Does the United States DESERVE to survive as a world power?

Nope.

The World's Best Hope has become the World's Biggest Bully, both internationally and here at home.

We have taken our normal space on the moral high ground and dropped our pants to defecate on it.

Sure, some of us can make the argument that we have worked for Peace, supported Good Candidates, campaigned for Positive Change...but we are all of us, compliant in the decline and fall of the United States on the world stage. Nonsense, you say? Let's do the math:

From supporting PEACEKEEPING operations with the UN, we have become an Aggressor Nation, waging aggressive war against sovereign nations in violation of treaty and pact.

From maintaining a network that cares for the needy of the world, we have cut funding for the the poor and starving of the world based on ideology, and turned a blind eye toward genocide.

From being a nation whose government's main function was to protect those citizens who cannot protect themselves, we have become the world's best friend to the international corporation and damn the hindmost.

From being the beacon of support for free thinking and freedom of expression, we have become a police state that the Nazis and Soviets would envy. You don't need Gulags and Concentration Camps; just strangle EXPRESSION and you accomplish your goal.

From having a society of tolerance and understanding, we now coin the phrases of the new intolerance like ISLAMOFASCIST, FEMINAZI, etcetera.

But I didn't do this, you say. I ask, did you and I FUND IT? Yep. We did. Did you and I stand by and WATCH it happen without putting ourselves on the line to STOP IT? Yep. That too.

In the 60's the numbers who would be arrested for protest was LEGION, and the phrase still echoes in my ears from Chicago 1968: "THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING! THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING!" Back then we were just opposing a WAR. NOW we have a DOZEN causes to support and fight for, but it isn't happening.

WRONG you say...I support (insert Candidate de jour) and we will blah blah blah blah....

It's not enough. Really.

Every time you pay a dime of tax at any level, or if you fail to call some preaching hypocrite wherever they stand, or if you don't go to DC or New York and treat it the same as Chicago in 1968 whenever they gather to celebrate the overthrow, or when you just keep taking care of business on a daily basis at someone who supplies the military and the environmental despoilers LIKE I DO directly or indirectly you enable the Fascists and Nazis that run our country and kill throughout the world.

Is this harsh in judgement? Yes. Is it UNFAIR in judgment? Not really.

Why?

Because we have NOT followed the words we claim to support:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

So, in the final accounting, we are all responsible to a greater or lesser degree for the decline and fall of the nation, which in our failure to act in measure to the challenge, is likely now inevitable and unstoppable.

Here endith the lesson.

But sometimes I do wonder if I'm being ethnocentric when I say that and if maybe humans have progessed a bit in other parts of the world as opposed to regressing to the Stone Age like we have here.

All of them.

about 100,000 years. I think Homo Sapiens is just about at the tail end of that 100,000 year span.

Maybe it was all planned; have people be concerned then so, 40 years later, we could be apathetic now.

:crazy:

I think Adams was right: Democracies have a limited life span and end in blood.

Before long it's going to be those damn 80s kids meddling with the levers of power. Who's gonna be their Scooby Doo?:beer:

Not as nice as Finland though.

:P

I think we showed them how to do it, and they ran with the ball.

Sorry, but for all the talk of the past how China was Communist and an enemy and this and that, things don't add up. Especially when they turned the water hose (made of lead and melamine) back at those who were helping them and giving them opportunities. China has done everything but admit as such. (400,000 out of 1.3 billion Wangs can't be wrong. (Don't accuse me of being silly or sick, it's THAT article that uses the "W-word".)

I've been predicting the Takeover by the New Chinese, Russian, et al Capitalists for over 30 years now.

The Oil Producers will now become the toadies of THEIR pessovantes instead of OURS, if there's a real difference anyway which I doubt.

No offense about toads intended.

Shit on Tuesdays, or Shit on Every Other Day.

Nice choice isn't it?

I have now officially replied to every single post other than my own to try and keep this alive. 27 posts and 4 recs. I will bump a couple of times, then that's it.

I won't sink: I'm building a lifeboat.

we took instruction from our elders exceedingly well.
:P

That makes all the difference. I like to say that even the least evil of empires is still evil.

Unrevocable Worldwide Democratic Socialism is the only solution that will preserve the planet and the species.

Without it, it's only a matter of time until extinction.

they've evolved into what they are now over thousands of years of endless bloodbaths and tyrants and monarchies.
I was going to try differentiate those aspects of those countries that differ from ours, but all I could come up with is that a bunch of slave-owners decided to fight for the spoils of their very profitable colony, make it their own, and hang their shingle out there and call it U.S.A.
It's a lot more recent and consequently has a lot more to answer for regarding all the bloodbath, tyranny, and economic-monarchy shit.
IIRC, Russia freed their slaves, as a matter of Czarist policy, long before the U.S.A. Then America had a bloodbath in it's own sandbox shortly thereafter.
Typical.

..

Other than the slavery that was required to get the job done(before we found the stuff in the ground), the genocide that was needed to expand(what tiny country is going to be a world power?), and the environmental destruction that was necessary in order to progress(if we don't control the environment, it controls us).

You don't get to be a world power without those three things. Was it worth it?

I don't thinkith you should've endedith the lesson. Good stuff.

I really do stock up on food, antibiotics/other drugs, and ammo you know.

I figure it rocks one way or the other: all out Fascism or Revolution. Fascism I can't fight, Revolution I might be able to keep my family alive through if it doesn't last too long.

Gotta be one MEAN son of a bitch, though. Thank DOG Deb is up to the task: if it happens, she's in command.

Nobody can ever come up with a reason not to think this way, no matter how much I really would LOVE to hear one.

we deserve to be ostracized from the planet.

Armed with Nuclear Six Shooters.

If the planet dies, it will be our fault.

We need those to point @ everybody while we poison their air and water.:nuke:

Until we get back to a power-sharing rather than power-taking/stealing/cheating construct, "no", we do NOT deserve to remain a world power.

I wish instead of a "Born Again" Officer Corps, we had Patriots of the ENTIRE PLANET, busily disarming the bombs and missiles on both sides.

Clunk. No Boom.

,...way WAY over the boom.

You're right. Planet Patriots disarming ALL bombs and missiles would be one of those "greatest achievements by humankind". However, those who make a 'killing' off arms development/construction/distribution are in the highest echelons of power in this country. They are not going to let disarmament happen,...unless, they are the ones hit by one of their own arms. Even then, they'd prolly opt for even greater forms of destructive revenge.

And about 1000 just like him.

I slept through that one while you were taking notes!
This smilie's for me::spank:

:shrug:

its massive twin deficits with paper that's relentlessly losing its value.

Nobody wants the downer to maybe be true. GOD FORBID we actually DO SOMETHING to stop it from happening.

I'll always rec a good doom and gloom thread B-)

As so many others miss.

All they have to do is look back at the 90's: the Republicans were not BORN the "Majority Party" for the next 14 years. They got there because people got COMPLACENT and didn't care about hard decisions.

It's not our job to change or do anything about anything. That's what someone else went to school for. That's why we have all those experts at the organized institutions. Our job is to keep feeding the beast, because if we don't, we die. Not because we'll get eaten(although some would), but like you said, we are the beast. Over the years, decades, centuries, we've given more and more power to centralized authority. Now the corporations that own the food want to control the DNA of food. Now the governments that own the land want to control the populations that live on it.

We did do it to ourselves, and at the same time we can't stop. We've created a world that isn't built for people(or any other form of life). We've built a distant world. We tried to end the realities of existence, the physical limits to existence, and here we are. It's not just the last 7 years, it's not since 1980. This is a process that has the momentum of thousands of years of history behind it. Unfortunately we won't stop that by simply not paying taxes. It would help, but that would just be the start of a long, and more likely than not painful process. On many levels. Then obviously you couldn't force anyone to go down that road, since force is what got us here. You're going to have to let people open that door voluntarily, with no penalty if they don't wish to do so.

It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
H. L. Mencken

I sometimes question whether the United States itself should survive at all, and often wonder how the rest of the world puts up w/ our bullshit.

Now were daring ourselves to try and jump over it.

Eventually, we'll fall in. Only a matter of time.

The only way to truly MOTIVATE humans is to RUB THEIR FACES IN THE SHIT.

Otherwise...they keep Whistling in the Dark as the Titanic sinks.

"Gentlemen it's been an honor playing with you thi....glub glub glub."

Did you know in the first draft of his slideshow, the frog boils to death? He thought it was a little too much of a bummer.

Probably right. Look how this one got tuned out for the "Blackwater/Kiddie Porn" and the "Obama/Clinton cheat" threads.

This has become the National Fucking Inquirer.

most of my doomier posts get lots of reads but few comments or kicks. I think if there was a "DUer most likely to get a visit from the NSA, you and I might be tied for first. That might keep some people away too. Fear works as has been so awesomely demonstrated by the thugs in charge.

And an extra you-know-what or two.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Antiseptic and anesthetic.

None ever has, nor ever will.

American people, by and large, view life and all of it's aspects as a grand football game that's meant to be won or lost. The emphasis is placed the most on how well our offense does, rather than caring about the defense, or even the team's effort as a whole.

America's motto may as well be "There's no 'I' in 'Team', but there sure is a 'ME'!"

They view the Bush admin as "their" football team, no matter how much it f***s up.

That, and they may be brain dead as well.

The concept of being a world power is highly overrated. On the whole, I'd rather not live in one. I'd rather be in Vancouver BC. I like Canada for a number of reasons, among them the fact that they have absolutely no ambitions toward world dominance -- and couldn't pull it off even if they tried. Same for most European social democracies, places like New Zealand or Australia and, in fact, most of the world with the probable exceptions of China, a militarily resurgent Russia and our own sweet land of liberty.

In addition to living the lie of ideals unmet, great powers require insane amounts of money to keep the war machine fed. Money that other countries use for the benefit of their citizens -- health care, education, housing assistance, early retirement with lifetime pensions, transportation infrastructure and so on.

If the US were sincere about the role of government being to promote "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," it would de-fund the Pentagon, stop making billionaires out of the death merchants, and devote that money to programs such as those mentioned above.

But we're trapped by two ideologies that combine to diminish the lives of the citizenry: quasi-religious devotion to unregulated capitalism (except when the corporate welfare queens need a taxpayer-funded bailout), and the military requirements of a great power, which bleeds us all dry and provides nothing but illusory defense in return.

IMO, here are some of the costs we pay as individuals living in a country that has attained military and economic world power status, then using it to advance the brand of vicious unregulated capitalism that requires cheap labor and raw materials and the military power to acquire them, even as it claims some kind of moral relativism that absolves it of blame for its many sins:

- We're living in the world champion of runaway capitalism, where the only thing that's valued in business anymore is the ability to extract more work from fewer people for less pay, all the while cutting or eliminating benefits, busting unions and generally creating a climate where the labor force is too scared and insecure to make much noise.

- Where three out of 10 people around you at any given time are religiously insane and think the earth is about 6,000 years old.

- Where public education is just about extinct, and where there is no money for anything necessary or worthwhile, unless you like new nukes and submarines and aircraft carriers.

- Where the economy runs as a rigged zero-sum game, and where even rare and highly prized skill sets don't guarantee a job with decent pay or security.

- Where environmentalism is seen as subversive, and where intellect is viewed with suspicion.

- Where Constitutional guarantees are now optional, where celebrity worship trumps political awareness, and where the apex of mass culture is the Super Bowl halftime show.

- Where paper pushers make fortunes and caregivers make minimum wage, and where systemic racism and xenophobia create murderous monsters out of otherwise normal people.

- Where wealth is so heavily concentrated in the greedy little fists of the upper two or three percent that they own about three-quarters of everything, and even that's not enough for these rapacious parasites.

- Where the trappings of success go to the most devious or outright criminal, while honest, decent people get the dregs.

- Where a significant percentage of the country's infrastructure of roads, bridges, overpasses and underpasses is structurally compromised and in immediate need of reinforcement, but there's only federal money available if you're in the mass slaughter and genocide business.

- Where the phony war on terror has replaced the phony cold war as the excuse for insane military budgets, and further enrichment of the upper few percent as war budgets and rigged tax structures transfer wealth from the working class to the investor class.

- Where the phony war on terror has become the new social control mechanism, useful for keeping the serfs in line, the mass media compliant (not that that's all that difficult), and rampant violations of the Constitution and international law by BushCo are deemed "necessary" to combat this new threat.

It's all bullshit, but this is particularly dangerous bullshit because the war on terror, by definition, can never end. There's no territory to conquer, no armies to defeat, no state to surrender. Just a bunch of ghosts and multinational religious fanatics.

But we're the last surviving "great power," so it's up to us to take on the threat formerly posed by maybe a thousand or so armed lunatics with a grudge, pretend it's the ultimate face-off between the forces of good and evil, multiply those few thousand lunatics into tens of millions of furious Middle Eastern nationalists who now have every reason to hate the great satan and, after six years of BushCo meddling and killing, actually DO pose a threat.

So you can have the great power syndrome. I'll take Canada, if only Canada would take me.


wp

:thumbsup:

You're welcome in my bunker anytime.

don't get all gushy on me. But the bunker may come in handy once HR 1955/SB 1959 oozes its way through congress and gets the imperial signature. Does it have how water, a microwave, broadband access and a well-stocked liquor cabinet? If not, I'll have to take my chances at Gitmo. :toast:


wp

I keep drinking it and forgetting to stockpile it.

If there's a general breakdown that stuff will be like GOLD until the stills and pot farms get running.

Greenhouse goes up this spring.

"I like Canada for a number of reasons, among them the fact that they have absolutely no ambitions toward world dominance -- and couldn't pull it off even if they tried. Same for most European social democracies, places like New Zealand or Australia and, in fact, most of the world with the probable exceptions of China, a militarily resurgent Russia and our own sweet land of liberty."

If those countries needed to secure their own resources, they would have ambition towards world dominance. They couldn't be countries if they didn't. If the dead empires of Europe were still around, they would not be funding their social programs. They would be out running around the globe with their military. The only reason they don't is because the global empires of Europe went to the inevitable war against each other as they were growing. They all lost, and then the US took over as world police.

Throw in the aging populations of Europe and North America, and you can see that those countries are dying. They're slowly dying because all that tax money has gone to extend lives, those couples have fewer children, and thus the aging populations.

Then you have the developing world, with more and more people. Mass migration could help prop up the system of the industrialized world, but many of those countries have issues with immigration on some level. Then if you take the best and brightest from the developing world, how would the developing world become developed? Would they just end up as a breeding factory for the most advanced nations?

To me it's not as simple as Europe has social programs. Why do they have that instead of an expanding military empire? Did they finally learn from history that war wasn't the answer? Maybe, in a way. They didn't have anything left after the war. Not only did they kill each other off, but the last two empires of the world, the USSR and the USA, killed them off as well. Then took control over how Europe was to be rebuilt. In my mind, if the world wasn't a single market, and European countries, or any countries, had to get their own resources, that they would be doing the same thing as the monomarket military(the US military) does.

I'm still wondering why we haven't already gotten to the point where every country(if they exist) puts in a certain % of their population into an actual global military. We're on our way there anyway, and with the speed of the world these days, I'm just surprised it hasn't happened. We have coalitions and all, but that's not the same.

All that would only happen if we have the cheap enough energy to pull off that type of centralization though. Which brings us back to the resources...

I'm going to be out for a few hours, but I'll respond later this afternoon (PST).


wp

Reading your post, that is what I was thinking.

We have reached the same point in our existence as Rome in its last days. There is massive corruption, the military is almost broken, and it is using mercenary bands (Blackwater) to make up the difference. More money flows out of the empire to shore up distant outposts than flows in to pay for internal needs. Meanwhile, the elites make sure the proles are distracted with cheap foods and entertainment.

This time the barbarians are not invading Germanic tribes, but the international finance speculators. They have allowed the system to rot from within. Now we simply await the inevitable collapse.

as was the case prior to WWI and then came the Lucetania "incident" (another "planned" attack?).

This country should put itself #1 to its citizens first. To hell with all of these other countries. How can the USA be running around bullying other countries when they cannot even care for their own people?

They let them die in the streets is what they do and they do not care. Katrina told the real story of what America is. And as we all know, Katrina is far from over. Get over it they say? No way in hell can the USA "get over it" until they rise up and show to everyone, mostly the people of the USA, that they are deserving of a reputation worth boasting about. At this point, they have nothing worth boasting about to anyone or any other country IMO.

I totally dis-agree with your observation.
The U.S. has only been a country for some 230 years, and have enslaved and murdered more people in our short existence than all of the horrible regimes throughout history.
Turning inward in typical selfishness would be a terrible mistake, we need to get over ourselves and get right with the world we're destroying, just because we think we can.

you've managed to prove our public school education system is no superpower.

Enslaved and murdered more than all the other regimes? Good luck supporting that one.

considering this alleged "global economy" and all of the other stuff that goes with it (like oil) it may not even be a possibility.

On one hand I like the idea a lot, on another hand I can most certainly see your point.

However, I feel we are viewed as being isolated anyway, so what difference would it really make at this point? I believe the USA has the resources it needs to care for itself being there is so much land here. That is the key right there - land.

I rather enjoy thinking about what life today could be like if we had the likes of another TR as president which is admittedly wishful thinking.

Perhaps the America some of us once knew is in fact long dead and gone I fear, the final victim of corporate greed. It is no longer We the People for we don't seem to count anymore.

:dem:

year 1898, when we fought and defeated Imperial Spain and inherited many of its former colonial possessions. Although it is true that the USA held a pro-forma "neutral" stance before the sinking of the Luistania, our merchant marine was busy transporting weapons and ammo to the British Empire in clear contravention of rules governing neutrality long before the Luistania was sunk

There can be no doubt that each and every one of us holds responsibility for allowing this horror to overtake and rule us.

Just as each and every German, even those who opposed him with their bitterly cracked jokes in secret whispers (the pre-Internet version of DU), is responsible for the ravages of Hitler and the Nazis.

Not at this time and based on the record of the past few decades. There is a malicious influence ping pong game where isolationism is a passive aggressive way to do pretty much the same crap on the world as emploiyng imperial muscle. Sometimes they seem two sides of an actually malignant policy and the selfishness or self-interest of the "nation" is merely a convenient base for those really in power.

If you don't derserve to be a world power then it actually suggests a staggering loss of monetary power and/or military might not a truculent retreat from engagement. Morally or by merit deserving has little to do with it. There are several factors where America's financical might could shrink drastically if the world can shift away from the black hole. It can disarm anytime but that nuclear primacy is not much of a guarantee. Just ask the old Soviet Union stuck with a garage full of world destruction and little influence.

By lack of real production and stifling innovation as baldly necessary as that for climate and energy crises we have lttile physical leadership to offer. Little progress. By accumulating really secondary monetary schemes in replacement of real power and ripping up the floors of our own government reminicent of a nation already in its decline(like Britain) we have put our status into a balloon we think no one dares pop. Inside that balloon is trillions of dollars of black hole debt this "great power" shares a Weapon of Mass debt with Red China, Saudi Arabia and other weaker "pals".

In its ironic nature of turning the "world upside down" the best the US has done recently is blackmail all the "world powers" into this quagmire where there is no such thing as a "great world power" at all. No unity except clinging to each other's failing coattails, no greatness except in foolery. What such a situation deserves I hope we never experience.

Like say Norway, or Denmark, or Switzerland, or New Zealand?

Then we could, conceivably, afford to be decent citizens of the world.

They aren't bloodthirsty nuclear powers that grudgingly decided owning slaves was kind of wrong, unlike the U.S.A.

but only if we are heading in a different direction

Despiste this administration, the US has done a lot of good in the world. I think the world, as a whole, would be worse off without the US. Again, this administration aside, we provide a lot of aid to third-world countries, provide relief to countries hit by natural disasters (although we tend to fail miserably in our own back yard). We even provide these things for countries that our current administration has declared enemies. Food relief for North Korea. Aid for Iran after it was struck by a massive earthquake.

Why do you think people talk of 'third-world debt forgiveness' after all the 'aid' given to them?
That even the odd 'grant' is given only in exchange for the recipient accepting some tough economic poison (aka economic restructuring). It is a pernicious, widespread myth that crooked capitalists are somehow eager to 'help' others at the expense of Americans. It is based on nationalistic thinking devoid of the slightest trace of class awareness, history or solidarity.

Without people, the U.S. would do nothing at all.

The dustbin of history.

All empires crumble without exception, and I believe our fate really will be more like the Soviet Union as compared to say the British empire. Hell, with the pound/dollar ration at over 2:1, our number 1 ally (sp?) is already cashing in at the start of our crumble. We were there for them as their empire started to crumble around WWI, but where are our allies now? As our currency is ground to a slightly higher value than dirt, I don't think they'll be around to pick the world's bully up. Even if they were masochistic enough to want to, how the hell CAN they?

Why America's Currency Is the World's Problem
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,520700,00.html

But as bad as things are now with currency woes, real estate bubble bursting, mind-numbing class inequality, fascist policies foreign and domestic, if world oil production truly peaked in 2006, then it is too late to avoid a collapse on the level of the former Soviet Union. I don't think it will happen quickly, although if our government continues to be run by neo-cons it will. But even if we woke up tomorrow with a wet-dream fantasy government run completely by progressives, the best they could do would be to scale back on foreign entanglements and initiate a crash program to re-localize every aspect of our infrastructure. If that happened, we would be a peaceful, self sustaining collection of autonomous states based on Constitutional principles. Barring that fantasy, there will be no peace as each states struggle to sustain itself will be prolonged, painful and filled with conflict. Regardless, by 2020 the United States, if it is still called that, will be a nation in name only. Get to know your neighbors if you want YOUR community to be truly self-sustaining. Or get yourself a well-stocked fallout shelter if you want to prepare for a REALLY bumpy ride.

Its their turn to be hegemon.

to the promise of a technology based future that makes science fiction look blase.

Will the experiment succeed?

I hope so because if we fail no other nation is positioned to replace us.