DiscoBiscuit
Meat Tornado
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2009
- Messages
- 14,794
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- 8w9
I don't sleep well and never have. But I usually manage ok. The last few days with Israel have seen multiple sleepless nights just following everything.
I remember my childhood in the 90's where everyone said everything would get better, and by and large everything did.
I remember 9/11 and being furious and shocked but it not settling in for me this would affect people I know.
I then remember going to college where a Fraternity Brother of mine ended up in Iraq and sent us a flag from the from the front. And another friend of mine who had been a Marine and taken AK fire in his trauma plate. I remember him not liking parking lots because of IED's, and the reaction he would have if a car ever backfired. He would go scuba diving in underwater caves to relieve the stress. I have an ex girlfriend whose boyfriend before me had died over there.
Even with all of that the world still seemed a wonderful place full of infinite possibility. Since 2008 with every passing year more of that optimism gets sucked out of me.
I hoped against hope that if only this time the right guys won, things would get better. And sometimes they did for a time, but those victories have always been pyrrhic. Just momentary lulls in the pace of everything getting worse. The policies enacted during the good times merely addressing to most obvious of symptoms resulting from the disease at our core while doing little to treat the cause. But the house always wins in the end in Vegas and so too in American politics does the establishment always win in the end. I frequently wish that I didn't love to follow politics and the world like I do. It feels like it has made me a less happy person. But I can no more change the love in my heart for following the process than I could change the love I had for a woman. 20 years of adult life has taught me that.
Which brings me to your "advantage". What I wouldn't give to have that childlike sense of wonder at the possibility that tomorrow would be better than today back. Which is what makes your account of how America has affected your life such a difficult knot to unwind for me. On the one hand I am deeply glad for the positive experience you have had from American and Western influence in your area. I suspect there are millions possibly billions of ones like it even if they might not attribute it to us as you so graciously do (and I'm sure its not only US and the west that contributed as local good decisions probably played a greater role in it). But at the same time its hard to not notice that that uplift you've experienced seems to have increasingly come on the backs of native citizens in the West.
What you see as something that has been done to US via Rus or China or whoever, I feel very strongly as something we have done to ourselves. Now there are portions of blame here and China and the Russians have acted as no angels not made things easier for US. But I think now and have always thought that the only people who could defeat US was us. And I mean that in the "great game" sense of struggles between nations and empires.
In the cold light of dawn that exchange of the quality of American life for international gains is not something I am comfortable making. Now whether one feels like this is something we've done to ourselves or something that's been done to us from outside would greatly color ones views. I wouldn't deem myself able to change your mind on that here. What I can tell you is that looking at the general decline of US politics as a consensus holding or making institution since 2008 and the decline in institutional trust tells me a story that I'm not alone in this country in my sentiments.
It would be right to say that I deeply wish we were still a country unified enough to rise to the current international challenges you articulate here. I really would prefer a strong US led global order. The world has worked better when that's been the case than it ever before.
But what you see possibly as something the US is still imminently capable of, I see as something we no longer have the domestic unity or economic capacity for. We can only print so much money/debt before the appetite for that debt dwindles (as it has esp. internationally) with fears that the US gov't is no longer a sound investment. We will probably be able to keep the ball in the air for a little longer, assuming things don't get worse with more conflicts opening up (which they probably will). I say we have until our funding for Social Security runs out which is expected to to be in 2033 but I expect to be somewhat sooner given the increasing deficits we've been running. When that happens the only issue that matters in American politics will be figuring out a way to fix our budget and get it funded.
In all likelihood we will still try to maintain the global order for as long as possible, unless some group of American politicians manages to wrest control of the whole gov't apparatus from the establishment.
So the good news here for you is, that I'm not saying the US will stop trying maintain global order in the short or possibly even medium term. We'll still try, though that may be a continually losing effort where you live with regards to Russia and China coming in. We're certainly gonna give it a go. Which is one of the reasons I think we will be forced by some sort of crisis to change things up.
My argument is that in a perfect world for the American voter, we forgo some of that to focus on fixing our rapidly crumbling domestic house. And more specifically that that is a reasonable thing for an American voter to want and not racist or xenophobic as some would label it.
