Oh, say can you see. . .

Back in the 1970s, when U.S. foreign policy was the inanely unsophisticated mix of bullying and trying to bankrupt the Soviet Union with the arms race--the legacy of John Foster Dulles--Europeans figured that the Soviet Union would only bluff, but never call a bluff, and that if it went bankrupt, it would give in. But they figured that the United States was too macho adolescent ever to back down, and that if it found itself on the edge of bankruptcy, it would blow the world up.

The Soviet Union--thanks to the leadership of Michail Gorbechev--accepted their loss of the arms race. Mr. Gorbachev was willing to dissolve the Soviet Union. But he didn't want to abandon communism. America had never understood communism, popularly: it was supposed to be the opposite of democracy. Communism, of course, was the opposite of capitalism, and totalitarianism the opposite of democracy. And by the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was a capitalist state more than it was a democracy. And capitalism was afraif of communism.

Today, capitalism sees socialism as its main adversary. Greed versus social or communal existence. Me versus us. And as capitalism fails, it becomes more and more dangerous to the whole world.

Europe is a socialist union. Even with all the current difficulties, everybody is agreed that the solution to the problems the Union faces must be achieved socially.
In America, chaos is rampant. Crimes against society range from simple everyday rich folks' greed to Madoff-style greed and BP irresponsibility and cover-ups, from multi-billion dollar bank theft to everyday cheating. "Liars in public places" are a dime a dozen.

At present it seems that the explosion of the aggressive Bush Warrior years may be giving way to more self-destructive behavior, nationally. The Obama presidency is only symbolic: and shamefully, disgracefully so.

The nuclear fear years were years of fearing that the United States would blow up everything: universal explosion. What we are facing now is American implosion. The rest of the world will be much better off, of course, if the United States implodes.

And maybe the United States will be better off if it implodes, too. And disappears.

Maybe a few benign, civilised Native Americans will survive the impolsion, and build--rebuild--a decent civilisation upon this blighted continent.