I vaguely recall the phrase: "Politics is art of the Possible". Anything is possible now, and technology is forever expanding this reality. In a sense, the crumbling of the economy, people losing jobs and healthcare has exacerbated the the social relations. History attests to this behavior which can be traced back to the life-span of this country. The rising tension of racism and hate have their antecedents in the colonial days to the present. Today, with unlimited access to the Internet and a population unable to shed-off its divided past, cyber babble and cable talking heads are the fueling the discord fast raising to a shrill and crescendo, that in the end some of us do not engage, others up the ante to dizzying heights. This cacophony of Youtube videos, editorials of the talking heads, comments on the many controversial blogs and hubs and other similarly affected web sites, newspapers, magazine, shows the zine as agitated and somewhat distorted and  intended to intimidate. It is easy to turn away from it all than to know more of the boogeyman called Politics. The media is accused of polarizing dissent, but the fames are fanned from one direction at this juncture, and common sense and cooler heads are desperately needed.

The internet has offered to people what books did to the early US, when books were distributed to the far corners of the land(except for the slave). What this medium of books has done,it has become a library for would be thinkers and thought givers. By this I mean to say that what people could do orally to their fellowmen with their retention skills, today we have people who bully anybody who does not follow their  Blog Posts or comments they make in their blogs or in their comments elsewhere. What the computer with the wired and connected Internet has done was to enable ideas to clash on all converging technologies clearly exposing the latent and undercurrent of the history of war of Ideas. The war of  ideas is iconic, on signs, verbally as well as on print(Internet, Newspapers or TV, Twitter, Facebook and so forth). The run to the elections, there was a lot consternation with the "change" in the way technology was being utilized to rally votes and collect money. This still needs to be investigated, i.e., the means and ways, the effects and affects of technology and packaged rhetoric on the intended audience. One of the most interesting aspects to look at is the use, today, of the very technologies, Internet and TV, by Huge Oil Companies and other Mega Financial and Insurance companies to pacify and outflank their opponents. They have not only invested millions into pitying opposing views within the milieu and upgrading their success level,  they are  always  in the background punctuating all this garbled discourse with memes that agitate and inflame passions. The combination of Big business and racist rhetoric makes for the crumbling of civility, tolerance and humaneness. The main idea here is to divide and conquer.

The Crumbling Facade

The crumbling schools, falling bridges, closing factories, weakened infrastructure in all spheres like abandoned houses, cracked pavements and pot-holed  highways, falling and failing schools, millions of jobs lost, healthcare costs raising and millions with no health care; a combative and recalcitrant opposition party; a lynch mob with aggressive and negative demonstration, rowdy and agitated rallies and Town Hall meetings. A  division of white and the rest of the colored people on two sides of the divide. The out shouting and trampling of other American citizen's rights willy-nilly; the threat of violence by gun-totting Gun Rights activists; disrespect of the sitting President which is without precedence. Hospitals with doctors inundated with paperwork and less patient care; spiraling Insurance fees, gas and oil rates, electricity rates, rising house taxes and toxic mortgages; Car industry in state of bankruptcy; corrupt and failing banks with questionable banking practices; calling the President a liar inside the; opposition working to make'Obama fail' strategies of heightened rhetoric and consistently becoming belligerent and testy; talk-show radio hosts who spew vitriolic and vile denunciations of everything the President does or proposes; poverty lines increasing;  unemployed checks coming to an end; many families on food stamps and some surviving on social security checks; rise in diseases, poverty and popping of pills; drug abuse; some are screaming cessation;  others announced they will not serve under Obama as the Commander-in-chief; placards or portray him as a "tribesman with feathers;  or given the 'sambo'; or, a Hitler; a water-mellon-fried-chicken-eating african person; the black population suffering mostly from the depression, incarceration at abnormal rates; Aids more prevalent in the black population, poverty-unemployment and drugs ruining the fabric of that community nationally; this applies in many ways to other brown people of non-European descent and poor whites; there are shouts of "I want my America back" and other snipes best left out of this article. It is not popular to say that we are a nation of immigrants, and we form the USA. The pertinent ideas here are those of  authoritarianism and divide and conquer. The notion that we are still a super Power is not backed-up by any tangible factl. True, we still posses some modicum of greatness, but our ideas no more determine nor rule what the world and civilization is about. We are involved in losing and senseless wars; we have become a credit nation in debt and not producing, with a chronically low GDP and a bloated national debt. Some members of our population are homeless, and very distressed and angry;  Banks that were propped-up have not improved nor learned lessons, and are still in the red; we are still beholden to the Arab, African and Middle East oil; there are signs that there are those that are spoiling for a racial fight or confrontation; Are we at the cusp of some 21st century United States Civil War? I bet and hope not... 

History as the Harbinger of the Present

It is important to put this matter into historical perspective In the North, the Civil War and Reconstruction significantly affected the development of race relations and, ultimately racial attitudes. The war brought black men a much needed measure of pride and confidence. When the nation was at war, they had given money  and blood to preserve the union and extended the range of liberty. White men forgot but black leaders could not, and the memory enhance both their self-esteem and their claim to fair treatment in the US. When when southern violence and Northern prejudice prevented the enforcement of laws designed to implement the amendments and the Supreme Court began to interpret them narrowly, the guarantees of citizenship were plainly incorporated in the basic law of the land. Black leaders  turned their attention to tactical questions and begun to devise methods for gaining in practice rights already granted in principle. The era also significantly affected the long-range development of white attitudes. Though Reconstruction ultimately failed to establish a new and civil and political order in the South, it did enable Republicans to include in the Constitution an indelible repudiation of racism- a fact of no small weight in a nation of Constitution worshippers. White men would long continue to discriminate against black men in clear violation of the Constitution, but the amendments were reminders that at a moment in the past white men had behaved toward black men in a way consonant with with the democratic principles of the nation. The Reconstruction amendments rebuked succeeding generation and established a standard against which men of conscience would continue to measure themselves and their society. If the steps toward creating racial equality during the civil war and Reconstruction turned out to be small ones, they were critically important, as first steps always are.

The Ideas that prevail in latter-day America emanated from a checkered past. Even when laws were passed, the attitudes carried over into the next generation up to now as we can see are the eruption of hostilities, belligerency, shouting and ominous placards and topsy-turvy and agitated racist reactions. These are spilling out onto the cable and net, that you end up hearing ex-President Jimmy Carter denounced these shenanigans as racism. Some people say it is a fringe element, but it is strangely from the Congress down to the man-in-the-street. This behavior has found it way into the Web and is used in a myriad ways. Articles like this one touching on these issues and points are somehow conveniently ignored and people would rather see life through rose-colored glasses; the predominant ideas are that one does not want to involve oneself in these 'politics' and so forth. The very politics everyone is running away from,  are dismantling and wrecking of the social cohesion we see everyday. Some people state that ideas of Obama and his people  are dangerous and making us unsafe. The preponderance and proliferation of divisive vitriolic cyber babble and talking heads 'talking points' are derailing the social glue that binds us all as Americans. History informs us as to how these attitudes came about and how and why they have been perpetuated. The explosion of free speech on the net and TV has escalated to the extend no one wants to deal with it. The issue is the first African American President to be in the white house in America. It has not yet been fully accepted that a black man can have his finger on nuclear weapon. These attitudes can be traced throughout the history and its perception of African people. This does not mean the whole country is against Obama, anyway, a significant majority of voters and large majority of the  Electoral College gave him the nod. But the fierce and very loud motley crew and majority white protesters and demonstrators swell the ranks of the angry people. These lynch-like mobs have been tabulated throughout history, but the  verve with which the present ones are manifesting, leaves most people filled with serious uncertainty. Reading history we can better understand the present and its malcontents. Whenever we can look much more clearly and straight into the feared unknown, we become better armed to deal with it, because at close quarters, it is intense, but not scary; although I will hasten to add that the situation out the in the land is becoming 'very, very scary' indeed. There is some silent confidence within the majority of  the Americans, the idea that we will give our President his chance to turn 'this ship around; there is also a silent majority which elected and still believe in Obama, and are seeing the change taking place and  see him everyday on TV, internationally and locally, building a different America, that is not fueled by war and racism. History is on his side and the changes that he is implementing are slow, but working.

Why civilizations fail is due to many factors. Ours is not unique in the way things are going. There is always and abundance of hope which stresses goodness over negative rhetoric. Dominant social ideas that have come down with us form the past are those of superior and inferior complexes. These ideas that one race is above the other, or is better or not properly equipped to deal with the vicissitudes of governance and power, in this young civilization are what have been the cause of the heated reaction which we see today manifest in many forms. The War of ideas, that the old ideas of domination of one race over the other have long been challenged and debunked, the only thing left is for them to become an implemented reality in the behavior and conscience of men of all cultures in the US today. When  a civilization crumbles, it begins to have many lose ends, it buckles, shakes either implodes or explodes unto itself and despite itself. There are many ideas that are purported to be the reason for the state of affairs in our country. There are those counter thoughts that say it has much further genesis, and where it's at is no more different from whence it originated. Once we ignore history, we ignore what is happening to us now in the present, because we do not know or understand the past, thus making us uncertain about the future. We know why our Empire is in dire straights, our past informs us why we are who we are. The present is very turbulent, and a lot of ignorance at times passes for knowledge because the Internet has made us to be an interconnected, and the problem is we have not yet had time to fixate on its affects and effects on us and our society. We have not yet understood the impact we are having on the world and its inhabitants, and how that creates perceptions about us, which in most cases can be negative than positive. We claim that what we do and think is no concern of the world and whoever is our critic, but that's no way of the  Empire. We cannot be perceived as acting like brutes and spoiled children; if we want to be taken seriously, we need to lead by just and fair examples and popular ideas. History teaches us how to hold together a disintegrating civilization by learning both its negative and positive ideas. Warring ideas do not facilitate for harmony and development, but chaos and destruction.