The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot

Politics International Politics
41

I’m not sure I understand the premise of these books y’all mention.

Which Americans have had their constitutional rights invalidated? How? When?

How is the US becoming a more fascist state than the EU which is choosing to ignore the popular in Ireland vote against the Lisbon Treaty? How is the US a more fascist state than Japan, that will hold criminal suspects in solitary confinement for up to 32 days? Did the US start shooting journalists like the Russians or use radioactive material to poison an out-of-country dissident? Have Democrats been abused, their wifes raped and their homes burned like Zimbabwe? Have we had mass attacks on foreigners like in South Africa? Has our murder rate increased 300% like Venezuela? Is the US running human rights tribunals that trample over the right to free speech like Canada? Does the US punish people who wear a cross or star of david or carry a bible in public like Saudi Arabia.

I know it’s big and rich and diverse. I know it’s the most powerful nation on Earth. I know that to live and work there is a dream for billions of people.

Maybe, I just don’t get it. Maybe, it’s just a mean dangerous country. I just don’t see it though.

Cheers,
Okami

42

You know… you could go back and read the New York Times editorial page from 1864, 1916, or whenever, and you’d get the same garbage that you get from these people who suddenly see the end of the great American experiment. History is full of doomsayers who read the tea leaves and tell the downtrodden to head for the hills.

Writers started comparing the U.S. to the Roman Empire decades ago, and now it’s not the Romans but ‘the 20th century’s worst dictatorships.’ Gee-zus… would you wimps pick just one of history’s house of cards and be done with it?

43

:bravo: :bravo:

Credit management does not mean getting a new credit card and rolling over the balance on the last 10 cards at 18 to 28% forever and ever amen.

44

Naomi Klien wrote a ‘state of the doctorine’ article in the Nation.
Disaster Capitalism: State of Extortion

She doesn’t think oil will go down again. With all the oil we get from Canada it’s still going up. Iraq will double their output in a few years (if it’s okay by Sadr), then we will see how much it costs.

45

[quote=“Jack Burton”][quote=“skeptic yank”]5% of the world’s population.
25% of the world’s prisoners.
50% of the world’s military spending.[/quote]

How much of world’s wealth?

How much of world’s energy consumption?[/quote]

How many of the world’s medical breakthroughs or technological advancements?

How many of the world’s great musicians and writers?

I hate these glib, two-dimensional criticisms of America. The place and people often embody both the worst and the best of humanity (and sometimes in the same person, event or day), yet more often than not, any discussion of America is reduced to a caricature of a nation at best. It’s at least as complex as anywhere else on the planet, and as mentioned, despite its many deep flaws, it’s hardly as bad as most nations on the planet.

46

[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”][quote=“Jack Burton”][quote=“skeptic yank”]5% of the world’s population.
25% of the world’s prisoners.
50% of the world’s military spending.[/quote]

How much of world’s wealth?

How much of world’s energy consumption?[/quote]

How many of the world’s medical breakthroughs or technological advancements?

How many of the world’s great musicians and writers?

I hate these glib, two-dimensional criticisms of America. The place and people often embody both the worst and the best of humanity (and sometimes in the same person, event or day), yet more often than not, any discussion of America is reduced to a caricature of a nation at best. It’s at least as complex as anywhere else on the planet, and as mentioned, despite its many deep flaws, it’s hardly as bad as most nations on the planet.[/quote]

Heightened criticism of the United States stems from the fact that it’s appointed itself the world’s policeman. Implying that it’s unfair to hold the U.S. to higher standards than other nations ignores this salient fact. On any scale I’ve seen in recent years though we seem to be doing abysmally. This one, for example (page 3)in which we’re one rung above North Korea in a poll of twenty-three countries rating whether our influence in the world is generally positive or negative.

47

spook: Why not heightened criticism for a whole lot of other countries for their gross hypocrisy?

How about Australia (my country) for locking people up in the desert?

How about the Netherlands that is apparently so tolerant now that it won’t even clamp down on its growing homophobia and hate crimes because it might upset someone’s culture to do so?

Actually, how about the gross hypocrisy of the developed world in criticising the U.S. for playing the part of the world policeman when we’re happy to profit from that at every turn – the last I looked, my comfortable lifestyle was precisely because of this. Everyone loves to have their cake and eat it too, including a good number of countries that have been saved militarily by this world policeman, or backed against bigger aggressors. When we all start pulling our own weight militarily or doing our own dirty work economically, THEN I will think the U.S. is fair game for this criticism. It’s a bloody cheek for Europeans in particular to not only not back the U.S. in its silly wars, but to criticise it for them, when the U.S. was all that stood between them and the Red Army for four decades. Europeans were able to build up their decadence, tolerance and touchy feely societies and conveniently forget that they were able to do so precisely because someone else played world policeman when they should have, at least in their own back yard. I notice Europeans were so morally concerned and involved in the 1990s in Yugoslavia. Oh sorry, that took the world policeman to sort out yet another European mess…

A lot of people in the developed world are like that really annoying guy everyone knows who will always have a ton of advice for how to do a particular task, yet will never actually do it himself because that would involved putting himself on the line. Instead, he can enjoy the successes of others whilst taking a “told you so” approach to the failures of others. All these clowns like Klein secretly or openly want the demise of U.S. hegemony, but I wonder if they’d be able to enjoy their chardonnay socialism if it weren’t backed by U.S. guns.

48

[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]spook: Why not heightened criticism for a whole lot of other countries for their gross hypocrisy?

How about Australia (my country) for locking people up in the desert?

How about the Netherlands that is apparently so tolerant now that it won’t even clamp down on its growing homophobia and hate crimes because it might upset someone’s culture to do so?

Actually, how about the gross hypocrisy of the developed world in criticising the U.S. for playing the part of the world policeman when we’re happy to profit from that at every turn – the last I looked, my comfortable lifestyle was precisely because of this. Everyone loves to have their cake and eat it too, including a good number of countries that have been saved militarily by this world policeman, or backed against bigger aggressors. When we all start pulling our own weight militarily or doing our own dirty work economically, THEN I will think the U.S. is fair game for this criticism. It’s a bloody cheek for Europeans in particular to not only not back the U.S. in its silly wars, but to criticise it for them, when the U.S. was all that stood between them and the Red Army for four decades. Europeans were able to build up their decadence, tolerance and touchy feely societies and conveniently forget that they were able to do so precisely because someone else played world policeman when they should have, at least in their own back yard. I notice Europeans were so morally concerned and involved in the 1990s in Yugoslavia. Oh sorry, that took the world policeman to sort out yet another European mess…

A lot of people in the developed world are like that really annoying guy everyone knows who will always have a ton of advice for how to do a particular task, yet will never actually do it himself because that would involved putting himself on the line. Instead, he can enjoy the successes of others whilst taking a “told you so” approach to the failures of others. All these clowns like Klein secretly or openly want the demise of U.S. hegemony, but I wonder if they’d be able to enjoy their chardonnay socialism if it weren’t backed by U.S. guns.[/quote]

If you want to start other threads about what countries do things for the benefit of corporate interests or what countries are disintegrating due to PC bullshit, them by all means start threads.

This thread is about the US.

If the US didn’t do things that involved making the military industrial complex, oil companies and bankers rich then I would think your post had some merit.

World policeman if there are some profits to be made.

Why hasn’t the US invaded Zimbabwe or Burma?
I would support an invasion of both of these countries.

49

cake: My point was about the utter hypocrisy involved in criticising the U.S. for doing everyone else’s dirty work by people who benefit very nicely from the current state of affairs. I merely mentioned other nations in passing to point out that most places don’t have their acts together either, yet still point fingers.

I used to whine incessantly about the U.S. until I realised one day that my entire comfortable lifestyle is predicated upon this very state of affairs. Unless we’re really prepared to put up, then we need to shut up. It’s like people who complain about sweatshops but still wear Nike, only on a bigger scale. Seriously, everyone cries crocodile tears for this group or that group that’s treated unjustly by the U.S., but we still all want our cheap oil/coffee/bananas/clothes/whatever. In other words, if we’re honest for just a second, we don’t really give a toss about these people except for the time it takes to write an internet post scoring cheap political points off those on the so-called right.

I’m sure every point you want to make about the U.S. is correct, and I’m sure I could add to the list, but I’m a happy beneficiary of all that. Unless and until people are actively ready to support a moral alternative to U.S. hegemony (ie. not China, Russia or any other even more despotic regime), then it’s all a lot of hot air. It’s all been said before and it’s really, really boring to hear it from us, who are collectively, a bunch of spoilt brats by world standards.

Maybe I’ve got it all wrong though and you live out in the forest, grow your own food and haven’t visited a shopping mall in however many years.

50

'Aint that the truth.

51

[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]cake: My point was about the utter hypocrisy involved in criticising the U.S. for doing everyone else’s dirty work by people who benefit very nicely from the current state of affairs. I merely mentioned other nations in passing to point out that most places don’t have their acts together either, yet still point fingers.

I used to whine incessantly about the U.S. until I realised one day that my entire comfortable lifestyle is predicated upon this very state of affairs. Unless we’re really prepared to put up, then we need to shut up. It’s like people who complain about sweatshops but still wear Nike, only on a bigger scale. Seriously, everyone cries crocodile tears for this group or that group that’s treated unjustly by the U.S., but we still all want our cheap oil/coffee/bananas/clothes/whatever. In other words, if we’re honest for just a second, we don’t really give a toss about these people except for the time it takes to write an internet post scoring cheap political points off those on the so-called right.

I’m sure every point you want to make about the U.S. is correct, and I’m sure I could add to the list, but I’m a happy beneficiary of all that. Unless and until people are actively ready to support a moral alternative to U.S. hegemony (ie. not China, Russia or any other even more despotic regime), then it’s all a lot of hot air. It’s all been said before and it’s really, really boring to hear it from us, who are collectively, a bunch of spoilt brats by world standards.

Maybe I’ve got it all wrong though and you live out in the forest, grow your own food and haven’t visited a shopping mall in however many years.[/quote]

The problem with that narrative is the U.S. before 9/11/2001 isn’t the same as the U.S. after 9/11/2001. Before 9/11/2001 we didn’t invade and occupy other countries because we felt like it or God told us to. We didn’t run gulag-style prison camps. We didn’t torture people and we didn’t spy with impunity on our own population. We respected and observed The Geneva Conventions and by and large didn’t think of ourselves as completely above the law. We tried and convicted people before we imprisoned them for life and we had at least a tenuous grasp on reality at all times – such as being able to tell the difference between the occupations of Japan and Germany versus the occupation of Iraq.

Now life in the U.S. is what life on the Pequod was like after Captain Ahab lost his leg to Moby Dick and became obsessed with revenge to the point of losing his hold on reality. We can only hope that we – and all those who rely on our former steadiness in the world – don’t suffer the same fate as the Pequod and its crew.

52

Maybe we were just better at keeping secrets back then.

53

Nobody’s perfect. At least back then we had enough sense of shame to keep some of the things we did secret. The fundamental differences between then and now abound though. Back then, for example, we clearly knew why we were fighting wars. Now, it’s anyone’s guess because we, the people, are no longer part of that process.

Before, you had Audie Murphy and Alvin York. Now, you’ve got Pat Tillman. I could go on and on about the differences.

54

I finally got to read this book, The End of America. It’s about 160 pages in the paperback if you don’t count the footnotes. It’s full of examples of how other dictatorships got started. How the leaders were elected and then slowly and almost imperceptably started to grab more and more control and power. Lot’s of examples from Germany and Italy as well as Chile, Russia, and other countries. I noticed there’s not much mention of China although there is a lot to work with there I’m sure. A little frightening. The elections is close in and if we survive and the process is fair, (and the book enlarges that ‘if’) I’ll be breathing a sigh of relief.

55

Now they have a movie. I hope after the election tomorrow it will have lost some sense of urgency. As long as Bush’s First Brigade doesn’t make an appearance.