The Eighth Deadly Sin

This book began as an essay (chapter 1) to vent my frustrations regarding the failure of our leaders to honestly and objectively analyze the political, economic, and social climate of the United States and Middle East that contributed to 9/11 and the changes, if any, that occurred as a result of the attack. As my inquiry about the “why” of 9/11 led further and further a field, it became clear that some additional written explanation would be necessary, if only to explain these observations to anyone who might read the essay at some later date. Those explanations, together with the original essay, slowly evolved into separate chapters of a book on American domestic and foreign policy failures that contributed to the attack.

Significantly, the failures included a number of characteristics woven into the fabric of our society that repeated themselves so often they formed predictable patterns of a national malaise either encouraged or at least purposely ignored by our nation’s leaders. Chief among them was the public preference for distortions, obfuscation, half-truths, and lies over any truth that called for sacrifice or an adjustment in their standard of living. Our libraries, bookstores, and the Internet have been awash for decades with exceptionally well-researched unclassified information predicting the decline and/or collapse of a variety of renewable and non-renewable resources, benefits, and functions critical to the American lifestyle. Some of those predictions have already come to pass, while, regrettably, others are firming up. (7) The data also describe a slow disintegration of the American family, e.g., stagnant wages, increasing divorce rates, increase sexual abuse and teen pregnancies, higher school dropout rates, and lower academic scores of those completing high school and college.

Taken separately few of the changes will seriously affect our standard of living; life will continue much as before only slightly impacted by the loss, and then only by the working poor, the uninsured, and the unemployed. Taken together, however, they paint a very grim picture, as most of the “end times” are predicted to occur within the same fifteen- to twenty-year “window” and all will occur prior to mid-century. (8) I am convinced that the convergence of these events in a general sense was and is well understood by many of our past and present corporate and political leaders. Yet to date, few have been willing to make the difficult decision to collate the data and present it to the American public as a cogent argument for change together with the consequences that will occur if the changes are not made.

(7) SSI is a prime example of our legislator’s and the American public’s willingness to ignore a known problem. Demographics on the “baby boomers,” born in the years immediately following WW II, and financial projections have for at least thirty years shown very clearly that the program in its present form is doomed to fail.  I have written my elected representatives for over twenty-five years citing federal documents that forecast the collapse of SSI. The few responses I received assured me there was no problem. Now, suddenly, our legislators tell us the problem is dire and requires some painful sacrifices. And while I don’t disagree with their current assessment, I can only imagine how much less painful the “fix” would have been had it been implemented a quarter century or more earlier and the SSI surplus resulting from the changes placed in a savings program not accessible to our elected officials slights of hand. A complete analysis of the future of SSI can be found on http://www.usgov.gov.

(8) Everett Herald, May 29, 2005. Three articles in the first section of the newspaper are perfect examples of the calamity that faces humanity in the near future and of White House acceptance –indeed, complicity—in bureaucratic incompetence. The first, on page one, was titled “The Competition Over Water Rights is Getting Brutal.” The second, on page three, was titled “World May See Oil Crisis.” And the third, on page four, was titled “Pentagon Honors Analysts Who Botched Iraq Report.” In the days that followed, there was not one op-ed commentary on any of the articles. The voting public, it seems, can’t be bothered with such mundane matters as incompetent leadership, national bankruptcy, or the exhaustion of resources.