I don't think the RW CARES about defense any more.

I know Republicans have traditionally been seen as being in support of the MIC. (Although they have mostly treated veterans like crap, of course.)

But I think that is changing. I think we are in the end game now. I think the ONLY people the right-wing supports are the super-wealthy. The few billionaires. The Koch brothers.

And their goal is to hollow out the U.S. entirely. Take all the wealth out. And when the U.S. is a failed state, they will go live in Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Dubai, or on floating cities in the sea.

They no longer care about defending the U.S. because they no longer plan on living here. That's why they don't invest in the infrastructure. That's why they are passing trade deals to get rid of all manufacturing here.

They are okay with the radicals bombing the U.S. because they won't be here. They don't care about the rest of us. All they care about is extracting as much wealth as they can, while they live in their glittering homes in Dubai.

They might use us as slaves for awhile. They might pat themselves on the back for paying us only enough to make us starve more slowly...sort of like the work programs during the Irish potato famine....while we toil with all our life force to give more wealth to them.

We might finally rebel at some point. Refuse to keep sending our wealth to Dubai and China. And when that happens, we will get nuked.

That's the future I see for us.

anymore. War stopped being a fun patriotic spectator sport by 2008, and we're now grousing about TSA measures in airports instead of being frightened sheep, so obviously the terra angle isn't working either. So I agree, Republicans follow the pot of gold, and the MIC isn't it anymore.

As soon as defense gets cut, they will ramp to the "dems are soft on defense" bandwagon, same as they did with Clinton. Just watch.

be money for ANYTHING in the U.S. We will become a completely failed nation with no infrastructure, no defense, no schools, just nothing. A vacuum. Maybe there will be warlords like Somalia, only maybe each warlord will have their own plane with nukes to make the civil war chaos a little more fun for us all.

Let me get this straight. The future is a mass exodus of the moneyed right to Brazil, China, India, Dubai, and floating cities. During this migration period, there will be a reintroduction of slavery followed by nuclear strike on the US.

If you say so . . .

future do you see playing out in our nation?

Truly, I am hoping I am wrong. I hope for better. But I'm feeling very pessimistic and depressed today.

what I see in China with FOXCONN etc. If there is slave labor anywhere in the world (and there is) then that means it could happen here too. There is nothing special about the U.S. that prevents us from seeing the same conditions seen elsewhere in the world.

Our system and way of life are not sanctioned by God. Of course that's never been just an American thing - the idea of a special purpose and some sort of divine/providential endorsement is a common aspect of national and state identities.

I've always been quite skeptical of the PIC and prison = slavery argument applying to the US. Not that there isn't something there, because there is. But perhaps I've spent too much time studying Stalinism, which was an actual slave system, to view the US as anything like that.

I do think that the drug war will peter out over the next few decades. But I also think that will be an anti-climax for people who think it will have much of an impact on our justice system or even on rates of incarceration. My sense is that our prison problem is far deeper and probably boils down structural problems involving wealth inequality and majority/minority dynamics. Not that that should matter though. The drug war needs to end right now.

Actually, I think the most pressing issue regarding prisons here isn't even rates of incarceration but basic human rights concerns. In many prisons, violent racial gangs run the show with the tacit acceptance of prison staff.

Well, maybe slightly, but in a nice way :)

I really don't know. If I had to take a stab, I'd say more of the same for a while. Continuing deficit problems and hard pushback against revenue-end remedies from the Republicans. Probably we'll reach a point where the cuts get deep enough that there will be enough unhappy people to end the Tea Party's run and discredit 'all cuts, no taxes' for a generation or two. I don't know when that will be . . . probably when all boomers are full-fledged seniors.

I do agree that the right will start to give on defense - perhaps something like Rumsfeld's failed post-9/11 'leaner, meaner' military as the screen for deep cuts there (too bad for him he won't be alive to see it). Molasses-speed drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan will leave only token forces and you might even see closings of bases in places like Germany and Korea. We'll definitely have a smaller conventional footprint around the world. The further we get from 9/11 (barring another major attack), the less stomach there will be for military spending related to the 'war on terror' as well. Probably this process will result in much greater regional hegemony for growing powers like China.

Perhaps the way to think of it isn't in terms of an endgame at all. The future for our nation is certainly finite, but that point is probably many hundreds of years away. There's a lot of history to be made in the meantime.

But hey, my guesses are as good as yours.

we can recover a bit of the fighting spirit at some point in our population. :)

of probability, in order to survive. They can't do that if they don't think about stuff like this.

But the possibilities for the future are infinite. Nobody has the time to laboriously ponder every single one. My point was (and I respect the poster) that some of the things described sound a bit too far fetched to be worth pondering.

The rationale is that the triggers are "toxic" enough that it will force Congress's hand and force them to accept the Super Catfood Commission's findings. But in reality, the GOP will have no interest in voting for findings that include revenue increases . They got what they wanted out of the trigger. Spending cuts. If you truly wanted to make the triggers toxic, you would have put revenue increases as part of the triggers. It's a #lousydeal.

Just like many left wingers. Honestly, i agree with them. Enough is enough. And it isnt defense, what we are doing. It is offense, and building nations over there while allowing ours to crumble here. No thanks.