Le Figaro - September 12, 2005
Emmanuel Todd: The Specter of a Soviet-Style Crisis
By Marie-Laure Germon and Alexis Lacroix Le Figaro
<snip>
The societies and ecological incorporations of Europe and the United States differ radically.
Europe is part of a very ancient peasant economy, accustomed to draw its subsistence from the soil with difficulty in a relatively temperate climate, spared from natural catastrophes. The United States is a brand new society that began by working a very fertile virgin soil in the heart of a more threatening natural environment. Its continental climate, much more violent, did not constitute a problem for the United States as long as it enjoyed a real economic advantage, that is, as long as it had the technical means to master nature. At present, the hypothesis of man's dramatization of nature is not even necessary. The simple deterioration in the technical capacities of a no-longer-productive American economy created the threat of a Nature that would do no more than take back its [natural] rights.
[...]
======================
Eerily enough, this passage almost precisely mirrors a conversation I had just last night with my cousin who lives in N. Carolina.
He was explaining why he and his wife were very seriously considering moving away from the hurricane zone.
I expected him to list insurance costs, the psychological toll of riding out big storms and other factors you might read about in the Wall Street Journal but he surprised me with an ad hoc analysis of American incompetence at official levels, as demonstrated by the Katrina disaster.
"The US is filled with places where it's okay to live as long as you know what you're doing" he said. "Places like the Gulf Coast, big areas of the West, Las Vegas, Florida, etc."
"If you, and I mean the big 'you' as in the government, know how to handle the situation - whether it's the threat of drought or powerful storms, or flooding or what have you - then it's really a calculated risk, a manageable risk to build in these kinds of places. But you've got to have the organizational competence and technical skills to handle shit when it inevitably happens. I think we now know the skill set's seriously deteriorated and more crap like this is going to happen. Folks are too busy congratulating themselves for being American to do the hard work. That's when you know your championship season's over; when you're too busy patting yourself on the back to remember your shit stinks."
Surely this is the unlooked for (but very predictable) outcome of US exceptionalism and self congratulation; the inability to address weakness because you can't see it. This makes what should be a situation of managed decline, relative to the rise of other cores of competency and production, a startlingly rapid slide into disarray and bumbling.
Early into the invasion of Iraq, many of us asked 'how could they have ruined this -- their own project -- so badly?' The answer was available from the start when the "evidence" presented to support war was debunked by simple Google searches (a clue as to the depth of operational sloppiness...even black ops wasn't done well) but we were reluctant to embrace it: they ruined it because they don't have the skill to do any better. There's not an Eisenhower among them, no architects of renewed empire but overstuffed dreamers without skills.
Now we see that this ineptitude extends to domestic matters which should be purely technical: establishing firm logistical command and control in response to a major disaster. Neither empire builders nor technocrats.
The word that comes to mind is degenerate, in every sense.
There must be opportunities here, not to revive American power but provide people with alternatives.
.d.