When the State of the Union Is Strong, but Doesn’t Feel Like It
By Bryce Covert, JAN. 13, 2016 (LINK to article)
This commentary on the "state of the union" is so wrong-headed it is difficult knowing where to begin in criticising it.
It is based on false premises. First and foremost, the false premise that America is a nation. It is not. Like all states, it is a mercenary "patron state" deceitfully posing as a nation, in order to legitimise itself, its ruling elites, and the immense power they wield and abuse, to their own and favoured (especially wealthy and academic) clients personal advantage, at the expense of society at large.
Then there is the false premise (which follows from the first) that economic growth is an absolute good, that everyone, no matter how wealthy they may be, always needs more money.
Far from being an absolute good, perpetual economic (and population) growth poses a dire threat to any society's very survival.
In order to understand where I'm coming from with my criticism, one must view ourselves, our society and civilisation from a human-evolutionary perspective, which tragically a previous generation of academics made a taboo of doing, in OVERREACTION to the Nazis having hijacked the half-baked ideas of social Darwinism, which they abused for their own evil purposes.
It is exactly the kind of overreaction warned against in a recent NYT editorial, The Price of Fear: “In the reaction and overreaction to terrorism [evil] comes the risk that society will lose its way".
Western civilisation has indeed lost its way - badly, and unless corrected, fatally.
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