Americans do not Want to Make a Better America

They disagree, of course. But I arrived at this conclusion after watching how they behaved, not how they said they behaved.

People are perfectly capable of deceiving themselves - and always have been. But this tendency became more prominent with Industrialization - a huge change we have never understood very well. Its results were the Industrial wars - the American Civil War, WWI, the Depression, and WWII, with its Holocaust. Clearly, something had gone wrong.

One thing that went wrong, was how people were overwhelmed by external forces. The result, they felt - was that they became a stronger people. Not a better people, but a stronger people. And a richer people.

What did these forces amount to, in concrete terms? Railroads and Factories.

My hometown of Ft. Madison, Iowa, was an example. The West End of town was dominated by the Santa Fe Railroad - the East End by the Sheaffer Pen Company. It is now part of the Rust Belt, that covers much of Midwestern America.

Americans, back in the 19th Century - did not try to build a better America. They built a stronger America instead. There was a minority (the Progressives) who did want a better America, especially for its farmers - but their voices were lost.

What I have described here, was an extremely condensed history of America, up to the Fifties. After that, two new forces appeared - TV and the Computer. That affected America - but the rest of the world also.