Some Americans, but far too few, want to know how Barack Obama gets to plan his upcoming 60th birthday bash this month on his 30-acre oceanfront estate on the island of Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts.

There are 475 confirmed guests set to show up who will be catered to by a staff of some 200 people at the estate which the Obama family bought for $12 million right after he left the White House. One can imagine the party will cost close to a million bucks. And this for a president who was primarily a “social worker” before he became president?

One can recall that, in contrast, when Harry Truman left the White House and President Eisenhower took over in the early 1950s, Harry left his job in Washington and he and his wife drove home unescorted to Missouri where he had long maintained very modest family home.

Those were the days when the U.S. really was at the top of its game, and quite prosperous with a thriving middle class. Back then, too, the U.S. was THE respected world power. Eisenhower, a celebrated U.S. general in World War 2 who along with his peers was instrumental in helping defeat Nazi Germany, turned out to be a solid president. Just before he left office after eight years he gave his now-famous speech warning about the dangers of what he called the “military-industrial complex” becoming too big a factor in the development of the country and potentially leading to all sorts of horrors, as it so amply has since the mid-1960s and the start of the Vietnam war debacle. Eisenhower was never interested in buying a $12 million estate, unlike Obama.

But the question remains HOW any president unless they were already filthy rich by inheritance like JFK or the two Bushes, and very much like many in Congress nowadays, manage to become very wealthy on relatively modest salaries while in office and especially after they leave office. The answer quite simply is rampant, obscene corruption. Favors did to so-called elites and special interest groups such as AIPAC and even the military while in office have resulted in huge rewards after they are retired. The Clintons are another case in point and so are many in or out of Congress today. Nancy Pelosi, who leads the Democrats in the House of Representatives, is another example.

So what the U.S. has become is a society of the haves and have nots like never before, and the results of this, including the decimation of a middle class and even industrial enterprise because of off-shoring to China and other countries, is a country that is unraveling socially, spiritually, economically and infrastructurally.

Biden has pledged to “bring back America” but already he has failed to live up to scores of campaign promises and America so far is not “coming back” except as a bigger threat, along with horrifical allies like the Zionist Apartheid state and the Saudis, to name just two. 

But one really needs to ask just one question: What can you say about a country that has spent trillions of dollars over the decades since World War 2 building and often upgrading several THOUSAND nuclear weapons? (When, presumably, a hundred or so of the barbarous bombs, which ONLY the U.S. has ever used unnecessarily – twice on Japan in 1945 – are certainly sufficient as a threat to rivals such as the USSR was, and could easily destroy civilization.)

Indeed, one can say U.S. governance has been on the wrong path, at its peril, for decades just as Eisenhower warned against. The U.S. has eroded at home and not served its citizens well overall, especially in the current century. Many realize this in the U.S. but far too few citizens understand exactly why and their scrambled reactions have often been absurdly counter-productive and severely fracturing to the social fabric and proper governance and respect from abroad.

The biggest “tell” pointing to the decline of the U.S. as a respected power seems to be this: the government has literally not been able to change directions under ANY president or party since Lyndon Johnson’s reign. Yes, for example, Biden has or is pulling the U.S. out of Afghanistan but that’s only because after 20 years and trillions spent and some 3000 grunts killed and more than 20,000 maimed the U.S. was utterly defeated in its war there. It’s not because of a marginal change in direction.

So the question remains what action modest or big COULD signal (before some sort of deep collapse occurs) the beginning of a real change in direction for the U.S. internally and abroad? Here’s a list of candidates, some of them seemingly minor, some major. 1. The U.S. lifts all the sanctions on Iran and restores the JCPOA with guarantees it cannot be canceled again as Trump and Pompeo did. 2. Makes aid to the Apartheid Zionist entity conditional on how it treats the Palestinians, half the population west of the Jordan River and forces the entity to lift the siege on Gaza. 3.  Slashes the obscene Pentagon budget materially. 4. Halts the rampant use of “sanctions” and lifts them from Cuba and Venezuela and other countries where deployed. 5. Raises taxes significantly for the billionaire and multi-millionaire “elites”. 6. Legislates Medicare healthcare for all citizens. 7. Raises the minimum wage for workers. 8. Cancels most of almost two trillion dollars in student debt. 9. Enacts strict environmental standards, many of which Trump trashed. 10. Dismantles unilaterally 90 percent of nuclear weapons. 11. Stops prosecutions of whistleblowers like Julian Assange.

Any one of these moves, however small (and none of them cater to the long-entrenched “establishment”) could be seen as a breath of fresh air for most all Americans and many others overseas. Sadly, for now, none of them are likely to happen until AFTER some sort of material collapse of the U.S. given the long road of bad governance the U.S. has been on. And as well, this ought to constitute a warning to other countries that seem incapable of changing directions themselves.