and here we run into one of the most surreal aspects of the right patriotic marketing campaign--that conservatives cannot face even the slightest amount of data that might puncture their assumption that the united states is the most fabulous of all possible nation-states, that cowboy capitalism is the most humane possible system and so forth.
most of the problems outlined above with the reality of the american system are not new--some of them even require attention--but the only certainty in the world i know of is that the right will never be able to address any of it because they cant bring themselves to be self-critical.
for example--the import/export imbalances are at once a direct result of globalizing capitalism and are irrelevant at the same time--because the dynamics of globalizing capitalism runs against the continued importance of nation-states. the entire conservative movement is geared toward trying to preserve this antiquated notion of the nation-state because--and only because--without it their ideology collapses. to do this, they need to never look at the reality of the economic system that the rest of their politics leaves them no choice but to defend as an unqualified good.
the american health care system is a disaster--best to deal with it by either refusing to look or qualifying all possible alternatives as communist.
the american educational system is among the most brutal in terms of reproducing the class structure at its most naked and unjustifiable--the problem seems to be the insistence on tying educational funding to local property taxes, which has the effect of rendering spatial segregation on class lines nearly invisible and assuring that the children of the poor are routed one way and those of the affluent another. of course because the right cannot imagine any alternative that would involve equalizing funding levels across localities--because it would involve the state (which is the inverse of markets for them) they cannot propose a coherent alternative--so you get this absurd, self-defeating emphasis on obviously futile programs like vouchers...
it goes on and on.
better to trade looking at reality for being able to wave a flag and "feel good about america"
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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