KS and Arraya I kind of fall into the middle of the argument. Personally I am super critical of our country and very pessimistic. Yet I do feel our country possesses a quality not found in other nations around the world.
Arraya even yourself and partypup are guilty of optimistic thinking. You guys do a fantastic job putting up post after post filled with links and hard data about how f-cked we are and how broke we are and how the country will crash and burn.
Then in the same breathe you guys seem to imply that after we are gone as world leaders there will be this nebulus collection of countries that will lead the world and provide the aide we have given and act in this humanitarian manner. Suddenly there are no more hard data links from you guys on who will take the reins. There is just this, we will all be better off for the new era we are in but there is nothing concrete about it.
How do you know we will all be better off. Personally I think we all may be very worse off, so don’t you think you guys are kind of “optimistically thinking”.
China which at least to me will clearly be the economic leader of the next era has pretty horrible human rights, and can pretty much control north korea if they want. Last I checked the population in North Korea wasn’t living under the greatest conditions. How much foreign aid does India or Brazil give to starving kids in Africa?
I mean really… yes our country is f-cked and greed has brought it down to a level that it simply may not EVER be what it was. For all of our imperialism, unjust wars, greed for oil, all the stuff you point out over and over and over again, I still maintain that the world will NOT be better without us at the helm. There are some good qualities about us that have been painted over by that greed and it is sad and maybe someday it will come back. I don’t know man…
Anyways none of you guys have bothered to try to answer my question about who will take the helm except for you Arraya, but the answer “they have been having secret meetings for years” doesnt really wash with me.
The way I see a rising tide floats all boats, but the tide going out will sink most of the ships except the sturdiest ones. So to me as the world continues to deteriorate life will not only get WORSE for the have nots and the middle class, but the disparity between the few and the many will GROW not shrink. Yes it has grown in our prosperous era but I think that it will even grow faster with a different nation or your collective nations idea. I would consider that to be WAY overly optimistic on your part. In my opinion nations like China and others will go, “why us? why anyone?, as long as we are leading why do we have to do anything?”
My hope is for us to somehow navigate out of this mess but I don’t see it with the choice our govt has made in the past. As our spending increases admittedly I think things are pretty bleak.