This is really an impossibility to determine.  It is such a macro question and there are so many different factors that weigh on the answer that it is difficult to come to an educated answer.  In light of that I am going to ask a second question that I have been wondering about for a while.  To speculate the answer to the second question I am going to assume that the answer to the first question is “Yes”, the US is in a worse place than it was 30 years ago.

Second question:  Why are we in a worse place?

The answer is simple and it has to do with the direction that culture has gone since World War 2.  Americans are obsessed with competition and separation instead of community and cooperation.  Its a simple answer, however, the causes and ramifications of this notion are complicated.  There is still an aspect of community in the US but generally it is focused on the appearance of cooperation and unity while in actuality the majority of individuals are looking to personally enrich themselves.  This type of attitude perpetuates itself.  When one party is greedy it causes others to distrust EVERYONE and act in a self serving manner themselves.  We have devolved into a society that looks to screw our neighbor over before they screw us over.

This attitude can be seen in the way that people conduct their careers.  People used to start working for a company in their late teens early twenties and retire from the same company 50 years.  Job jumping was not something people did and for the most part people’s careers grew as the company grew.  Now it is much different.  I have been at my company for over 5 years and I am one of the people with the longest tenure in the office.  I have moved around to a few different positions and negotiated for more pay/benefits but if not the company tends to keep those people at a steady salary with marginal increases.  This leads to new hires getting paid more than existing employees (it pisses me off that this is a standard business practice).  I can understand that some companies do this to attract the top talent but it should not come at the expense of current employees.  The only reason they would think about paying an existing employee  more is if they threaten to leave.  That is not a positive relationship.  The company looks out for itself and the employee looks out for his or herself.  Employees pretend to give a fuck about the company but they don’t and the company does the same.  I was actually told by a recruiter that if hiring agents see that you stayed at the same company fro a while it was construed as a negative.  That’s fucked up.

Another example is the technology that we use today.  Social media sites are billed as expanding community and connecting people.  I see it as deluding the “real” community of people around you and isolating people with their technology.  If one can connect online with groups of people that have the same interests it lessens the impact of the local community and further isolates the user.  I see people on the train everyday banging away at the Facebook app on their phones totally oblivious to the people around them.  While these services “connect” people it does so at a very surface level.  Knowing what everyone is doing at any specific moment does not connect you anymore to that person.  Most of the applications of social media are designed to glorify the ego of the specific user, broadcasting the details of their lives to others that may or may not care (just like a blog… oh sweet irony).  This leads to more, yet fewer “deeper” relationships and a decreased focus on the “real” community around the user.  This activity actually leads to people who are more detached from the community at large and more likely to disregard the people around them.

I could see a shift happening in my childhood, I wasn’t actually aware of it but looking back I could see a clear path to the mindset of today. This selfish mindset is ancient and has always been a part of human nature but since the Cold War, which was at its core an ideological battle of capitalism vs communism, it has pervaded every part of our society from the public figures we worship to our familial relations.  Capitalism won out and created the ”me first” culture we are in today.  I am not saying that the capitalist ideology is a failure but rather that some of the values of a more community focused ideology may lead the US to a better future. Recent corporate environmental issues and the late 2000′s economic collapse are two examples of events and catastrophes that resulted in individuals solely focused on maximizing their own gain at the detriment of the community around them.

I certainly don’t have any solutions to this problem but I think it is real and personally I can only see it getting worse.  What do you think?

Besides the US bombing the shit out of their homes, torturing and killing people indiscriminately there are plenty of ugly things about our society today that would piss off some poor bastard living in a cave in Afghanistan.  Even as a citizen of this country I am forced to see the stupid, wasteful and vile things that we are bombarded with on a daily basis.  Simply by tuning to MTV to see 20-something trust fund assholes bicker and whine at each other could easily push any fundamentalist over the edge. *sidenote* George Bush’s speeches back in the day always made me laugh when he would talk about the fact that the “terrorists hate our freedom”.  Um… I think they hate the fact that we have a lot MORE of everything than they do and, in their eyes, wasting those boundless resources on vice and impropriety.  Oh yeah – and we invade Middle Eastern countries indiscriminately *end sidenote*   Here are the things that we should hide from any potential terrorists at all costs:

The Real Housewives of _________

If I wanted to see a pack of dried up old skanks fight over money I would go down to Barrio Logan and watch the meth-heads squabble over drug money or I could tune into one of these “Real Housewives” shows.  The fact that these programs are popular enough to have as many iterations in different geographic areas astounds me.  They are the absolute worst kind of women – materialistic, bitchy and above all stupid.  People get bothered when there is swearing or nudity on TV but I find this type of show far more offensive than any tit I have ever seen.  I would rather have my non-existent children watch “Faces of Death” than one minute of “The Real Housewives”.  One viewing of an self-entitled tramp feeding her dog paté while she is complaining about the housekeeper would make any self respecting Al Qaeda member start loading up the rental van with fertilizer.

Lindsay Lohan/Britney Spears/Paris Hilton vs. The Tabloids

I think I have seen Lindsay Lohan’s vag more than I have seen my own dick.  I get it.  When a half drunk tweaked up actress gets out of her town car and you have a camera shooting up her skirt you will probably get a picture of her crotch.  How are paparazzi allowed to do that?  The media lavishes them with attention then when they start to act their age they become pariahs and fodder for jokes on late night TV.  I feel like comedians are waiting with bated breath for Miley Cyrus to turn 18 so they can start tearing her apart in the media.  This is what much of society focuses on for entertainment – the day-to-day lives of horrible, horrible skanks.  It is no wonder that the US is slumping as it is when our role models are lazy, talentless, drug addicts.  Hopefully no one in Saudi-Arabia has access to Paris Hilton’s twitter feed or we are all in big trouble.

Sports players thanking God after games

Are you really that narcissistic?  Do you actually think that God really cares if a big orange ball goes into a hoop more times than the other team?  I always wonder why people who actually believe in God aren’t insulted by athletes and their love affair with thanking Jesus/Mohamed/the Spaghetti Monster every post game interview.  Apparently their god is a personal god that knows, and is concerned with everything that anyone does.  I can almost picture that same “thankful” athlete at the strip club later that night and “Cinnamon” over on stage 4 hopping off the pole to thank sweet baby Jesus for giving her big tits and a low self esteem.

I’m sure there are plenty of things about the US which would drive someone to mass terror… can you think of anything that I missed?

http://www.local6.com/weather/14477653/detail.html

Remember that posting I made on September 27th?  Well, it’s beginning… these are the first stages of our coastline getting swallowed up by intensifying storms and rising sea levels.  This is not something that will effect us only in the future.  It will effect us slightly now and only get worse.  I am already working on “Ultraparadoxical.com” brand life-raft!

Finally, a sane person saying sane things.  Now to see if anyone will listen to him.  American agents are torturing people.  Period.  End of statement.  The fact that Americans are not vocal in opposition to this is disheartening.  Hopefully more influential people will speak out to this fact and things can be changed.  At least this is a start.

The first time I read this article I actually laughed out loud, then I stepped back from myself and looked critically at how I was thinking.  I don’t think many people look outside of themselves to see the perspectives of others.  If I were in the Middle East and American actions were affecting my life adversely I would probably agree with the categorization of the US forces as terrorists.  Terrorism is such a charged word that has a vague definition, and that what makes it so dangerous to use that label carelessly.