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If I may, I'd like to suggest that all may not be lost in the wake of the scenario the author suggests. The nation was founded largely though the toil of people who were, in fact, jacks of all trades. Up until the recent decades in the wake of WWII, Yankee ingenuity is mainly what gave us our progress, leadership and cultural identity. If, as the article opines, our demise may be at hand because of the loss of technically specialized, globalized and heavily energy dependent systems, this may be a jolt (granted a brutal one) that serves to recalibrate our national priorities and direction.

True enough, we would see significant upheaval like riots, crime waves and the like, but it is a certainty that the conditions that created the massive urban under-classes were, in fact, byproducts of rogue federalism built on the profitable specialization in the post-war economic boom. To a large extent, this comparitive advantage in American economic specialization has been monopolistic (and profitable) until the very recent past. Witht the rise of globalization, all bets are off anyway and our vaunted status is likely to be one of diminishing returns even if we continue to live in times of relative peace and security. In other words, the problem, according to this analysis, we now might face is generated by a very recent mutation of the corrupted system we wish to preserve - not an external, alien threat to traditional American values or intents. The solution, however bloody or painful, might just lie in excising this disorder from the body politic - even at the risk of civil strife and governmental collapse. Frankly, I can't imagine a better equipped nation of people to deal with a catastrophe of that magnitude.

BTW, Skeezix was a minor god.

Apparently thinking and writing number among your trades, Jack.

Here's lookin' at ya'.

A jack-of-all-trades is a powerful thing, and perhaps most valuable in industries built on specialties, but it takes many, many specialists to create, maintain, and exploit the technologies underlying the semiconductor industry, for example.