THE MELTDOWN

Hey, what's going on here?

Didn't we just suffer through a catastrophic meltdown caused by Republican corruption and thievery?

Enormous deficits directly caused by unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy and crony corporate pork barrel spending, relentless attacks on human rights and our own American civil liberties, a determined effort to dismantle any government oversight of every business activity - remember?

We saw a balanced budget turned into enormous federal deficits. We saw SALT treaties ripped up to allow the multi-billion dollar Star Wars boondoggle. We saw Marines sent to grab oil fields for private companies, who sent more six-figure contractors to Iraq than we sent troops. We saw the NSA set loose to spy on Americans, listening to all of our phone calls and reading all of our emails.

And, finally, we saw the catastrophic meltdown of the U.S. economy in 2008. There were plenty of warnings. Foreclosure rates were rising to historic levels, and various economists were warning that a bubble was forming in the housing market. The Republican administration had years of warning that some action should be taken to slow things down. But that was completely opposed to their political philosophy - Let The Rich Get Richer.

And, finally, predictably, things fell apart. Banks failed. GM went bankrupt. Markets crashed. And millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes, their health coverage, their hope.

We did the right thing in booting the GOP in 2008, and bringing in new leadership to get us out of the mess. And maybe someday the GOP will reform itself to be a genuine political party again, instead of a corporate-controlled neofascist conspiracy.

They had their chance, and they showed beyond any doubt what they have to offer: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the country goes to hell.

After the last Republican-led meltdown, in 1929, we elected a Democrat in 1932. Things had gotten pretty bad by then, with national unemployment hitting 25%. But we were still struggling to recover for the rest of the decade. When we finally did emerge after WWII, we began the era of American leadership that we all grew up with.

It's 1934. Are Americans dumb enough to stick that screwdriver into the light socket AGAIN?

OMG

CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON

Americans remember that we won World War II.

But nobody seems to remember how we did that.

First of all, we didn't do it alone. We were part of the Allied Forces. It was a serious strategic blunder for Japan to attack us at Pearl Harbor. We entered the war to fight alongside of Great Britain and her Commonwealth countries. It was a fatal strategic blunder for Nazi Germany to attack the Soviet Union in 1943. The Red Army fought back with brutal ferocity, and were the ones to enter Hitler's Berlin in 1945. We did our part, and can be proud of that. But we didn't win the war single-handedly.

And, secondly, much of the war effort that led to victory occurred here in the United States, not on overseas battlefields. We built war machines in numbers that overwhelmed the opposition. For example, at the start of the war, Japan had 10 aircraft carriers in commission, and the United States had 8. At the end of the war, Japan's force had been reduced to only 4 carriers. The United States had 114. For example, the German Panzer tank was more powerful and more durable than the American Sherman tank. But American Sherman tanks outnumbered Panzers by a ratio of 5 to 1. We won the war partly because of our manufacturing might.

So how are things going these days?

A decade of jingoism and cowboy highjinks severely damaged our relations with our historical Western allies. The present administration is trying to repair things, but the jingoistic and partisan GOP seems to have forgotten the idea that politics stops at the water's edge. Once most of the world saw us as the good guys. That was before Abu Ghraib. They thought our leadership could be trusted. That was before we re-elected Dubya.

And our manufacturing might? Our corporate leaders, seeking to enrich themselves more by paying less to their workforce, have relocated much of that to foreign shores and foreign workers. China now has much of our manufacturing capability and expertise. They are now the world's second largest economy, and growing rapidly while we sputter along.

We were on the winning side in 1945.

But times have changed.

There are clouds on the horizon.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

If you were old enough to remember the Great Depression, here's what you would remember.

After the stock market crash of 1929, our economy and the world economy went into a tailspin. Unfortunately, we had just elected a Republican in 1928, Herbert Hoover, who philosophically held fast to the notion that the government should not involve itself in taking action in the crisis. As conditions got worse, as unemployment hit 25%, hundreds of Hoovervilles sprouted up to house thousands upon thousands of rail-hopping hobos looking for work, and Herbert Hoover assured America that he was staying the course and prosperity was just around the corner.

It wasn't. America dumped Hoover and the Republican Party in 1932, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected. Over his next two terms, he had some success in using government powers and government funds to improve the lives of ordinary Americans. Many wealthy and privileged people in this country still hate him for doing that.

The worldwide economic crisis brought down a new democracy in Germany. A new fascist government allied itself with a militaristic regime in Japan. Western governments, sickened by the horrifying loss of life in WWI, went to great lengths to avoid new conflicts. That didn't work.

War started in with a German invasion of Poland in September 1939, a little after Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler agreed on a non-aggression pact. Poland was crushed, and afterwards Britain and France declared war on Germany. For two more years, America stayed out of the war. But Roosevelt and many others wondered what would happen if we did not enter the war, and if France and Britain were defeated. Would Germany come after us next?

But the United States did enter the war, after our naval forces in the Pacific were attacked by Japan on December 7, 1941. We declared war on Japan. Germany, Japan's ally, declared war on us. We then declared war on Germany.

No one in this country knew if we would win this war, or lose it. In retrospect, Franklin Roosevelt's statement that "No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory." was a pretty gutsy thing to say. But no one knew if we could win, or could even survive this war.

For at least once in our nation's history, we were united by the shock of Pearl Harbor. We amazed ourselves and the world with the force of our united strength. The tide of the war against Japan turned in the summer of 1942, with an American victory at Midway and the destruction of the carrier force that attacked Pearl Harbor. The tide of the war against Germany turned when they betrayed the Soviet Union in 1943 and attacked. Our inconvenient alliance with the Soviet Union began, and we supported them in their resistance to Nazi Germany.

In 1945, the United States and its allies were victorious. We all experienced the relief and pride of a hard earned victory. But unlike our allies, we had not been bombed into rubble.

Before WWII, the United States of America had been an economic entity. But we were not a world leader in anything, except corn and cotton production.

After WWII, we were Number One. In just about everything.

While the rest of the world rebuilt its houses, we went full speed ahead with our massive manufacturing plants. Suddenly, the backwater pre-war USA became the powerhouse post-war USA.

We're Number One!

Many modern Americans don't remember what the world was like before WWII.

We weren't much then.

We didn't become something more until after other world cities were bombed to rubble.

After that, we got a big head start. We were Number One when there wasn't a Number Two.

The Fifties. The Sixties.

Those were the Good Old Days.

Unfortunately, we've outsourced our manufacturing and ruined our climate and indebted our economy to foreign powers. Oops.

If you are old enough to remember the Great Depression, you came through a terrible time.

If you're not old enough to remember the Great Depression, you're living in a terrible time.

Your enemies are domestic, not foreign.

We're only Number One if we're smart enough to stay Number One.

But, geez, what are the odds of that? It's comforting, at least, to remember.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

ISLAM

I'm not sure whether I met any Muslims before I met ...

Gee. I can't remember his name. He was Egyptian and he worked with me at FourPhase.

FourPhase has disappeared into corporate history, and so has he.

He was a good guy, very competent, very nice. He could write Unix scripts.

His example showed me that Islam has some things in common with Christianity.

You can have good guys like Saint Francis and Saint Theresa and Mother Theresa saying they are Christians. And you can have dirtbags like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and George W. Bush doing the same.

Islam has decent people , like him, and insane monsters, like Osama Bin Laden.

We Americans have a solution to this insanity.

Everyone, from bigoted racist Christians to civilized tolerant Muslims, are entitled to pursue their own personal religious convictions.

And we prosecute anyone who threatens our Constitution and our existence as a nation.

That's the American Way.

Yeah!

OMG

So the Obama Administration has followed the same course as the Nancy Pelosi Congress.

It was possible, and frankly fully justified, to impeach Bush and Cheney for war crimes.

We did, in fact, convict and punish others for waterboarding our own soldiers in WWII.

So Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, who authorized waterboarding, deserved at least to go to prison for war crimes. I know, some idiots think these guys were desperate to save American lives. But that's not the truth. The people being tortured were Al Qaeda leaders, and they were being asked specific questions. They were being asked to confess some contact between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The torture had nothing to do with saving American lives. It was ordered from the White House to produce false confessions, to save the lily white asses of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Pelosi knew enough to start impeachment proceedings. She should have. But she didn't. She decided that getting the Democrats into power in the next election was more important than seeking justice for these crimes. Was she right? I don't know.

Now the Obama Administration has avoided partisan confrontation on this issue and many others. They have sought to show progress, and to deny the right wing any inflammatory positions that might be used to frighten centrist voters. They have followed the Nancy Pelosi path of seeking power by soothing the anxieties of moderates rather than implementing the rightful demands of their own supporters.

Is it possible that they have miscalculated, that their own supporters will neglect their civic duty and vote this November? Is it possible that the racist base of the Republican Party will show up and steal the next Congress away from the rest of us?

OMG