Do me a favor, please. Go pick up World War Z and read the section 'Home Front USA'. In particular, the first part that the interviewer talks to Arthur Sinclair, Jr.
This part of the book deals with the reorganization and reconstruction of the United States after the initial chaos and devastation of the "Z Plauge". One of the main programs started, which seems to be the basis of the whole rebirth of the country in the Western Safe Zone, is the Community Self-Sufficiency Program (CSSP). It does what it says and really, it seems that we could use it today.
This section also deals with the racism in America, but not how you'd think. It goes about talking about it through the classism that exsists due to our commuter-based infrastructure (a majority of Americans owning cars to get around) and our postindustrial/service-based economy. Because, really, how many of us live in our own ghettos? How segregated are we these days? White collars live in outer-suburbs and gated communities while blue collars live in the inner city or "run down"/WW2-era suburbs.
While WWZ is a work of fiction, it really hits hard on the problems of modern America, and the world by extention. This is my all time favorite book because of the issues it addresses and how the remaining world population dealt with them and rebuilt what was left in thier own Safe Zones. This book can be used as a guideline on how we can fix a majority of our problems if we all stopped, shut the fuck up about shit that isn't required to make it day to day and just get the job done and get our shit together.
I know so many people who call the World War 2 generation the "Greatest Generation Ever". I disagree. The WW2 Generation was able to build upon, and use, the foundation of thier parents and they where the greatest because they where "The New Deal Generation". And for fuck sake, we need another New Deal.
We need to focus on our local communities for our collective strength, not our country as a whole. That mindset has failed. We need local markets again. We need 'community' again. And this is how the America (and the rest of the world) of WWZ survived and won. They refocused on the population on the local, not so much the global. Yes, you need a global mindset in our world today, but you must, MUST, act local.
We need 'victory gardens' again. We need a national movement for recycling, as they did in WW2. We need local power grids, not a national one that is fragile and falling apart. We need a national railway based on the examples of the EuroRail, France's SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français) which is a public enterprise (see, Socialism isn't all that bad), South Korea's KTX, Japan's system of bullet trains and even the "radical move" of China utilizing MagLev Trains in Shanghai.
Our highway system is in shambles and we are to close to the tipping point of not being able to fix it. America must give up its' love of the car. We must re-embrace the train, but with the modern technology of speed, magnetics and electric/clean power and propulsion.
If we can't do this and continue to go about traveling the road we're on, America is dead. No two ways about it. But then if we can't learn and grow, then maybe America deserves to die. We are behind Japan, Korea and Europe when it comes to technological applications and they laugh at us and we deserve it.
America must give up this puritanical mindset that we worship. It got the Pilgrams kicked out of England and it has made us a joke. This mindset has handicapped us and limited our individual, local, national and global potential. We can't afford to be limited anymore. Our puritan pride is killing us and I'm not laughing at the joke anymore.
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