However much I try to suppress it, I can’t resist the strong impression that the United States is courting economic disaster. This is due to several factors, including the global financial meltdown, the precipitous decline of the stock market, the escalating mortgage crisis, rising unemployment and collapsing real estate values.
This is a propitious moment to try to influence the national dialogue regarding endemic poverty and homelessness here in the United States. Three factors in particular lead me to this conclusion: the $700 billion bailout for Wall Street engineered by the U.S. Congress, the global financial crisis, and the mandate for change recently extended to Barack Obama by voters in virtually every section of the nation.
Revolutions tend to focus the mind. Anyone who has lived through one, victors and victims included, will attest to this fact. Last Tuesday’s election here in the United States was, for all practical purposes, marked the onset of a revolutionary process. As a result, most American, including those who have flooded gun shops around the nation during the past week, readily admit that the magnitude of the election’s significance has left them in a heightened state of awareness.
In less than 48 hours, the people of these United States will pass a history-making verdict regarding the presidential campaigns being waged by Barack Obama and John McCain. One of them represents the future, and the other the past. One represents a leap of faith in the possibility of mass enfranchisement, and the other the certainty of maintaining the systems of race, gender and class-based apartheid that distinguishes this nation from all over developed societies.
Copyright © 2010 Robert L. Terrell Blog. All Rights Reserved.
No computers were harmed in the 0.421 seconds it took to produce this page.
Designed/Developed by Lloyd Armbrust & hot, fresh, coffee.