[Dialogue] A difficult article

[Janice Ulangca]

Colleagues, when my message came through, I clicked on the link to check it.  It took me to the AlterNet web site, but more was needed.  At the top right of that page is a Search box.  Typing in "Morris Berman Why the American Empire .."  gets you to the article. 

Here are the first 2 paragraphs of the article - it's an interview with Morris Berman written by Nomi Prins. It was dated March 7, 2012.   
Janice Ulangca
Several years after the Wall Street-ignited crisis began, the nation's top bank CEOs (who far out-accumulated their European and other international counterparts) continue to hobnob with the president at campaign dinners where each plate costs more than one out of four US households make in a year. Financial bigwigs lead their affluent lives, unaffected, unremorseful, and unindicted for wreaking havoc on the nation. Why? Because they won. They hustled better. They are living the American Dream.

This is not the American Dream that says if you work hard you can be more comfortable than your parents; but rather, if you connive well, game the rules, and rule the game, your take from others is unlimited. In this paradigm, human empathy, caring, compassion, and connection have been devalued from the get-go. This is the flaw in the entire premise of the American Dream: if we can have it all, it must by definition be at someone else's expense.  ....



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Janice Ulangca 
  To: Colleague Dialogue 
  Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2012 9:03 PM
  Subject: [Dialogue] A difficult article


  The link below is to a very sobering interview with Morris Berman, author of several books on American culture.  Calls for a revolution in values which he doesn't see as possible.  This was forwarded to a group working on Awakening the Dreamer - Changing the Dream events.  The article does call for changing the "American dream" away from hustling to get more and more - and more than anybody else.  I find Mitt Romney eloquent on the subject of everybody getting more and more.

  Is what Berman says true?  How would the values he sees in the USA compare to Christian values (of the RS1 variety)?  I wish Berman had said more about change "to what - and clues to how to get there" - perhaps his books do.  I'd like to think he's wrong, but I don't think he is.

  Janice Ulangca  


  www.alternet.org/.../why_the_american_empire_was_destined_to_collapse  


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