Stumbling towards the decline and fall of the USA

What (Walt hears you ask) is The United States Department of Defense's Office of Net Assessment (ONA), and why do we need (and pay for) one? Well sir... The ONA was created 51 years ago by Richard Nixon to serve as an "internal think tank" for the Pentagon. Aided by outside contractors, it's supposed to look into the future of the military -- kind of like a khaki crystal ball -- and produces report [prophecies? Ed.] on the results of its research.

"Do we really need this?" Walt hears you ask. The official answer is that it is important to have a good grasp of net assessment because it is an "important part of the language spoken by leaders in the higher levels of DOD" and officers who lack familiarity "will be at a disadvantage in communicating with the civilian leadership." Got it now?

No? Does it help for me to tell  you the Director of the ONA is one James H. Baker, who has held that position since 2015, serving under the Prez, then No. 45, and now Senile Joe? One of the "ourside organizations" who assist the ONA is the Rand Corporation. Understand now? We're talking Deep State here!

According to a report prepared for the Office of Net Assessment by the Rand Corporation, the future of the Paranoid States of America isn't so bright. "The Sources of Renewed National Dynamism" looks at the US competitive position as it faces a rising China, and finds that America is stumbling towards a decline from which few great powers ever recover. 

The US of A is diminishing in power on a relative basis geopolitically, militarily, financially, economically, and technologically. Competitive pressures from within include slowing productivity growth, an aging population, a polarized political system [No kidding? Ed.] and a "corrupted information environment". Does that mean (Walt wonders) that someone is lying to us? Who could it be?

These problems are exacerbated by an addiction to luxury, failure to keep pace with technology, an ossified bureaucracy, an overstretched military and "self-interested and warring elites." Again... who are they talking about? A clue may be found in Listen, Liberal, a brilliant but obscure book by Thomas Frank (Henry Holt & Co., 2016), which Walt recommends highly.

The title is misleading. It's not a rant by an Alex Jones type, but a stinging criticism by a certified liberal of the Democratic Party, the "professional elites" and the corporate and cultural elitism, which dominates liberal politics and is responsible for the ever-deepening rift between the rich and poor in America and elsewhere.

The ONA report concludes that unless Americans can unite to identify and fix the problems it outlines, the US of A risks falling into the same downward spiral that resulted in the fall of the Roman, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. 

Is it too late to reverse the decline? Is it too late to make America great again? You be the judge... on November 5th!

Excerpt from Listen Liberal (cited above): 

Popular attitudes toward the professions started to sour in the 1970s. "Technocracy" was the new term for describing the reign of professionalism, and its connotations were almost entirely negative.

Rule-by-expert, it began to seem, excluded rule-by-the people. It was dehumanizing and mechanical. In a technocracy, the important policy decisions were made in faraway offices that were insulated from the larger whirl of society. The people making the decisions identified far more with society's rulers than they did with the ruled, and their decisions often completely ignored public concerns.

Busing was one of the era's classic examples of failed technocratic overreach; another was the Vietnam War, a catastrophic intervention in which tens of thousands of working-classs Americans were sent to their deaths...largely because foreign-policy professionals in Washington were unwilling to listen to voices from outside their discipline, bearing uncomfortable views.