• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

"The Decline of America" circa 1988

UNCG Deac

UNCG Deac

Member
Joined
May 31, 2013
Messages
175
Reaction score
22
I am sick of hearing about the "decline of America." I see countless references to our "waning status" across the internet, and when talking to members of my generation (I am 22) the fact that we are in decline is accepted as conventional wisdom. Today, I stumbled across an article called "The Decline of America" written by a left-wing journalist.... circa 1988. He talks about our declining military power (the Soviet Union would collapse three years later) and references a book about the coming 1990 Great Depression. It's a good read to laugh at in hindsight, but it is also a good example of why we should avoid listening to those who always tell us that the sky is falling.

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201305/american-inferiority-may-1988

The party's over. When the stock market crashed 508 points one Monday last October, the cartoonist Herblock drew a hung-over party boy clutching his forehead. The caption: "Morning in America." It's not just the economics. American influence abroad makes the money picture look positively vibrant. The splendid military mission in the Caribbean, in which the cabanas and golf clubs were made forever safe from Communism, seems now a depressing event, merely another embarrassment in line with the jumbled efforts in Nicaragua, the Philippines and Lebanon.
Click to expand...

"One of the events that might shake people up is when Japan's gross national product becomes roughly equal to that of the United States," says Yale historian Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. "In 1880, it was a huge shock for Britain when the U.S. passed it in GNP," Kennedy said in a recent interview. "Now, if you take into account the decline of the dollar against the yen, the Japanese are in a position to do that to America. They've already passed the Soviet Union."
Click to expand...

Meanwhile, the best-seller lists are peppered with such uplifting successes as The Closing of the American Mind, The Great Depression of 1990 and, yes, Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. And if Time magazine can be taken as a barometer of popular culture and its acceptance into the mainstream, well, then, beware. The Irish group U2 is the cover band, and British hurdy-gurdy man Andrew Lloyd Webber is the cover boy of Broadway. In fact, the only attractive figure in Tom Wolfe's end-of empire novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, is the whiskey-sodden journalist. A Brit.
Click to expand...
 
Talking about the decline of America is a total American thing to. I'm sure that people were already bitching on July 5 1776.
 
I mean, even the slightest of historical longviews would suggest that 1988 ain't that long ago, at all
 
Damn, how'd Paul Kennedy go from a Yale professorship to bitching and starting an e-revolution about [Redacted]?
 
Yes and I suspect the Democrats will say America's in Decline w/ Dr. Ben Carson is elected POTUS in '16.
 
Go said:
Yes and I suspect the Democrats will say America's in Decline w/ Dr. Ben Carson is elected POTUS in '16.
Click to expand...

If that joke of a man could actually get his foot out of his mouth long enough to get elected, the "sky is falling" mantra would finally be right.
 
Hell, an inexperienced minority candidate has worked so well since 2008, lets double down folks! Screw old white men (and women)
 
If you think Ben Carson and Barack Obama are remotely similar I've got a bridge to sell you.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top