Warfare continues to become more professional and dehumanized every day.

The purpose of Extraordinary Edition is being revisited for winter, headed into 2013. U.S. foreign policy, Central Asia and the Middle East remain key focal points. Economics and culture on your front doorstep are coming into focus here.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Still Extraordinary, a Change of Edition.

Life inside the borders of the United States becomes increasingly stark and alarming as living steadily becomes easier for a slimmer percentage of the population each day. The lifestyle, which former Vice President and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney famously stated is not up for negotiation, falls under criticism for conspicuous consumption in all areas from eating too much to purchasing extravagances that boggle the mind on a regular basis in the name of improving an often mysterious sector of society known to us in daily news as "The Economy." The last time wages increased above the pace of increase in the cost of living here was in the early 1970s. Labor organizations have all but disappeared, leaving the workforce to fend for itself, each individual in a job performance review (for those whose jobs have performance reviews) fending for him or herself. Meanwhile battle overseas has shed boundaries, no longer known by "name of country"+"War", following the chaotic NATO nightmare of Libya, the dissolution of Iraq and Afghanistan into administrative presence of the U.S. military for the rest of eternity and the evident State Department contemplation of acting as it pleases the state in Syria next, someday possibly Iran and Yemen. With the U.S. facing apparently urgent fiscal responsibilities on Capitol Hill, the average citizen is left wondering how we can afford any presence in a country besides our own. Many average Americans have what they refer to as jobs because of U.S. foreign wars, but the commute hardly seems realistic. And operating a machine via satellite that's moving across the other side of the planet in a completely different time of day, frequently to destroy lives of ordinary citizens, seems more like a video game and bizarre at best. If we had better economic priorities in U.S. culture, we might find ourselves building viable occupations and civic institutions at home. Municipalities continue to go bankrupt like in San Bernardino, California and Birmingham, Alabama. Why do individuals and families struggle at local levels as the upper levels of government and industry make excuses and back away, taking with them the revenue generated by working hands? The historic moment immediately following a presidential election is a good time to raise concerns about economic priorities among everyday citizens, especially in a wealth country that holds the user manual on the current global economic system and tends to set examples internationally for how to proceed in the face of adversity and successive failure of the usual solutions. Look to our site for valuable observations and discussions you can get involved in as we proceed into the year 2013.

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