Does anyone else ever wonder what the history books will say about this era 50 years from now?

[AverageJoe90]

28. They might call this the Second Gilded Age, starting with the ascension of Dubya Bush......

and ending only goodness knows when. In any case, it won't speak too kindly of the right-wing here in the U.S.; they practically trashed this country beyond any reasonable hope of getting ourselves back on track without truly substantial changes to the system a la a 21st-century version of the New Deal.

But if you thought Bush's America will be criticized(and the Bushies deserve every bit of bashing they could get!), they will be just as hard, actually maybe more so, on Putin's Russia and the corporatist sham state that calls itself the "People's Republic" in China.....speaking of China, by the way, it's highly unlikely the government will be able to survive the coming economic bubble burst, without some truly serious economic reforms *and* democracy; hopefully, for the sakes of the Chinese people, this does happen, but if it doesn't.....well, let's just say the results won't be at all pretty.

Neither will they have many nice things to say about the Likudnik/Betar factions of Zionism, or Islamism, particularly that of the Muslim Brotherhood, or what is practiced in Iran or Saudi Arabia still. And certainly not for the Religious Right and the Teabaggers here in America. Though I would think that Obama will likely receive plenty of sympathy for trying to start to fix our broken system.....all his few faults aside.

And it's not just governments, eitther.

As for climate change, the history books, if they are unbiased, will also be quite damning of (actual) climate denialism, but they will also be highly critical, and rightly so, of certain actions of people such as Kevin Anderson, David Wasdell, and even James Lovelock in his waning years, of allowing "Chicken Little" speculation and fearmongering to overshadow the very real concerns of global warming & other climate-related problems, as well as the mainstream media for playing off both extremes. Though they will also commend people like Bill McKibben, Andrew Revkin, John Cook(the Skeptical Science guy. Did I get his name right?), and others for trying to help combat the problem.

Just my 2 cents, and yes, barring something truly catastrophic on a *cosmic* scale, such as a K/T re-run or a gamma ray burst, we'll still be here. So we don't need to worry about that, really, at least.