If it is to survive, the United States must get three looming threats to its existence out in the open, Kevin Phillips warns: the central role of oil in the nation's psyche, economy and culture; radical right-wing religionists intent on creating a theocratic state; and the nation's staggering national and personal debt. Candid, open discussion is our last hope if we are to avert the catastrophes that felled the world's other dominant economic empires, says Mr. Phillips. He's the political analyst who gained fame predicting the emerging Republican majority 40 years ago.

America is in big trouble, Mr. Phillips says, and the problems are compounded because the one possible way out -- honest, open, inclusive and democratic dialogue grounded in "We, the People" -- is simply not happening.  Not in the mass media.  Not in the political arena. And not in our communities, neighborhoods, workplaces or homes.

Consider oil. Bush and Blair told a transparent lie, Mr. Phillips documents, when they asserted their premeditated attack on Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with oil. Oil, Mr. Phillips shows, has always underpinned America's supremacy and culture. There's also a political coalition through the Republican Party which represents most of the oil and motorists' interests. And there's been a complete merger of national security, oil and the intelligence community, no longer any separation between oil, defense, and defense production industries, Mr. Phillips laments. Nobody's talking about these threatening realities.

Religion? The U.S. has a President with a messianic view of himself in the world and a reliance on co-religionists who have turned the G.O.P. into the nation's first religious party, intent on having a theocratic state, which is rarely discussed. Perhaps it's not surprising, for Mr. Phillips reports this turn to rigid religiosity also has happened at the end of all other economic empires. And too, the U.S. does has a long history of super-saturated religion...which nobody talks about.

And finally, there is America's staggering and mushrooming debt. Politicians and corporate news media do not talk about what the nation's exploding debt really means, the society's overwhelming debt-culture, or the calamity Mr. Phillips fears is dead-ahead when today's housing asset bubble bursts..if we don't get the issues out on the table.

In the long haul when everything's totaled up, Mr. Phillips believes America has clearly peaked out as a nation and as a world power. How did it happen?  He attributes it to the culture, the economy, the rich-poor gap and a lack of fiber in a lot of people who have had it too easy in too many ways, just as happened to the Romans, Hapsburg Spain, the Dutch and the British.

Is a dark future inevitable? No. Not if individuals are ready to challenge America's privileged and greedy few with the nation's most powerful weapon of all -- democracy.

 

The Gross National Debt

[This Program was recorded April 20, 2006, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.]