No matter how this is rationalized, none of this is either reasonable or at all rational.

Vis-a-vis the imperatives of evolution, ecology, and ethics that we are capable of applying decent consideration to, and in this day and age, all this alleged rationalizing (particularly as to our only choice is to compete or disarm), is insane.

It's quite a conundrum.

But you see, in my eyes, America has 'simplified' - it lacks the skilled industrial and agricultural work force it possessed in previous generations, these having been replaced with people who feel that financial engineering has a higher value than actual labor with a tangible result, for example (let's not even get into the 'growth' of the legal profession as another example of productive capacity being displaced).

The thing is, that this simplification from useful skills in a tangible world to what seems in my eyes to abstract constructions increasingly divorced from reality (mortgage brokers servicing customers who can't read the documents they are signing - a sign of increasing complexity, or a step on the long staircase of decline?) is the problem.

I realize this goes somewhat against the grain, but I feel that the U.S. is, metaphorically, well on its way to becoming a monoculture - and that this path was not merely randomly chosen, but was instead the answer to the challenges which the 1970s exposed. Forced and unwise simplification (American housing truly seems to be stapled and glued at this point - this is not a sign of skill or quality) is disguised as a dynamic economic miracle, for example.

I believe the bubble popping will expose more reality than most Americans can actually handle, the same way peak oil will.

And people have a vested interest (as we see here, daily) in their beliefs, long past the point that they are proven wrong in the eyes of others.

America, currently home of the largest trade deficit and the largest financial bubble in human history, feels itself to be number 1 in so many areas. The two I noted are beyond dispute, however, and yet, they are not claimed with pride by Americans. Selling the sizzle of financial engineering, not the reality of a declining manufacturing base - America can probably claim no. 1 status in marketing itself, too.