In A Recovery’s Long Odds, Bob Herbert, of the New York Times, discusses how “Americans are not being honest with themselves about the structural changes in the economy that have bestowed fabulous wealth on a tiny sliver at the top, while undermining the living standards of the middle class and absolutely crushing the poor.”

Herbert is pointing us in two directions: first, that Americans appear to be delusional — or that somehow we’ve been complacent with the direction leaders — and the media — say we’re heading.  The notion that American citizens are dormant is beginning to get some notice.  Arianna Huffington, in her new book, Third World America, evolves this notion, but gives us some solutions — how to turn this around.  You can hear a good interview with here in On Point: “All countries have rich and poor. What Third World countries don’t have is a strong middle class. Neither, right now, does the United States,” says Huffington.  The second notion is that of course, following on Huffington’s notion of a declining middle class, is that we have a huge gap in wealth acquisition — the disparities are now too great not to be noticed.

The middle class is finally on its knees. Jobs are scarce and good jobs even scarcer. Government and corporate policies have been whacking working Americans every which way for the past three or four decades. While globalization and technological wizardry were wreaking employment havoc, the movers and shakers in government and in the board rooms of the great corporations were embracing privatization and deregulation with the fervor of fanatics. The safety net was shredded, unions were brutally attacked and demonized, employment training and jobs programs were eliminated, higher education costs skyrocketed, and the nation’s infrastructure, a key to long-term industrial and economic health, deteriorated.

Of course, this has everything to do with sustainability – can we sustain the America we have or, perhaps better put: can we sustain the America we’ve had?

Since we’re heading towards Bill McKibben’s End of Nature, it’s appropriate to wonder how deeply the human alterations of nature have gone; that is, it may be that our processes and procedures, our ways of living — socially, economically, intellectually and spiritually — have genuinely altered our ways of being, socioeconomically, and now we find ourselves, like nature, on the ropes.

After reading End of Nature, Herbert and Huffington, I wonder what you think about where we stand in America — and where we may be heading?  To put it another way, as first years, what do you see down the line for you in 3 or so years?  Or, what do you have to do now to prepare to what seems to be an alternate state of being, one quite different than you’re perhaps accustomed to?