re: Which generation is to blame for this country’s direction?

Certainly diet, activity, social media, smartphones have a role in the last 3-4 decades

One thing about the generations - post WW2 saw the explosion of the middle class. Family incomes were within very tight distributions - the top were a lot closer to the middle and bottom than ever before in history. Debt was cheap. We could all watch the same three TV channels each night.

Parents raised their children that everyone can have a great life and the same things, no matter of origin, and that was mostly true - just as consumerism exploded.

In latter decades, the top grew in wealth exponentially more than the middle and lower percentiles but people still have the belief that we should all have the same things. Thus leading to keeping up with Joneses.

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It's no one generation's fault. We were decades ahead of other countries after the war. Our economy boomed. We led the way economically and socially. Prosperity and capitalism brought about the ability to innovate. Innovation is on the whole good, but sometimes companies are a little too quick to market with products that hurt the populace. We became fat, tired, complacent, and dumb. The sugar industry, as well as companies that mass produce food items ladened with preservatives, fricked us. That's the cause, IMO. I think the obesity rate is the cause and all of the other shite (entitlement, lack of critical thinking, laziness, greed) is a symptom of the fact that we are so fricking fat. Now other countries are starting to catch up. They are getting fat, too.

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This + our election system on all levels has been rigged in one fashion or another to allow the elite the final say, and thus control as they are fit.

We live in a banana republic, but more and more people are finally waking up to it.

The question is: what is there to now be done about it, now that the system is rigged.

We need strict voter I.D. laws coupled with paper ballots, and extreme chain-of-custody verifiable by true forensic capability, and backed up by serious prison time. It’s the only way I see out of this mess, but I don’t see a way to it presently.