searching on the internet for tips or instructions. However, so many times the information I find is uselessly out-of-date. When ordering a new device, the documentation that comes with it is so incredibly brief that it is practically useless.
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Engineering is getting worse, especially in terms of the human interface, as companies no longer sufficiently test their products, whether in-house or with a set of potential customers to gauge their reactions. I am an engineer myself – of 45 years’ experience – and I am a big proponent of well-designed user interfacing. Yet, I have seen interface designs become worse by the year.
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I will mention that one bright, shining exception is cars and trucks. These seem to be well engineered these days.
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Eleventh
About prisons: Many people don’t realize this, but the prison system in the US is a privately-owned business, supported by money from the public trust. See the movie named “13th” (for the 13th amendment) about the whole rotten setup. With the incentive to keeping men and women locked up for as long as possible, the system extracts a terrible price in both human terms and the cost of supporting this kind of system. And again, it’s all for the money – money to a few corporations and their shareholders.
Several European countries have much better systems for handling law violators, and these serve as good examples.
Twelth
Loss of ability to sing or dance. People used to learn how to sing, both in church and in school. When they sang “Happy Birthday”, or “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”, it sounded good. Now, unfortunately, very few know how to carry a tune. Just listen to the waiters try to sing “Happy Birthday” these days! Ugh; perfectly awful.
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They have no idea how to dance either. When I was young, this was a valuable skill and a source of great delight as a mode of expression and a way to celebrate. New types of dances were always popping up, and people thought it was great fun to learn them. Music and dance – essential elements – now lost!
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(Don’t remind me of the “pumping fists in the air” kind of dancing that exists these days. That’s not dancing.)
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Thirteenth
Out-of-control health care costs -- caused, for the most part, by the “elephant in the room” – the greedy health insurance companies. They charge big bucks and at the same time, set up hundreds of exclusions and limitations in their contracts, plus delay claim processing whenever possible. Not only that, they wield such power over the doctors and hospitals that they are able to manipulate them into using equipment and procedures that increase their profits, even at the expense of human well-being and even human lives.
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Health care is a tremendous burden upon the American people. It is a cancer that needs to be removed.
Fourteenth
We started with George Washington and subsequent presidents who were men of honor and principles. Recently we had Donald Trump, with zero honor and zero principles. And roughly half of the US population loves him and believes his lies. A large portion of Trump’s support comes from the evangelical Christian community, which enigmatic to me, as Trump is clearly non-Christian in every sense.
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Fifteenth
9/11 was discussed earlier. I’ll come full circle back to that. 9/11 was planned and carried out by our vice president at the time, plus the head of the Pentagon and top people at the CIA. No, I have not been drinking or smoking Mescal. Evidence in support of this position is abundant and clear to anyone with the courage to go looking for it. (Unfortunately, it would seem that only 1/3 of Americans have this kind of courage.) President George Bush just kept quiet and went along with the plan. What does it say about a country when its leaders plan and carry out a ruthless “false flag operation” that involves killing thousands of its own dear citizens and scaring the wits out of all the rest? 3,000+ people were sacrificed in the twin towers and hundreds died in the plane crashes. This alone is treason. But then you also have the health hazards. Tons of asbestos and other dangerous materials were released into the air in New York City that day. The very reason the Port Authority kept denying Silverstein’s requests to demolish the buildings (and then build new ones) was the release of asbestos.
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9/11 was planned and carried out to prepare Americans to go to war. Immediately following 9/11, a tremendous propaganda campaign was launched, persuading Americans that Iraq deserved to be invaded and its leader deposed. However, almost every aspect of this campaign was a lie. Many books bear this out. For instance,
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Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11, by several Journalists, including Paul Krugman, James Bamford, Ron Suskind, and Juan Cole, 2005
Into the Buzzsaw, by Kristina Borjesson, 2002
The Price Of Loyalty, Ron Suskind, 2004
Fair Game, Valerie Plame Wilson, 2007
By Way Of Deception, Victor Ostrovsky, 1990
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Years later, the true reasons for invading Iraq (and Afghanistan soon thereafter) came to light. Iraq was about oil and Afghanistan was about drugs.
When the leaders of a once-great country perform monstrous acts, where does that leave the people? They are lost. Russians have a saying that goes: “A fish rots from the head down.” Well, the head is rotten for sure. So now what? Will we rot too?
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