3. Will the United States survive to celebrate its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026? And if it does, will the American Peoples be in any condition or mood to celebrate anything?
#USA-CCL???: A Question on July 4, 2023
Prelude:
Today, July 4, 2023, is exactly 1,096 days before July 4, 2026, 250 years after that day in Philadelphia that launched the beginning of the Experiment that is The United States of America. Thus, it is an excellent day to pose the following question:
#USA-CCL???; Or, Will America Survive to Celebrate Its 250th Birthday?
Back on my 73rd birthday in July 2019, i decided and determined to live long enough to see if there would be an election on November 3, 2020; and, if there was, to see if there would be an inauguration on January 20, 2021, regardless of who “won” and/or “lost” on 11/3.
I have since acknowledged, accepted, and moved on with the fact that, at this point at least ~ and barring what would be nothing less than a Revolution~ i will very probably not have to live long enough to see whether or not the United States of America will still be around to celebrate #USA-CCL!!! on July 4, 2026.
Given everything that has happened since January 6, and is happening in and to America today~ a looming recessionary hyper inflation with food, fuel, and power shortages, another probable Pandemic, the controversies and conflicts surrounding abortion, guns, police accountability, spiraling crimes against persons and property, weather- and climate-related natural disasters, church/state relations, the possibility of World War III, and so forth, and especially the fact that Donald Trump and Joe Biden are the front-running candidates in Election2024 ~ given all that, this asks if #USA-CCL!!! shouldn’t be altered to read #USA-CCL???
“CCL,” of course, is “250” in the Roman numeral parlance [to borrow a meme from the NFL]. And, “USA-CCL” refers to July 4, 2026, the 250th Anniversary of the official start of the American Secession from England [aka the First American “Revolution”] with the American Colonists’ Declaration of independence.
The question posed is: What will the United States of America ~ this people, this land, this country, this nation, and above all, this government ~ what will the USA actually, really Be 1,096 days from now?
Another, blunter way of putting the question is: Will the United States of America ~ this people, land, country, nation, and above all, this government ~ will the USA, as it now exists, operates, functions, and in fact now is, will this USA survive over these next
1,096 days all the way up to July 4, 2026?
l. a Bankrupt Debtor State
2. an Imperialist Warfare State
3. a Redistributionist Welfare State
4. a Secrecy/Surveillance/Security/proto-Police State
5. an Autocratic/Oligarchic/Plutocratic/Patriarchal Deep State
6. a Failing or at best Flailing Nation State
7. an Overshoot State
And, perhaps most importantly,
8. a People and Nation no longer merely “divided,” but fractured~ even to the point of disintegration~ in ways not seen in more than 164 years, since the eve of what may end up being merely the First American Civil War.
Those who would deny any of these assertions are invited to consider the facts ~ in numerical order~ about America as:
1. a Bankrupt Debtor State: Consider this nation’s $34.04 TRILLION and growing by the minute national, sovereign Debt; which does not include State and Local government, corporate, or private and consumer Debt. Also, look at this nation’s $212.01 TRILLION worth of Federal Unfunded Liabilities [Social Security, Medicare, Interest on the Federal Debt held by the Public, and Federal Employee and Veterans pensions and benefits]. And the looming, inevitable instability if not bankruptcies of many State and Local government and private income and medical security and entitlement programs.
See https://usdebtclock.org/ for details, accessed 17 Jan 24.
The most immediate questions that arise in the face of the various already passed and further proposed multi-trillion dollar stimulus/rescue/rebuild/bailout/etc plans are: Who is going to pay for all this? And When? And How?
2. an Imperialist Warfare State: In its more than 240-year-long history since declaring independence on July 4, 1776, there have only been 16 years in which the US was not at war.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States for details.
From the end of World War II to 2001, the US initiated 201 of the 248 armed conflicts in 153 locations, accounting for over 80 percent of total wars fought on the Planet. From 2001 to the present, the United States spent over $8 TRILLION on wars and military operations in 85 countries, caused more than 900,000 Direct Deaths and more than 4.5 MILLION Indirect Deaths, and created 38 MILLION Refugees in 78 countries. This does not include US expenditures on its war with Russia in Ukraine or its support of Israel’s extermination of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, or the Refugees created in those wars. See https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures for details.
In the 20 years since 9/11, US arms dealers have spent a total of $285 MILLION in campaign contributions and $2.5 BILLION in lobbying spending, and in hiring more than 200 former government lobbyists. Over that period, the top five weapons companies ~ Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman ~ received a total of $2.02 trillion in US congressional appropriations. See https://www.opensecrets.org/news/reports/capitalizing-on-conflict/defense-contractors for details.
And three days before Christmas 2023, President Biden signed into law the FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act giving America’s Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex operating expenses for the next year. Included in the NDAA was renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, continuing the authorization of warrantless surveillance by the government of American citizens.
And now with the American war on Russia in Ukraine, events in East Asia with China, and in the Middle East with Israel, Iran, Syria, Iraq, etc, Cold War II has begun. The Russians have recovered from the collapse of the USSR and the failure of European Communism ~ and the Chinese from the madness of Mao ~ well enough to present credibly viable and saleable “threats” to, and thus be obvious “enemies” of America, and its global unipolar hegemony since the end of Cold War I thirty-two years ago. And who knows Who is doing what to Whom all over the Mideast.
As Julian Assange noted back in 2011 regarding Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, etc, “The goal is endless war, not a successful war.”
3. a Redistributionist Welfare State: Consider the individuals, groups, organizations, and institutions within which particular political, economic, cultural, social, or other Special Interest sectors, and which subsidiary governments [domestic and foreign] receiving what kind of and how much in:
welfare, subsidies, relief, bailouts, loans, rescues, grants, gifts, grifts, grafts, pork, log rolls, bribes, and other “entitlements, aid, and assistance” from the federal government.
And reflect on how much it costs Who [or cui mal, as they used to say in Rome], and into Whose pockets it all goes [or cui bono, as the lawyers all say today].
4. a Secrecy/Surveillance/Security/proto-Police State: Ponder this nation’s governments’ iron veil of secrets from~ and blanket, warrantless surveillance of ~ its citizens, all in the name of those citizens’ “security,” all perpetrated and enforced by an increasingly militarized Federal, State, and Local regulatory and law enforcement Praetorian Guard.
5. an Autocratic/Oligarchic/Plutocratic/Patriarchal Deep State: Examine the military-industrial-congressional complex, the banking finance-printing press web, the techno-infotainment matrix, the petro-food-guns-n-drugs cartels, the pharmo-medico insurance-legal cabals, and the surveillance-secrecy-security-safety panopticon that owns and operates, and commands and controls the politicians and bureaucrats at center stage in America’s reality-tv extravaganza; and America’s
$ 1 = I Vote system of government and governance that gets, puts, and keeps them there.
6. a Failing or at best Flailing Nation-State: Note that America spends more per capita and a higher percentage of its GNP on Health Care, and yet has and has had ~ from almost the very beginning~ the most Reported Cases of and Deaths from COVID of any other nation on the Planet. With 4.2% of the World’s Population, the US currently has 15.8 % of all Total COVID Cases and 17.1 % of all COVID-related Deaths. For perspective: The United States has had just under 51,765 less COVID Deaths than India and Brazil combined, whose combined populations is almost five times greater.
Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ ; accessed 17 Jan 24..
America has a prison-industrial complex that incarcerates more people ~ particularly for non-violent crimes~ than any other nation on the Planet. Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-country .
And America is awash in crimes of violence [with and without guns] against persons and property, drug addiction and overdoses, suicides, and maternal mortality, among many other sobering indicators of individual and collective crisis.
Its energy, transportation, and communications infrastructures are crumbling and increasingly vulnerable to increasingly frequent disruptions from weather events, cyber-attacks, supply line choke points and resultant critical shortages, social unrest, and the like. And, one can only wonder: How many current and former Students and/or their Parents are satisfied with the Education they got or are getting today, and the system that is failing to provide it; at all levels? And what they owe for the “privilege” of having received that “education.”
7. an Overshoot State: That ~ with 4.2% of the world’s population ~ while America produces 15%+/- of the world’s measured goods, products, and services, it consumes 25%+/- of those services, products, and goods, and create 30%+/- of its waste, garbage, and pollution, including 11.1% of Total emitted Greenhouse Gases. If the entire planet lived like America does, it would take more than five Earths to provide the natural resources, goods, products, and services provided by this one Earth that we Humans have. [See https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do-we-need/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions for details.]
8. a People and Nation no longer merely “divided,” but fractured: The results of Election2020 spoke and still speak for themselves. No politician, party, or special interest group championing any cultural, social, economic, or political agenda has a national “mandate” to do anything in this country about anything. Not Biden. Not Trump. Not Anybody. And especially not the progressive, “social democrats” like AOC, Sanders, and Warren elements of the conversation. And this was confirmed in Election2022.
That 25,000 troops were needed to secure the inauguration and, almost three months later, that several thousand were still in town should have made that simple, stark fact amply evident. That a significant number of Americans still sincerely believe that Election2020 was stolen shows it irrevocably.
As do all the seething controversies and confrontations, and the conflicts boiling over about: The COVID Event, past and looming; The Election. and January 6; Abortion, Guns, Police Accountability, Environmental Quality, and Church/State Relations; Culture Wars, Critical Race and Replacement Theories, and Wokeness; Alternative Facts, Elective Evidence, and Discretionary Information, and so forth,
Note also that the US government has declared a “War Against Domestic Terrorism,” whatever that may conveniently ending up happening to be. Further indication that that time, 164 years ago, was the eve of merely the First American Civil War.
See https://www.gao.gov/blog/rising-threat-domestic-terrorism-u.s.-and-federal-efforts-combat-it for details.
These eight “States” are the state of the United States of America today. They constitute flashing warning signal beacons showing the direction in which America’s collision course with reality is headed. And they give only passing reference to the impact that changing weather and climate patterns will have and are already having on this nation’s infrastructure, economy, society, and security.
Those who would dismiss as implausible and impossible the demise of the United States in less than three years are invited to consider the year 1988, and how things were going back then at the Berlin Wall, around the Warsaw Bloc, and in the USSR itself. And then remember how things had changed there three years later, starting with the fall of that Wall in 1989 and ultimately, the disintegration of the USSR and the demise of European Communism by the end of 1991.
In light of all this, the question isn’t so much Will the United States survive to celebrate #USA-CCL!!!, but Can it? And if it does survive, will it ~ and more importantly ~ and the American Peoples be in any condition – or have any desire~ to celebrate anything?
And, finally: If it is to survive, How?
What is the Alternative to and the Antidote for these eight Existential Threats to the uniquely American Experiment with Constitutionally-limited, democratically-elected representative government under a Rule of Law, before which all Human Beings are “created equal and treated equally”? That all Human Beings were NOT treated equally from the very beginning of that Experiment is the seed of a major reason for its being in very real danger of unraveling completely today.
What changes to the American system of national government and governance ~ and the relationship of that government to the national economy, to subordinate governments, and to civil society~ what changes need to happen to bring that Experiment back from the edge of total failure?
That is the question that a critical mass of Americans needs to start asking themselves and each other while the opportunity to do so still exists. But first, they must recognize, realize, acknowledge, and accept the fact that that Experiment is frighteningly close to collapsing into chaos, and then into its only available alternative and antidote, tyranny.
Then they have to commit to actually, really doing something about it.
And then can begin the process of figuring out What to do When and Where, and Who is going to do it and How. At which point the strategic planning process can proceed.
Note: Another way to frame the entire issue is: Given its current system of government and governance ~ a system whereby Vested Special Interests can gain ready, easy, but expensive access to the legal power, the administrative authority, and, above all, the spending capacity and capability of that government as governed by its elected politicians, entrenched civilian and military bureaucrats, and anointed political appointees ~ given that, the real question is: SHOULD the United States survive to celebrate #USACCL!!! ?