Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America (1995)

If there's any evidence of a decline, it's definitely found in the extent to which people are both (a) looking to federal politics to solve their local and personal problems for them, and (b) supporting incompetent sloganeers as the people they want managing federal politics.

Prophetic, time machine, crystal call.

That's exactly the lenguage of darkness and superstition...

> https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crr54x00857o

"China's economy expanded in the third quarter at the slowest pace since early last year, as the country struggles to boost flagging growth."

> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/20/chinese-econ...

"It has been a grim month for the Chinese economy: A slew of recent data has revealed the world’s second-largest economy is slowing faster than expected, causing analysts to predict it will miss its relatively modest 5 percent growth target this year."

> https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/china-deflation/

*Chart showing growth in all but one quarter since the start of 2019, and good growth in all but one of the growing quarters*

> https://www.aei.org/economics/chinas-economy-is-in-deep-trou...

"This week’s disappointing Chinese GDP (gross domestic product) numbers showed that Chinese economic growth has slowed to 4.75 percent from the very rapid annual economic growth rate of seven to eight percent during the 2010s"

> https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/06/03/xi-china-economic-decli...

"China’s economy is performing dreadfully. The post-pandemic bounce was far smaller and briefer than the Chinese government had anticipated. Despite recording a respectable, if diminished, official growth rate of 5.2 percent in 2023, the reality may have been much slower, with some analysts estimating growth was no more than 1-2 percent."

> https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/business/chinas-gdp-q2.ht...

"China’s economy grew 0.7 percent in the second quarter over the previous three months, below the expectations of most economists. When projected out for the entire year, the economy grew at an annual rate of about 2.8 percent — a little less than half the rate in the first three months of this year."

The USA, by comparison, was 2.5% in 2023.

If China is "in decline" from these numbers, so is the USA.

And this is part of the problem. Citizens United was a bog standard first amendment ruling that has been targeted by an aggressive misinformation campaign by a faction that wants the unprecedented power to censor political discourse, and people are eating up the misinformation.

> While his policies are a big part of his platform, what really resonates with a lot of people is his unwavering commitment to first principles values like fairness, equality, social justice, and democracy.

But again, his "commitment" is in the form of talk. The reality of the policy positions he does advance is to set us up for the exact opposite of all of those things. I don't know whether he's a well-intentioned fool or a deceptive manipulator, but either way, the consequences are the same. He's just a mirror image of Trump, using vague emotional appeals to win power, then horribly misusing that power.

> Provide just enough support for folks that they still hold agency in their life. As Fred Rogers put it, "There's a world of difference between insisting on someone's doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it."

Absolutely correct. And the problem here is that "insisting on someone's doing something" is the fundamental nature of the political state, while "establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it" is the task of a dynamic and pluralistic civil society, in all its forms.

The more we allow the assertion of political power to solve problems that ought rightly be solved by bottom-up activity in civil society, the more we set ourselves up to be the victims of abuse (especially as the well-intentioned people who created the system of political dependence are superseded first by indifferent functionaries, and then by corrupt powermongers).

I wonder why?

/s

I'll concede, in the US, just as in everyplace else, we have a long list of issues with which we need to deal. However, things like public debate and freedom of speech are not present on that list. I, personally, would go one step further, and caution everyone to carefully consider the possible motives of anyone calling for the elimination of public debate and discourse in government.