This is a 4 part essay of what I consider to be very insightful analysis by Jim Quinn whose web site is "The Burning Platform" - http://www.theburningplatform.com/

FOURTH TURNING – THE SHADOW OF CRISIS HAS NOT PASSED – PART ONE « The Burning Platform

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/02/09/fourth-turning-the-shadow-of-crisis-has-not-passed-part-one/

FOURTH TURNING – THE SHADOW OF CRISIS HAS NOT PASSED – PART TWO « The Burning Platform

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/02/10/fourth-turning-the-shadow-of-crisis-has-not-passed-part-two/

FOURTH TURNING – THE SHADOW OF CRISIS HAS NOT PASSED – PART THREE « The Burning Platform

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/02/11/fourth-turning-the-shadow-of-crisis-has-not-passed-part-three/

FOURTH TURNING – THE SHADOW OF CRISIS HAS NOT PASSED – PART FOUR « The Burning Platform

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/02/12/fourth-turning-the-shadow-of-crisis-has-not-passed-part-four/

If you're pressed for time read parts 2 & 3

Here are two snips:

Civic Decay

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The cultural decay of American society is pervasive, promoted and applauded by the corporate media, hawking Chinese made baubles & trinkets, and proudly displayed by the delusional egocentric iGadget addicted masses.

The tattooed, pierced, obese masses glory in their ignorance, apathy, materialism, selfishness and greed. A united nation of self-reliant, freedom loving, hard-working, personally responsible, civic minded citizens has degraded into a fragmented amalgamation of dependent, fearful, lazy, irresponsible, short sighted inhabitants in a kleptocracy of delusion.

The vast majority are incapable or uninterested in the critical thinking required to keep evil men from hijacking our economic, financial, political and judicial systems. There will be no groundswell for change until the societal structure implodes.

The only way civic decay could be reversed would be through an educated populace capable of critical thinking who questioned and contested the actions of government apparatchiks, politicians, bankers, corporate executives, and the self-declared Ivy League ruling class. Sadly, that is not to be.

After forty years of government control of the education system spending per student (in constant dollars) has risen from less than $5,000 per student in 1970 to $12,000 per student, while test scores haven’t gone up by one point over this same time frame.

Total enrollment is up 8%, while government employed union teachers and bureaucrats are up 95%. Their job has been to produce functionally illiterate, financially ignorant, indoctrinated consumers, who follow orders, feel rather than think, and believe what they are told by the government and their media mouthpieces. They’ve done a stupendous job of dumbing down the populace.

Any children who show individuality or fail to conform to the government indoctrination are immediately diagnosed with A.D.H.D. and pumped full of drugs. This has the added benefit of increasing the profits of the healthcare industrial complex that pay doctors to prescribe their drugs.

Nearly one in five high school age boys and 11% of all school-age children have been diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. An estimated 6.4 million children ages 4 through 17 have received an A.D.H.D. diagnosis at some point in their lives, a 16% increase since 2007 and a 41% rise in the past decade.

Keeping uncooperative children sedated is good training for adulthood, where one in ten adults is on anti-depressants and one in five women in their 40s and 50s are on anti-depressants. The prescribing of anti-depressants is up 400% since 1990. A dumbed down drugged population is not likely to revolt, notice the crumbling of their society, loss of freedoms, or declining real incomes. The oligarchs like it that way.

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The American people have lost their ability to think, reason, question, do math, control their urges, defer gratification, or realize when they are being lied to by the people they elected to public office.

A culture of ignorance, celebration of the absurd, salutation of stupidity, honoring of the inane, being mesmerized by electronic gadgets, and satiating their egocentric shallow impulses on social media, is a sure recipe for societal collapse.

Victory in World War II and becoming a modern day empire created the dynamic Eisenhower warned about. An immense military industrial complex has created enemies around the globe in order to keep the profits flowing in this welfare/warfare empire of debt. War is a racket for the rich.

The peasants who buy into the incessant patriotic propaganda and volunteer are nothing but cannon fodder for the .1%. Keeping the masses fearful of phantom enemies and portraying foreign leaders as evil, is essential for the oligarchs to retain their wealth, power and control.

Truth, facts, and long-term consequences are of no interest to the sociopaths running the show and pulling the levers. The discent into darkness has been gradual and unnoticed by a purposefully distracted populace.

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