If you want some easy listening...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojYK6CW8gdw

The national anthem of all things...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l12Csc_lW0Q

DA-DUH DA DAAAAAAAA!

hmmm...flipped trilby, chronic case of fullofhimselfism...I'd say we are looking at the Scout IRL.

I guess it depends on what people mean by 'decline'. Personally, I don't think we are on the verge of total annihilation and collapse "just liek Rome [nevermind that it took centuries before it could even be perceived as 'collapsed' from a modern historical perspective]".

Even so, it is a given that there are things we can improve upon; there are some older venerated qualities we could bring back (while leaving the ones which no longer apply dead in the past).

In a way, I sort of miss that can-do, even-if-we-get-blowed-up-next-week attitude so prevalent in the Cold War.

These kind of articles always crack me up...basically an adolescent hipster crying about cOLD problems, as if doing so makes them stand out as some kind of fucking visionary. HURRRR everything's going to shit and I see it and I'm in the minority I'm so smart HUGALAGHUAGLAGHUALG!!!11!!!one!!111POOTIS!!!!! He gets extra points for appealing to "The People" after railing on about how they are mindless drones and whatnot.

Now this isn't to say that the general thrust of the rant is invalid. Indeed, we are propped up upon many unsustainable systems, and there is genuine danger not far away. But this ball has been in motion for generations, *at least* since the end of the second world war. The most acute sources of recent recession(s) have been ongoing for over 30 years, since at least Reagan. This decline was gradual, and any recovery will be gradual. The cry for quick-fixes backed by moral absolutes only contributes to societal degradation by allowing the ignorant to trade the pabulum of complacency for the rush of intolerant fanaticism (the dependency upon which eventually becomes its own form of complacency).

Civilizational slides like these are inevitable, because people will gravitate toward comfort and convenience (maybe it's a leftover instinct from the struggle to simplify the constraints of surviving in the wild). This is not some 'new' phenomenon brought about by an Evil Force which must be vanquished in true Epic Legend style. You do not need to conspire against the willfully ignorant. Now, we can scream all we want about how people have somehow magically gotten dumb and decadent, but we can validate this attitude only by virtue of our own all-too-recent epiphany on human nature.

All in all, this article smacks more of butthurt than of true insight.

tl;dr -- What Salamancer said in #17

What if she puts your pet bunny in the tea kettle? 0_o

hurrrr if yew dont liek the macrib then you hate amurika and you killed jeebus!!!