[Infowarrior] - AP: Everything seemingly is spinning out of control

[Richard Forno]

Everything seemingly is spinning out of control

By ALAN FRAM and EILEEN PUTMAN, Associated Press WritersSat Jun 21,  
3:14 PM ET


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080621/ap_on_re_us/out_of_control&printer=1;_ylt=AvOwN0gklCtwE4UL0hmRUEtH2ocA

Is everything spinning out of control?

Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are  
skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and  
health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq,  
Afghanistan and against terrorism.

Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.

The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is  
under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping  
away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded  
with sheer courage and perseverance.

The sense of helplessness is even reflected in this year's  
presidential election. Each contender offers a sense of order — and  
hope. Republican John McCain promises an experienced hand in a  
frightening time. Democrat Barack Obama promises bright and shiny  
change, and his large crowds believe his exhortation, "Yes, we can."

Even so, a battered public seems discouraged by the onslaught of  
dispiriting things. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll says a barrel- 
scraping 17 percent of people surveyed believe the country is moving  
in the right direction. That is the lowest reading since the survey  
began in 2003.

An ABC News-Washington Post survey put that figure at 14 percent,  
tying the low in more than three decades of taking soundings on the  
national mood.

"It is pretty scary," said Charles Truxal, 64, a retired corporate  
manager in Rochester, Minn. "People are thinking things are going to  
get better, and they haven't been. And then you go hide in your  
basement because tornadoes are coming through. If you think about  
things, you have very little power to make it change."

Recent natural disasters around the world dwarf anything afflicting  
the U.S. Consider that more than 69,000 people died in the China  
earthquake, and that 78,000 were killed and 56,000 missing from the  
Myanmar cyclone.

Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their  
wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world  
gone haywire.

Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the  
gradual degradation of a planet's weather that man seems powerless to  
stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge?

It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New  
Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city  
where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain  
abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.

Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due  
to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India  
and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs — turning  
corn into fuel — is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops  
that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. In the U.S.,  
rice prices tripled and some stores rationed the staple.

Residents of the nation's capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose  
power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In  
California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting  
drought.

Want to get away from it all? The weak U.S. dollar makes travel abroad  
forbiddingly expensive. To add insult to injury, some airlines now  
charge to check luggage.

Want to escape on the couch? A writers' strike halted favorite TV  
shows for half a season. The newspaper on the table may soon be a  
relic of the Internet age. Just as video stores are falling by the  
wayside as people get their movies online or in the mail.

But there's always sports, right?

The moorings seem to be coming loose here, too.

Baseball stars Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens stand accused of  
enhancing their heroics with drugs. Basketball referees are suspected  
of cheating.

Stay tuned for less than pristine tales from the drug-addled Tour de  
France and who knows what from the Summer Olympics.

It's not the first time Americans have felt a loss of control.

Alger, the dime-novel author whose heroes overcame adversity to gain  
riches and fame, played to similar anxieties when the U.S. was  
becoming an industrial society in the late 1800s.

American University historian Allan J. Lichtman notes that the U.S.  
has endured comparable periods and worse, including the economic  
stagflation (stagnant growth combined with inflation) and Iran hostage  
crisis of 1980; the dawn of the Cold War, the Korean War and the  
hysterical hunts for domestic Communists in the late 1940s and early  
1950s; and the Depression of the 1930s.

"All those periods were followed by much more optimistic periods in  
which the American people had their confidence restored," he said. "Of  
course, that doesn't mean it will happen again."

Each period also was followed by a change in the party controlling the  
White House.

This period has seen intense interest in the presidential primaries,  
especially the Democrats' five-month duel between Obama and Hillary  
Rodham Clinton. Records were shattered by voters showing up at polling  
places, yearning for a voice in who will next guide the country as it  
confronts the uncontrollable.

Never mind that their views of their current leaders are near rock  
bottom, reflecting a frustration with Washington's inability to solve  
anything. President Bush barely gets the approval of three in 10  
people, and it's even worse for the Democratic-led Congress.

Why the vulnerability? After all, this is the 21st century, not a more  
primitive past when little in life was assured. Surely people know how  
to fix problems now.

Maybe. And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about — a great  
unraveling of some things long taken for granted.