© Carlos Barria/Reuters
News headlines this week of epidemic drug abuse and mortality among Americans confirm what many observers have already noted - America is in bad, bad shape.
But despite the media coverage, there was little commentary on the backdrop to the malaise. American society is collapsing because of an epic failure in the economy.
Reports dwelt on the types of drugs being used and metabolic diseases, such as diabetes, but there was scant attention given to soaring poverty and social misery. Could this be because the US media, like the government, is covering for what should be the "big story"? The bankruptcy of American capitalism. And when we say "bankrupt" we mean not just a protracted downturn in the "business cycle" -
but rather the entire system mired in a condition of historic, terminal failure.The
Washington Post headlined: "Nearly 60 percent of Americans — the highest ever — are taking prescription drugs". Reporting on a study by the
Journal of the American Medical Association, the article revealed: "Nearly three in five American adults take a prescription drug, up markedly since 2000 because of much higher use of almost every type of medication, including antidepressants and treatments for high cholesterol and diabetes."
Based on the same study, NBC News
headlined: "More Americans than ever use prescription drugs". The channel reported that "the percentage of people taking prescription drugs rose from51 percent of the adult population in 1999 to
59 percent in 2011."
Meanwhile, the London-based
Financial Times,
reporting on a separate study also published this week, ran this grim headline: "White, middle-aged, uneducated and dying". The
FT said: "
Drug and alcohol abuse and mental health issues in the US are contributing to an alarming surge in deaths among white middle-aged people, in a trend that has reversed decades of progress and is not being seen in other advanced economies."
Comment: See also:America's Darkest Secret: The Nine Stages of American Autogenocide