In ‘What’s Ruining America?’ columnist David Brooks is reported as blaming the country’s sickness and internal division on “chicken littles” spreading a national contagion of pessimism. He could hardly be more off-beam. What is ruining America is the age-old condition known as imperial over-reach. A state where a country’s overinflated idea of itself becomes increasingly detached from reality, leading many to doubt and even despair.
America was founded upon the inalienable right of one human to pillage and enslave another, concreted in by a toxic admixture of European mercantilism and religious fundamentalism: the faith that god rewards the most brutal by making them rich. Consequently, the country has been at war with someone for 93% of its existence. The 49,000 Americans shot to death by one another every year show it is really at war with itself.
As reality seeps in, the despair this engenders is the real reason underlying America’s decline. Not “chicken littles”, the concocted foes of US arch-conservatism.