General Discussion

You don't have to be Black to be disappointed, but I'm damned sure it helps.

I remember self-appointed pundits asking "is America ready for a Black President ?", each evidently feeling this was a product of insightful deliberation peculiar to themselves, and forming my response as "The rest of the world is ready for America to have a Black President; If America isn't ready that's our problem."

Well. It turns out America had/has a much bigger problem than I realized. A painful learning experience for me, and much of the country, I'm guessing.

In the Fifties (and before), it was popular on the Right to say "America, love it or leave it". Much later, I remember a country music star adding "and if you do love it, stay here and try to fix the sonofabitch". I have to say I admired that addition, and felt like Democrats weren't the ones wanting to destroy the country (that was the oligarchs, as always), but rather had a moral obligation to be the ones who did the fixing, and I always wanted to be on the side of that effort. I'm not so sure about that anymore. I've pretty much lost any chance of having a normal life and career because of the way things are tilted towards the rich and connected, and I don't see much chance of that changing within my remaining lifetime, and I'm assuming 20-25 years to go is not unreasonable. If I were offered an academic position in a foreign country, with the kind of benefits those Socialist Yerpeens all enjoy, I'd move if I could afford it. And I'm not sure how much it matters what country, or what the native language is. (Well, almost. Hungary is still iffy for a while, and not because of the language.) My expectations for improvement in this country are that low. It will happen, I suppose, but not soon enough to help me live any but a marginal existence as a "consumer", maybe even a "voter". "Citizen" in a meaningful sense is out of reach for many Americans now. Maybe even me.

I used to think of America's future as always getting better and better. Now, I think the longer the country lasts, the more its fundamental flaws emerge (legalized slavery being a flaw that's now gone, at least in name); if these aren't reckoned with, I think we could end up going the way of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918), weakened by internal ethnic conflicts until broken apart by crises of internal or external origin. Austria-Hungary was once a major industrialized state and economic power in Europe, but fell apart when the accumulated stresses became too great, and the Russians attacked in alliance with Serbia. I'm not convinced a similar thing for America (1776-20??) is out of the question.