I just posted this in the politics section... as I look into the future (which happens to be my profession) I'm not seeing much light... not hereabouts anyway... there is light - Canada, the Pope, some Scandinavian countries, Holland's use of microfarming, Iceland's environmentalism, and so forth - really there is a lot of good and even just ordinary places and people, and my following statement isn't meant to be either myopic or inadvertently oblivious to the very real woes and weals throughout the planet... it's just a reflection on what are possibly, even probably, the final days of a once decent nation, finally having to look at its own long-denied evils, and having to endure the world's awareness of them...
I am old enough to have lived through the Nixon era as an adult -- and the Vietnam "war" ... and the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. Those were very dark times, with a few oases of light and hope. One reason the commune movement happened back then (and I know this because I created one) was as a sanctuary against that darkness. That *was* a bad time and 'we' somehow survived and even got better for a while. This administration - make no mistake, Pence and his cronies are at least as dangerous to all but the 1% as is Trump - is literally saturated in Evil. Real Evil. The Germans know it, most Europeans see it, and even Trump's dictator friends know it, because they are like him. There is a very real chance that the USA will break as a result of his tenure. Not during it, but within 25 years. As the USSR how it's doing, or Korea, or Tibet. Countries get swallowed up or fragmented with amazing rapidity once the first real crack opens up... and the current administration's dual focus on dividing the country along inclusive and exclusive racial lines, alongside the exploitation of human and natural resources for the 1% is hammering hard at that crack. Business knows that it takes 3 to 5 times more money and time to repair a ruined reputation (if at all - Enron anyone?) than it does to maintain a good one. Having shown the world that it doesn't need this brand of the USA I see no reason the world will be inclined to care what happens here
