by Doc Cuddy, Editor

Answer: Hope.

In each country revolution brought profound social and economic change. An old established order was swept aside, a new structure was put in place where it seemed all citizens would be able to better themselves. And the citizens were filled with hope, for themselves and for their children.

We know all too well what happened in Russia, Germany, and China after the vision proved unsustainable, the hope unattainable: Stalin, Hitler, Mao.

Among the remarkable characteristics of the American experiment, the long run of American hope may be the most extraordinary. Decade after decade, hope offered and hope realized, through war, through economic collapse, through social upheaval.

No false dream this, American hope powerfully drew wave after wave of immigrants who came, saw, and conquered.

Many factors contributed to this long, long run—a very rich, virgin continent not least among them. Politicians and patriots spoke often and rote-like of freedom and rights and so on. But the great on-going promise of America was opportunity and hope: Come, work, and chances are your life will be good, or at least better.

What few noticed over the years is that freedom without hope is hollow, meaningless.

How, you ask, can you have freedom without hope? Aren’t the two inseparably linked? It’s easy to see how you can have hope without freedom (the prisoner dreams of being free). But freedom without hope? If you’re free, doesn’t that necessarily mean that you can act, do things to make tomorrow better than today?

Maybe. Maybe not.

America is about to find out, because on an unprecedented scale we are being forced to realize that the great game in America has become dishonest, crooked, fixed, rigged.

The bubble of the 1990s offered hope as never before. The collapse now comes with a new kind of despair. America has known economic despair before. But think of this difference now: One of the clichés of the Great Depression is that of Wall Streeters jumping out of windows when the market crashed. Whether the sharing was illusory or not, the nation believed that the despair touched all, rich and poor alike.

Think, now: how many of the exposed executives have shown public remorse? Answer: One. Remember? In the early days of the Enron collapse one principle player parked his Mercedes on the outskirts of Houston and shot himself.

Otherwise we have had at best stonewalling from the bad guys, and at worst unabashed arrogance. (The Worldcom CEO testifying before Congress asserted, "I did my duty.") And it is that pervasive attitude of publicly displayed naked hubris that could do us in.

They came. They say. They stole. And mostly got away with it, depriving untold numbers of trusting workers of their savings, their retirements… their hope.

The shameless greed of those who manipulated and profited with no interest in the common good has been exposed. With that exposure the terrible, long-hidden truth behind what is now seen to be a sham democracy is revealed.

Is it mere coincidence that the brazen theft of a presidential election, suborned by the Supreme Court itself, happened almost simultaneous with the early stages of economic collapse?

Or that the government in power as collapse occurs should be shamelessly beholden to the perpetrators of the fraud of the 1990s? (Bush-Cheney / Enron-Harken-Halliburton.)

Of course not. The people in power now were both creators and products of the system that perpetrated the fraud.

As never before in American history, it’s clear for all to see that the game was rigged. Bigtime, indeed. Rigged on an unprecedented scale.

In a corrupt system, where lies hope?

The American dream, for the first time, is shattered, in ruins. Shards of broken hopes vastly cover a landscape interrupted only by the plenteous certitude in the gated, protected communities of the ones who got away.

This has never been a country of whiners but the silent pain of irrecoverable loss now permeates the land: dreams of comfortable retirement lost, hopes for a better future dashed.

If you were a possible immigrant on the other side of the American border today, would you be dreaming of freedom and opportunity, or would you be thinking: Why go there, where the corruption is as bad as here, where hope is a bad joke told repeatedly by stupid politicians?