Boiling Over

Also in the Wall Street Journal today is this headline;
America Is at Risk of Boiling Over

The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped us.

The country I was born into was a country that had existed steadily, for almost two centuries, as a nation in which everyone thought—wherever they were from, whatever their circumstances—that their children would have better lives than they did.

Parents now fear something has stopped. They think they lived through the great abundance, a time of historic growth in wealth and material enjoyment. They got it, and they enjoyed it, and their kids did, too: a lot of toys in that age, a lot of Xboxes and iPhones. (Who is the most self-punishing person in America right now? The person who didn't do well during the abundance.) But they look around, follow the political stories and debates, and deep down they think their children will live in a more limited country, that jobs won't be made at a great enough pace, that taxes—too many people in the cart, not enough pulling it—will dishearten them, that the effects of 30 years of a low, sad culture will leave the whole country messed up. And then there is the world: nuts with nukes, etc.

See it here; http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703748904575411713335505250.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

Many of us watchers have been saying that another civil war is brewing for America. Of course if the state of California quits paying it's welfare checks in Los Angeles and Oakland a civil war could break out there. And that may spread to Illinois, New Jersey, Nevada, New York and others as they start bouncing welfare payments.

But there are even more boiling points than simply the poor on welfare. She accurately ends her article with this sentence;

Inner pessimism and powerlessness: That is a dangerous combination.