I can tell you a few conclusions at which I have arrived (without going into the years long process by which I arrived at them):
America is now a totalist state. This seems not so apparent because of the glossy "commercial skin" over everything. Shining goods, much meaningless commercial activity, the energy of every able person dedicated to profit making activity in the name of "the economy," which has become god, yet no one can define it except in the language of Wall Street and the stock market -- a faceless god in itself. Interestingly, the stock market goes up when people are paid less or more people are unemployed, etc., yet people have accepted its terms as the definition of their well being.
The rise of this state has required increased police forces and heavy-handed enforcement, thus we hold one-quarter of the world's prison population, though we are only six percent of the earth's population.
The elections are an illusion. A totalitarian state loves nothing more than elections, which gives the illusion of choice on the part of the people. The people, after so many generations of this illusory choice, believe it themselves.
America is already a second world nation, but the aforementioned shiny commercial skin and charming digital gizmos leads the citizenry to believe otherwise. No health care, no guarantee of anything really, except competitive struggle with one another for work and money.
Americans are presently comfortable because we have always been very materialistic from the beginning. And so comfort and goods have always trumped thought and morality. But now that natural resources are being heavily stressed globally, we are left without enough concern for the common good to save ourselves as a unified entity. The problem with American style democracy is that it is all well and good to say, "I owe no man anything. And no man owes me. I am free unto myself." And, unfortunately, alone. No grasp of the common weal. And so we are left to depend entirely upon the state to do everything man does collectively, while we are each left to seek out the latest personal comfort or amusement.
Neither comfort nor amusement are boundless. And never do they replace or fulfill the moral and philosophical.
There is indeed a sort of unease. But not nearly so much as you might think. And that unease is inchoate because the language needed to describe its causes has vanished into, or been neutralized by the state's economic consumer culture. There is almost no discussion of the meaning of anything, just the emotionalism managed by politics, marketing, etc.
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