First of all, I didn't know you had no party affiliation. Second, you have acted like you know me as well and you don't know shit about me. Third, I have not attacked you personally, just your comments.
My beef with your comments is this - if you truly think that this country is going to fall and fail, then in your mind it will, regardless of what happens. If the majority of people think and act in that manner in this country, then it will fall and fail. We cannot afford that. This country defeated totalitarianism, cured diseases, built the strongest economy in the history of the world, and put a man on the moon. So don't give me this horseshit that there are too many problems or problems that are too big for us to solve. We can fix this, we just need the right attidude and political will to do it. If you don't think we can, fine. You are entitled to your opinion. I just hope that more people think like I do - and I think they do. I posted a comment on a thread recently that the market is driven by perceptions. If the people in this country think things are getting better, then they have the ability to make it so. And that will improve the economy. Do nothing, and we will fail.
You are perfectly free to express whatever opinion you want to. However, in this case, I think you are dead wrong.
And see, I understand your point but you are missing what I'm saying here. What I'm saying is that in order to fix the problem many concepts, services, products, all sorts of things from our former (bubble driven) lifestyle simply have to go poof before we can adequately fix things. What I'm saying is the market and society at large is sending us a message (you must fundamentally change your mindset and your economic way of life) and we are ignoring it, largely due to the shortsighted perspective that you share with the vast majority of those in power. I don't see our current economic collapse as an ultimate failure--I see it as fulfilling our destiny and taking our place in history as the generation forced to pick up the pieces and reshape society and civilization into something better and more sustainable. Every generation has their place and we can rise to the challenge, but we have to acknowledge the real problems.
My perspective, I'm sure, seems irrationally long term or impractically broad to some, especially in today's America where instant gratification comes too late. What I worry about the fact that most folks share your beliefs is that it will end up causing us to waste precious resources and time on red herrings, rather than allowing the market to direct resources where they belong (and, please, spare me the party line about the free market being dead--it was never given a chance to sustain itself but was stillborn and kept alive on the feeding tube of free money from central banks, which are inherently adverse to free market principles). Perhaps, if everyone embraced my ideas, we would be fixing or redesigning the engine of the economy instead of just trying to inject a little gas into the carburetor to rev the engine again. All of our answers to the problem seem to involve increasing the problem itself--debt. We can no longer go back to the bubble era because the bubbles have nearly all popped (save T bonds and the dollar...anything else?). But we're just trying to reinflate like we can find a new bubble to blow. Hell, we're actively trying to reinflate the housing bubble rather than let housing prices decline to more rational levels. It's utter insanity.
I hope you can see why I take issue with your characterization of my position as being utterly negative. In a shortsighted perspective, yes, you are right it looks pretty dismal. But I also think that the only way we can make the best of things is by acknowledging the fundamental problems and then blowing them up and starting over and doing things better. We can't continue doing the things we've done--and that's exactly what your faithful leaders are advocating at a very basic level, although they do a good job of plastering over reality with headfakes, press manipulation and fear mongering.
I've never met a retarded person who wasn't smiling.
