USA: Green or Blue?

Two projections from the early 1970’s that predict 
the USA of the future (i.e. of today). One says we 
will be Blue, the other says Green.

I refer to The Bluing of America  by Berger & Berger
and the Greening of America by Charles A. Reich. 

The Reich  book was published in 1970 and was much 
discussed at the time. Many today look back on the America 
of the 1950’s and 60’s as an idyllic time when the US 
still had its "industrial base"  with lots of "High Wage 
Union Blue Collar" jobs,  with security and no need for 
the little wife woman to worry about anything except 
cooking and cleaning the house.  

But Reich writing of these times saw the US in a 
rather different light.

The earlier "Consciousness I" view of the nation as a collection of
independent  land owning individualistic farmers had given way to
the "Consciousness II" Corporate State. The individual must conform 
to the requirements of the Industrial Age with its regulation and 
schedules. Workers are now alienated and bored by the repetition  
they know is necessary for Society to function, and they must be 
trained and constrained to be effective parts of the machinery of 
Industry.  (And of course women are bored and alienated because 
they are NOT included in the job market, as Betty Friedan explained
in the Feminine Mystique).

And of course the US was a fascist police state that repressed the 
peaceful protest of the war as well as those who would call attention 
to our failures by burning a few cities to dramatize their point.

But Reich saw hope for the dire situation in the rise of  
"Consciousness III",  which he says has always been around in the 
background in a few poets and disaffected intellectuals, but which 
spread to the college generation starting in about 1969.  Reich says 
that the Woodstock Nation is leading the way in the rejection of the 
Industrial Corporate State, and creating a new value system. And that 
this is springing from the kids of the middle and upper classes as 
they chose to "drop out" of the rat race and find meaning for their
lives in love and cooperation.

Which brings me to The Bluing of America. 

http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jul1971/v28-2-criticscorner1.htm

or if that does not work try

http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/4834/bluing.htm

If Reich was correct, would that mean that the USA is dropping 
out of the Industrial Age to become a nation of stoned potheads?  
Maybe we are losing our "industrial base" because Americans no 
longer want to work in factories, and don't want to have 
factories polluting their environment?

Or does it mean that someone else will be (has been) stepping in 
to become the Ruling Elite?  If the kids of the old Elite are 
dropping out, are they being replaced by the kids of the lower 
class and of the new immigrants?  Will the USA of the future be 
directed by the likes of Colin Powell, Connie Rice, Bill Clinton 
and Andy Grove?

                     ,,,,,,,
_______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________
                       (_)
jim blair (jeblair@facstaff.wisc.edu) Madison Wisconsin
USA. This message was brought to you using biodegradable
binary bits, and 100% recycled bandwidth. For a good time 
call:   http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/4834