The Long Slide Part One

I think it may be time to face a harsh reality. The world as we know it is going to shit. I know! It's a shock!
To be honest, the world has been constantly going to shit since people grasped what going to shit meant. Ask anyone of any age or region and they'll all say the same. The Aztecs thought the world was going to shit. The Egyptians thought the world was going to shit. The Romans thought the world was going to shit. The colony at Roanoke thought...well, in that case they were definitely right. But you get my drift.
I've always maintained that the United States is Rome in Fast Forward. What took the Romans 700 years to lose won't take us a fraction that long. To be honest, we haven't even really mattered as a country except for the past hundred years or so. Before that we were a backwater filled with savages. Europe was where it was at. If you were in the US you were akin to an aborigine. Maybe taller.
But then World War I came and we tore that shit up! Well, no, not really. we were Johnny Come Latelies to the party and were treated mostly with disdain. Then the League of Nations came along and was not, in retrospect, that good of an idea. But, BLAMMO! WWII, baby!
We drop the bomb, help off the Nazis and all of a sudden we're the bees knees. Every country wants to be us. Or blow us up. We're the new tough on the prison block. One minute we're following George Washington's policy of isolationism and the next we're GLOBAL, man!
But the fundamental problems that took Rome years to realize they'd created we built in no time. All of a sudden there was the super rich and everyone else. The super rich didn't want to pay taxes and everyone else couldn't. We threw money at the military like dollar bills at a strip joint, just like the Romans did. In the words of Septimius Severus we "Enriched the soldiers". Except...we really didn't.
We enriched those already enriched. The wealthy company owners who built the war machines (some of which worked, some which didn't and some which just sucked money and never actually came out at all) While these people got richer and richer soldiers themselves found their families back home on welfare.
We lowered the taxes on the rich and raised taxes on everyone else to make up for the shortfall. We became a nation of debtors led by corrupt public officials and a shadowy "electoral college" that no one seemed to know very well. We invaded nations and then sent them transport planes filled with millions of dollars all the while we borrowed and borrowed and mortgaged our future.
And, just like the Romans found out 2000 years before us. Our economy is in the depths of a collapse. Yes, I know, it collapses every fifteen years or so. But this time it's not just us. In a modern age it's a global shitstorm.
Rioting in England, Fascist Tea Partiers fondling suggestive photos of Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman and calling for a good old fashioned lynchin' just like their ignorant KKK breathren of yore, most of Europe going into debt. Pretty much the whole middle east revolting against something or someone. Things ain't lookin' so nice. So what are we to do?

The Horror of the MEDIA!!!

Let's all whine a chorus to the media. The biased, corrupt, liberal, conservative, fascist, commie media that corrupts our precious youth and skews Americans' vision of politics. If you read any story on yahoo or google even remotely concerning politics and then scroll down to the horror that is the comments you will find that web 2.0 users hate and blame the media. Amidst the sprawling tapestry of American ignorance and hubris that is celebrated in every comments section you will find no less than 200 references to the "media". Who is this shadowy underworld "Media" they talk about so scornfully? What power do they wield? What backroom deals are they finalizing to send us all to the abyss of ruin?
Well, if you read a bit deeper...except for Rupert Murdoch who is a very dangerous combination of a moron, an Alzheimer patient and fascist (Alzmorist) the media doesn't do a whole lot. They report the news and, yes, they can put whatever slant on it they want, but at the end of the day, the American people will blame them if their views don't match with what's reported. If you like Obama you can blame the media for making him look bad. If you like Boehner (Boner?) you can blame the media for making him look ignorant.
The reality is that, unless you're foolish enough to believe Fox news, you will read what the nasty media says, discard what is clearly bullshit or bias and draw your own conclusions. Unless you're an idiot.
Sadly, I've done an informal poll and there are, roughly, 208 million idiots in the United States alone. People that should not only never have access to a computer and the ability to spread their plague of ignorance across the entire world, but people who are so clearly misguided or flat out dangerously stupid that it's a wonder they can form words in anything resembling English at all and every single idiot out there blames the "media". I'm surprised, to be honest, that most of them can even use the word media in a sentence, let alone spell it.
If you hate the media don't watch it or read the stories or, here's an idea...draw your own conclusions like a big boy or girl! If you believe Fox news seek psychiatric help and burn your computer so you can't drag down the mean IQ online.

Immigration

Ok all of you people who feel that the way our ancestors did immigration was all right because we all followed the rules. You need to shut the hell up. You have no idea what you're talking about while extolling your rudimentary knowledge of history. Our ancestors came here because there were no immigration laws until the 1920s. So, no, great grandpa Giuseppi did not do it "legally" following the "rules" because there weren't any. Get off your high horse and ask yourself how the Indians (They're not native to America any more than my family is, they're native to Asia and just lived here longer. Sorry.) felt about these "legal" immigrants showing up on their shores and throwing small pox infected blankets into their camps to spread disease and thin out the population. They probably weren't too terribly keen on the whole concept of immigration at that point in time.
There are fixes for immigration, none of which involves treating these people like criminals. Try maybe pressuring their government to provide for its citizens the way the anti-immigration people inevitably bitch about us doing. Maybe have Americans get off their high horse and stoop to doing the work these immigrants do at minimum wage.
Either way, shut the hell up about our forefathers doing things "right" You know nothing and need to be treated with the derision and scorn your ignorant comments deserve.