This idea, that the “system” has to collapse before it can be rebuilt in a better way drives me crazy. In the first place, we don’t actually have a system. Remember Will Rodgers’ quote, “I belong to no organized political party, I’m a Democrat”…well, that concept aptly describes our capitalist “system”. What we do have is a remarkably complex and diverse economic ecosystem, the collapse of which would have disastrous consequences for most of its inhabitants.

You are right though, people tend to look at current conditions and see them as the way things have always been, the natural order, or some other misunderstanding of a snapshot in time. At 97 my dad’s memory is compromised, if it weren’t he would remember sweeping changes in our “system”, most notably the construction of a safety net state that lifted the elderly out of poverty, that created a robust middle class, that saw the elimination of U.S. Apartheid and the stark reduction of racism, sexism, and homophobia, and the introduction of a national culture that won’t tolerate drafting young people to fight massive and bloody wars.

Our “endless war” in the Middle East is barely a patch on the Vietnam war, which was not only tolerated by the majority of Americans but actually supported by them. In contrast, the U.S. citizen would not tolerate the wholesale killing of millions by our troops the way it passively did in the ‘60s-’70s. Things change, mostly for the better, and we rapidly come to see those changes as the way things always were;)