Reflections on a Carl Sagan Excerpt

In The Demon-Haunted World (1995), Carl Sagan wrote:
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time-when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agenda or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."

This is a powerful sentence, which needs to be dissected.  In the fifteen years since it was written America has shipped most of its manufacturing overseas.  We have become more of a service economy, which is why it has taken so long to recover from the Great Recession.  There is no forward-looking leaders in America.  The politicians look only to the next election.  Corporate leaders look only as far as the quarterly or annual earnings reports.  There is no investment in the future. There is no vision of an interstate highway system, a transcontinental railroad or an Erie Canal.  The governor of Florida could not see how high speed rail could connect the cities of the state and certainly not how those cities could be connected to the rest of the country.  He was looking back to "Americans love their cars."  In the few months since he killed high speed rail in Florida the price of gas has risen to nearly $4 a gallon.

"When awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few" is coming with the attacks on public education.  Only those who are able to attend elite private schools will be able to experience those powers. The programs will be cut from public schools because of declining budgets.  Only the privileged, like Bill Gates, who was able to spend 16 hours a day on his private school computers, will have access to the latest technologies.

I am not sure if anyone in public office can grasp the issues or if they are just being paid to look the other way. The Great Recession was caused by irresponsible lending by banks, backed by Wall Street investment banks, yet no one was held responsible for this catastrophe.  Instead, the tax payers paid to cover their mistakes.  When the Republicans were in charge, they preached the value of debt and deficit but now that the Democrats are in the White House debt and deficit spending  is evil.

As for questioning authority, most Americans get their news from television, who reduces everything to 30 second sound bites.  How can the problems that plague us be comprehend in 30 seconds.  Those who do not get the news from television get it from an unfiltered Internet.  You do not what the author's agenda is.  Some are in the pay of the people who would benefit by the writing.  Most people, particularly the young, scan the Internet and do not read objectively.

I write this the day after the world was to come to an end, according to the pseudoscience of religion.    Many people were duped by his seemingly supportable mathematical calculations.  Others believe in Mayan calendar to point to 2012 as then end of the world.  It raises the question, has the slide into superstition and darkness begun.

Thoughts on the killing of Bin Laden

At first I was very excited by the news of the demise of Osama Bin Laden but then I began to think about the cost.  First there is the economic costs.  The Republicans preach about the deficit but one of the major causes of it is the "war on terrorism."  We are spending billions in Afghanistan and Iraq (which was not a source of terrorist activity).  Was Osama worth the economic cost?  We are spending billions in a country that is home to 100 al Queda operatives.  Second there is the cost is American life.  1500 Americans have died in Afghanistan.  I do not think there sacrifice was worth it.  Third there is cost of American values.  To fight terrorists Bush told us we needed to give up certain civil liberties, habeus corpus, unwarranted wiretaps, unreasonable search and seizure and unlawful detention. Lastly there was the cost to American prestige.  The wars in Iraq was the first time that America invaded a country that had not attacked us.  Since 911 we have become a diminished nation.