(Illustration found here).

In the US today, apparently all collective eyes were glued to South Carolina where intelligence-deficit Republicans held their primary to select from among a short-list of bullshitters a warm body to run against President Obama this November.
And Newt Gingrich is now the man of the hour — a later laugh is always loudest.
From a late afternoon post at CNN: “Gingrich has been harder to kill than Rasputin,” Republican strategist and CNN contributor Alex Castellanos said Saturday. “He has been dead three times in this campaign, and … the guy keeps coming back.”

US politics for 2012 so far has Never-Ever witnessed such a handful of completely worthless and despicable characters — a line up of reasons why this country/world is f*cked.

A most-likely insurmountable obstacle is truth of priorities and sight.
And Newt is no friend of the environment — he’s goes where be Robert Dollar.
An entire US political party (there’s only two) is working way-hard to create calamity for the coming years — twisting knowledge like a pretzel, cherry-picking data and just out-and-out lying — which in turn morphed a most-important circumstance into a cultural/religious phenomenon.
Last week, the Washington Post‘s Michael Gerson positioned correctly: But however interesting this sociology may be, it has nothing to do with the science at issue. Even if all environmentalists were socialists and secularists and insufferable and partisan to the core, it would not alter the reality of the Earth’s temperature.
There it is — reality.
And a shit-biscuit reality for our kids.

What set me in this thought direction was a post at The Dish earlier today which included the writings of Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke, especially Burke, who was concerned that the ‘earlier’ generation made up of his own contemporaries ought not jeopardize the future of still later generations who had not yet been born by creating chaos and disorder.
And a further look at the US future via five trends, the biggest problem being the national debt.
Debt?

The US has one, and really only one problem, and it’s a humongous one (along with the entire freakin’ planet), and it ain’t financial.
The near-immediate by-and-by carries a most-disconcerting view like this quick clip found right here  — a sight of the near-immediate past into the nowadays that casts a look at a future horror for all our offspring.
Another related contemplation comes from Dianne Monroe at Speaking Truth to Power — she portends this is an unique period in world history and “an amazing time to be alive.”
Some snippets:

If you are reading this, you are alive today, and that means you are part of this Great Unraveling/ Great Turning, or whatever name we choose to call it.
If you, like me, are middle aged or beyond, we have lived through the apex of a global empire now passed irrevocably into decline.
When exactly that point of turning was passed is the topic of many discussions.
I am not sure how important it is to know that precise point.
We can see that it happened sometime as we were following our dreams and passions, pursuing careers, raising families, paying mortgages… or however we chose to spend those years of our lives.
We know that something big happened on the way down with the economic crisis of 2008, even if the mainstream economic pundits keep assuring us that prosperity is just around the corner.
…
We are experiencing this great crumbling from within, as it is happening.
We will not experience it as an academic lecture or experiment (although some may try), with us standing outside of and observing some scientific process.
We are each in different locations as it unfolds.
One analogy I have heard is that it is like a long, slow train wreck.
The people toward the back are still riding along comfortably.
They may not have even noticed that something is amiss.

Good post, but like a lot of others has way-too much chasing windmills in the mind.
Despite some success in gaining traction — the Occupy movement opened eyes to the impact of income inequality, the Internet blackout rebellion last week knocked SOPA for a loop, and even the public demonstrations that helped put a end to the Keystone pipeline — all good results with good intentions, but the broad matter of a swiftly-changing climate hasn’t been seriously addressed, and it may never even have a chance.
And yes, this age is most-interesting and amazing, and therefore will become more violent and dangerous.
Some US peoples — currently tagged a subculture — have become “preppers,” or those preparing themselves for what they call, “uncivilization,” the disintegration of society and government — the end of life as we know it.
Take a look  at American Preppers Network.
And this from Reuters‘ interviewee Patty Tegeler on acquiring survival equipment and stockpiling supplies of freeze-dried food: “I think it’s silly not to be prepared,” she said. “After all, anything can happen.”
Anything always happens.

Good sense goes back a long way.
From IPS and the modern Mayans:

But the end of a cycle does not mean the end of the world, and the collective hysteria triggered by the supposed 2012 Maya doomsday prediction does not at all reflect the thinking of today’s Maya Indians in Guatemala.
“There are leaders who let themselves be carried away by what they hear, or because ’13’ has very strong energy and they are worried that a catastrophe will happen, but none of that is true,” said Antonio Mendoza, an activist with Oxlajuj Ajpop, a local NGO whose name in the Maya Quiché language refers to the 13 forces represented by the Maya calendar.
On the contrary, he said, “this new stage is extremely important for reflection and analysis about human coexistence and nature,” he told IPS.
…
Mario Molina of the national network of Maya youth organisations, RENOJ, told IPS that Dec. 21 “will not mark the end of the Maya or the world, but will be a moment to assess the progress made in the development of nature and humanity.”

One must remember the operative words here: ‘neoliberal policies.’
A concept that take in absolutely no account of nature and humanity.

A view from the UK’s Guardian:

For decades, many of the poorest in developing countries have been left reeling from free-market World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) economic policies.
Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) included forced privatisation, public spending cuts and lowered taxes on the global south.
They spelled a triumph for Milton Freedman’s Chicago School of Economics, which proposed that only by leaving everything to the market could economies flourish.
Prosperity did rise for the few, as levels of inequality deepened.
Sound familiar?

And the children will cry and wonder why.