Download or read book America Is Self Destructing written by Thomas P. Wallace and published by . This book was released on 2013-06 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Countries that at different times in history were among the world's greatest powers, such as Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Britain, and Germany, have gradually shifted their sights either in the wake of defeat or after protracted periods of grappling with decline, from winning the great power sweepstakes to topping the lists of nations offering the best quality of life." David Rothkopf "One critical measure of the health of a modern democracy is it ability to legitimately extract taxes from its own elites. The most dysfunctional societies in the developing world are those whose elites succeed either in legally exempting themselves from taxation or in taking advantage of lax enforcement to evade them." Francis Fukuyama "Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity." Joseph E. Stiglitz "Tea Party constitutionalism and conservative originalism more generally are less interested in the Constitution's actual words (or the 'real' intentions of the Founders) than they are in rolling back democratic advances that have been made since 1787." E. J. Dionne

Download or read book America the Great and Its Self Destruction written by Wei Bin Zhang and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The accelerating self-destruction of the United States cannot be hidden when the loss of productivity, loss of faith in government, enflamed identity politics and social fragmentation are constant and are clearly documented. Any national assessment should be grounded in facts, and Prof. Zhang provides a plethora of economic data as a baseline for discussion. The figures and graphs reveal many sides of America that we may generally miss. In addition, Chinese and other Asians familiar with ancient Confucianism have their own sources of wisdom and commentary to guide them in assessing how they and their neighbors think and behave. Here, a Chinese academic familiar with both worlds shares his impressions and his conclusions. Prof. Zhang juxtaposes the political, economic and cultural behavior of America with sparkling quotes from Confucius, Mencius, Xun Zi, as well as Western classical thinkers from Plato to Quesnay and Weber. The book gives us a new perspective on our country — with insights as well from Chaos Theory. In this book we explore how the basic concepts of the yin-yang vision, and socioeconomic chaos theory, can help us understand American civilization, what it represents, and the natural cycles it is going through. Confucianism is more rationalist and sober, in the sense of the absence and the rejection of all non-utilitarian yardsticks, than any other ethical system, with the possible exception of J. Bentham’s. The author presents data on American economic and social trends, and systematically compares the basic ideas of Confucius and Adam Smith. These are interwoven with hundreds of pithy observations on America from a wide spectrum of commentators, from intellectual lumaries to Hollywood stars. The aim of studying the history of human societies, the author says, is to find the equations, i.e., mechanisms, of historical evolution; by stepping back to view events from different perspectives he seeks to present America as an organic whole, going beyond a partial, one-sided view of history — neither the patrician perspective nor that of the workers and the poor. The book is basically an application of the author’s general theory on socioeconomic evolution to provide some insights into America’s evolution by viewing it under an alternative ethical system (ancient Confucianism), with insights from chaos theory.

Download or read book No Success Like Failure written by Ivan Solotaroff and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking for America? asks Sam Toperoff, Ivan Solotaroff has drawn the map, and it takes you down, down, down, to the junkyard of the Dream Machine. He tells us exactly what happens when the Devil comes to collect and tells it brilliantly. Ivan Solotaroff never blinks. Never. A remorselessly dispassionate chronicler of the absurd, the troubled, and the deformed, Ivan Solotaroff has an uncanny ability to find his way into the private lives of public figures at their moments of greatest epiphany, abasement, and deluded grandeur. With none of the judgement, artifice, or tropes of literary journalism, the eleven essays of No Success Like Failure present a vision of the American ego at its most fragile. Among them: Sympathy for the Devil on the life, times, and burgeoning environmental awareness of Charles Manson; In the Land of the Fischer King, an account of Bobby Fischer's public reappearance in war-ravaged Serbia-Montenegro; Once a Man, Twice a Child, which covers the criminal trials of soul-star James Brown; Superhuman, All Too Superhuman, on the pugilistic career and vagina dentata of Mark Gastineau; King of the Park, on the rise and fall of the street comic Charlie Barnett. In these tales of unknowns, household names, and has-beens Solotaroff shows us what it is like to be trapped in the harsh spotlight of American popular culture, revealing in unflinching detail the hysteria and pathos of our national delusions.

Download or read book Appetite for Self Destruction written by Steve Knopper and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the epic story of the precipitous rise and fall of the recording industry over the past three decades, when the incredible success of the CD turned the music business into one of the most glamorous, high-profile industries in the world -- and the advent of file sharing brought it to its knees. In a comprehensive, fast-paced account full of larger-than-life personalities, Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper shows that, after the incredible wealth and excess of the '80s and '90s, Sony, Warner, and the other big players brought about their own downfall through years of denial and bad decisions in the face of dramatic advances in technology. Big Music has been asleep at the wheel ever since Napster revolutionized the way music was distributed in the 1990s. Now, because powerful people like Doug Morris and Tommy Mottola failed to recognize the incredible potential of file-sharing technology, the labels are in danger of becoming completely obsolete. Knopper, who has been writing about the industry for more than ten years, has unparalleled access to those intimately involved in the music world's highs and lows. Based on interviews with more than two hundred music industry sources -- from Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. to renegade Napster creator Shawn Fanning -- Knopper is the first to offer such a detailed and sweeping contemporary history of the industry's wild ride through the past three decades. From the birth of the compact disc, through the explosion of CD sales in the '80s and '90s, the emergence of Napster, and the secret talks that led to iTunes, to the current collapse of the industry as CD sales plummet, Knopper takes us inside the boardrooms, recording studios, private estates, garage computer labs, company jets, corporate infighting, and secret deals of the big names and behind-the-scenes players who made it all happen. With unforgettable portraits of the music world's mighty and formerly mighty; detailed accounts of both brilliant and stupid ideas brought to fruition or left on the cutting-room floor; the dish on backroom schemes, negotiations, and brawls; and several previously unreported stories, Appetite for Self-Destruction is a riveting, informative, and highly entertaining read. It offers a broad perspective on the current state of Big Music, how it got into these dire straits, and where it's going from here -- and a cautionary tale for the digital age.

Download or read book The Coming Self Destruction of the United States of America written by Alan Seymour and published by Harvill Press. This book was released on 1971-01-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Society Against Itself written by Howard S. Schwartz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Political correctness" involves much more than a restriction of speech. It represents a broad cultural transformation, a shift in the way people understand things and organize their lives; a change in the way meaning is made. The problem addressed in this book is that, for reasons the author explores, some ways of making "meaning" support the creation and maintenance of organization, while others do not. Organizations are cultural products and rely upon psychological roots that go very deep. The basic premise of this book is that organizations are made up of the rules, common understandings, and obligations that "the father" represents, and which are given meaning in the oedipal dynamic. In anti-oedipal psychology, however, they are seen as locuses of deprivation and structures of oppression. Anti-oedipal meaning, then, is geared toward the destruction of organization.

Download or read book The Index of Self Destructive Acts written by Christopher Beha and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the day Sam Waxworth arrives in New York to write for the Interviewer, a street-corner preacher declares that the world is coming to an end. A data journalist and recent media celebrity—he correctly forecast every outcome of the 2008 election—Sam knows a few things about predicting the future. But when projection meets reality, life gets complicated. His first assignment for the Interviewer is a profile of disgraced political columnist Frank Doyle, known to Sam for the sentimental works of baseball lore that first sparked his love of the game. When Sam meets Frank at Citi Field for the Mets’ home opener, he finds himself unexpectedly ushered into Doyle’s crumbling family empire. Kit, the matriarch, lost her investment bank to the financial crisis; Eddie, their son, hasn’t been the same since his second combat tour in Iraq; Eddie’s best friend from childhood, the fantastically successful hedge funder Justin Price, is starting to see cracks in his spotless public image. And then there’s Frank’s daughter, Margo, with whom Sam becomes involved—just as his wife, Lucy, arrives from Wisconsin. While their lives seem inextricable, none of them know how close they are to losing everything, including each other. Sweeping in scope yet meticulous in its construction, The Index of Self-Destructive Acts is a remarkable family portrait and a masterful evocation of New York City and its institutions. Over the course of a single baseball season, Christopher Beha traces the passing of the torch from the old establishment to the new meritocracy, exploring how each generation’s failure helped land us where we are today. Whether or not the world is ending, Beha’s characters are all headed to apocalypses of their own making.

Download or read book The coming self destruction of the Unites States of America written by Alan Seymour and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Clueless America written by Deidre Maylor Pittner and published by . This book was released on 2005-10-01 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Self Destructive Habits of Good Companies written by Jagdish N. Sheth and published by Pearson Education. This book was released on 2007-04-26 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do so many good companies engage in self-destructive behavior? This book identifies seven dangerous habits even well-run companies fall victim to–and helps you diagnose and break these habits before they destroy you. Through case studies from some of yesterday’s most widely praised corporate icons, you’ll learn how companies slip into “addiction” and slide off the rails...why some never turn around...and how others achieve powerful turnarounds, moving on to unprecedented levels of success. You’ll learn how an obsession with volume leads inexorably to rising costs and falling margins...how companies fall victim to denial, myth, ritual, and orthodoxy... how they start wasting vital energy on culture confl ict and turf wars...how they blind themselves to emerging competition...how they become arrogant, complacent, and far too dependent on their traditional competences. Most important, you’ll find specific, detailed techniques for “curing”–or, better yet, preventing–every one of these self-destructive habits. The “cocoon” of denial Find it, admit it, assess it, and escape it The stigma of arrogance Escape this fault that “breeds in a dark, closed room” The virus of complacency Six warning signs and five solutions The curse of incumbency Stop your core competencies from blinding you to new opportunities The threat of myopia Widen your view of your competitors–and the dangers they pose The obsession of volume Get beyond “rising volumes and shrinking margins” The territorial impulse Break down the silos, factions, fiefdoms, and ivory towers

Download or read book The Jihadis Path to Self destruction written by Nelly Lahoud and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jihadi ideologues mobilize Muslims, especially young Muslims, through an individualist, centered Islam. Appealing to a classical defense doctrine, they argue that the mandates of jihad are the individual duty of every Muslim and therefore transcend and undermine both the authority of the state and the power of parental control. Yet emphasizing the duty and right of individually initiated jihad is just one side of do-it-yourself Islam. The other involves protecting the purity of doctrinal beliefs against deviation, even by fellow jihadis. The pursuit of doctrinal purity has led some jihadis to resort to takfir, a pronouncement that declares fellow Muslims unbelievers and makes it legal to shed their blood. Set against the background of the Kharijites, Islam's first counter-establishment movement, this book explores the religious philosophy underlying jihadism. The Kharijites's idealistic and individualistic ideology forces members to deploy takfir against one another, thus hastening their extinction as a group.

Download or read book America s Suicidal Statecraft written by James Cumes and published by Booksurge Publishing. This book was released on 2006-11-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Civilisations die from suicide," Toynbee warned us, "not by murder." The United States, along with Australia and several others have pursued fatally flawed economic and financial policies for almost four decades, beginning with ill-judged interest-rate hikes and stagflation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They then punctuated the years afterwards with policy departures which, almost without exception, made things worse. In effect, they embarked on serial attempts at economic, social, political and strategic suicide through often obsessive devotion to such concepts as "free" markets, deregulation, privatisation and globalisation. They neglected mounting dangers from debt, deficits and derivatives, from rampant speculation, chronic unemployment, low wages and mounting inequality at home and abroad. Long years of unmitigated error have reduced a once magnificent American economy to one that increasingly resembles a hollowed-out shell. Though there continue to be great potential strengths in the American economy and society, these strengths have already been gravely diminished and the unremitting ebb of intrinsic power persists while other economies grow stronger, ironically by grasping the opportunities that feckless American policies continue to surrender to them. Perversely, predatory finance capitalism has nourished and become a victim of the prey that, with exquisite cleverness, it sought to capture and exploit. This erosion of economic and financial strength has grave social, political and strategic consequences. Not so long ago, the United States was, despite some inevitable imperfections, one of the world's most admired, progressive and transparent democracies. That democracy has been increasingly corrupted over the years and America's capacity to carry out its role as a superpower - certainly as the world's single superpower - has been put gravely at risk. These are some of the major issues addressed in "America's Suicidal Statecraft". Basically, they are down-to-earth economic and financial issues but they have have had and continue to have the most far-reaching social, political and strategic impacts - for the United States, for closely allied countries such as Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand and, indeed, for the whole world community. There are still ways in which the decline and prospective fall of the United States can be reversed; but that will call for an enormous exercise of political will and, above all, a comprehensive change of vision. At the moment, given the many complexities and uncertainties in the world economic, social, political and strategic situation, the most likely outcome is that American policies will be reversed and a new vision adopted only as irresistible imperatives when a devastating collapse has already occurred or is transparently under way. A crucial question is how many months or years we have left before we reach the point of collapse and just what we can do that will be effective in the meantime. "America's Suicidal Statecraft" suggests some approaches.

Download or read book The Rise and Self destruction of the Greatest Football Team in History written by John Mullin and published by Triumph Books (IL). This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the story of one of the greatest football teams in the history of the NFL: the '85 Bears. They were, for a brief, magical moment, a band of eccentrics who went from nobodies to rock stars and cult figures--they took America on a wild ride in the middle of one of the wildest times in history. The Rise and Self-Destruction of the Greatest Football Team in History reveals all the stories from that year, like how Walter Payton ended up hiding in a storage closet and why the team collapsed under the weight of its own greatness.

Download or read book Will America Self Destruct written by Walter Stern and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2001-02-15 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent Us Elections written by United States. Office of the Director of National Intelligence and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-01-06 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report includes an analytic assessment drafted and coordinated among The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and The National Security Agency (NSA), which draws on intelligence information collected and disseminated by those three agencies. It covers the motivation and scope of Moscow's intentions regarding US elections and Moscow's use of cyber tools and media campaigns to influence US public opinion. The assessment focuses on activities aimed at the 2016 US presidential election and draws on our understanding of previous Russian influence operations. When we use the term "we" it refers to an assessment by all three agencies. * This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment. This document's conclusions are identical to the highly classified assessment, but this document does not include the full supporting information, including specific intelligence on key elements of the influence campaign. Given the redactions, we made minor edits purely for readability and flow. We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion. * New information continues to emerge, providing increased insight into Russian activities. * PHOTOS REMOVED

Download or read book The Coming Self destruction of the United States of America written by Alan Seymour and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Elements of Self Destruction written by Brent Potter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stated purpose of this phenomenological psychoanalytic study is to make the phenomenon of self-destruction and its vicissitudes intelligible. It presents the nature of the relationship between the essence of technology and the essence of self-destructiveness.