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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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IMO compost is a good thing. Nice healthy things grow from compost and shitty old things are made usable again.
That's why Europe is starting to reject socialism and free-immigration from North Africa. They composted and are starting to renew, as we should.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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The view from Japan where I live is pretty much the same as Europe.
In addition, the Japanese would cite these factors in the decline of America.
1) No long term thinking at either the individual or national level.
2) Lack of support for education - individual and national level.
3) Social inequality with a huge gap between the rich and the poor, management and factory floor workers.
4) Emphasis on individual wealth instead of group well being.
5) Emphasis on individual rights instead of responsibilities to the group.
6) Failure to take into account the destructive aspects of the drug culture and to control it.
Meanwhile we live in a society over here where children as young as 6 or 7 take the public busses alone after dark and feel safe to do so, where my neighbors go off for the weekend and leave the back door open for better ventilation in the humidity, where 80% of the people feel themselves to be middle class, where service excels at every level, where health care and education are provided and people retire at age 60 with a government pension.
All of this is achieved in an aging society that has experienced a 15 year period of economic stagnation, in part because of the aging society.
The Japanese are also 4th in the world on military spending for their defense only force, give more foreign aid than any other nation, and contribute more to the U.S. bases on their soil than any other nation.
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pc
climber
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Way to turn the cup upside down Bluering.
Please tell me which parts of Europe are rejecting which parts of socialism. I'm curious. I hang a lot in the northern part of Europe and I'll tell you that's not the case. Where do you think those 2 million plus refugees we helped create in Iraq and Afganistan are going? Certainly not the US.
Skoal,
pc
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willie
Trad climber
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Today, I installed new windows in a doublewide. This was paid for by the government with "stimulus" "money". The "homeowners" sat and watched a brand-new, wall-sized teevee all fricken day. OK, they did get up and go to the cuboard for cheesy poofs and pop a couple times.
We're doing just fine, thanks.
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Jeremy Handren
climber
NV
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Jan
"5) Emphasis on individual rights instead of responsibilities to the group.
This would only be correct if by individual rights you mean individual corporate rights. One of the great fallacies of American political discussion is that more corporate regulation = less individual freedom.
You'd think that after the last decade (thirty years really) we'd be figuring out point #1, but Free Market Fundamentalist dogma is so widely believed that if anything its getting worse.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Please tell me which parts of Europe are rejecting which parts of socialism.
England, France, Italy, maybe Holland. Maybe even Germany.
The Euros are starting to realize that post-war peacenik socialism isn't the way. Come to light. Capitalism, baby!!!!!
You people think capitalism is so evil, it's kinda funny. You toy with all your socialist crap and meanwhile you burn. Capitalism can suck, but if regulated properly, it works for everybody. Commie!
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Captain...or Skully
Social climber
bivied above you, maaaan
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Man! You guys sure get riled up, huh?
Whoa.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Skully, It's like doing a 5.9......interesting
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pc
climber
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Well that was articulate.
What's wrong with being a communist/wanting to help my fellow humans? And why must capitalism be removed from socialism? They co-exist quite well.
Me = commie/lilylivered/Canadian educated/VC backed/high tech weenie/wanna be climber/there is no god/proud pappa/American! - part of the stew baby!
If you've had more than 8 fingers please proceed straight to PTPP's Fridrunk thread.
p(sinistra)c
PS Natallia, you're a fairly lame troll. Not that trolls are all bad.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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That's what I'm trying to say, Slim (Fattrad), the Euros have woken up despite Natallie's desperate pleas for socialism.
The Dutch, Danes, and Swiss are already there. The Americaner is not wis us....
F*#king Euros....Amazes me that everyone thinks it's a done deal too!
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Hi Jan
Good to see you chime in on this post, even though you're totally wrong. Japan is bankrupt and about to slide into the ocean. Or beg for American help. Or have a cataclysmic civil war. Or something.
I'm not exactly sure what form the socialist apocalypse will take there, but Fattrad told us that because medical care is available to all Japanese, the country was doomed.
I know you've lived there for quite a long time, but obviously you can't have any insight into what happens there because...
Uh...
Hey, Fattrad, can you explain again why it is that Jan doesn't know what she's talking about?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Those who fail to remember their history are condemned to repeat it
And those who fail to remember (or find) that the quote is Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, by George Santayana, are in yet another category. And Santayana was/is one of the U.S.' most influential political philosophers/historians.
As for the thesis of the original post, the US still has a long way to decline, and the world isn't always predictable. Its relative share of world GDP has been declining since the late 1940s, and George Kennan's seminal article, I believe in Foreign Affairs. At that time, the US produced 50% of world GNP, and Kennan foresaw that in relative terms it was all downhill for the US from there. Which it has been - although real income and wealth have nonetheless risen. And noting that economic hegemony is usually a precondition for any sort of empire. The US empire, somewhat more based on values (or at least lip service to them) and economics than most, was starting to decline even before Bush's insanity.
Whether the public and politicians of the US can put aside cheap rhetoric and trivial values, and focus on essentials and foundations, remains to be seen. They're easily distracted, or bought. The country does need to do some searching self-examination, perhaps starting with its own historical myths and beliefs, how their country is seen by others, where it stands now, and work from there. The US has great strengths, but needs a very healthy dose of realism, common sense and sanity. Or, looking at it another way, far too much policy is nominally founded on beliefs rather than reality.
The current over-reaction to yet another clever 'terrorist' attack is an example of short-termism. Al Qaeda and company clearly have far superior understanding of the importance of symbolism, and how the US system (doesn't) work, than the reverse. It's a situation where the US president needs to say that what (almost) happened was unacceptable, that those responsible will be held as such, that the government will take all reasonable steps to prevent similar things - but that in the real world, it is impossible to avoid all risks. Also, that even if one passenger plane in every million was blown up, the risks of flying by air would still be 10% or less per person/kilometre than driving.
As is always the case with empires, military dominance always declines well after economic, and in the case of the US, cultural influence. Always a problem - the military grasp exceeds the reality.
It will be interesting to see whether the US government and public can acknowledge and adjust to their slowly-diminishing state, bearing in mind that for all its problems of inequality and injustice, the US still leads the world in many ways.
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jstan
climber
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I believe I can answer Dave’s request for help.
There is an underlying dynamic to life in the US which, to my mind, seems to date from Nixon's "Southern Strategy”. Nixon's intent was to assure republican dominance in the US by leveraging southern dissatisfactions extending back to the Civil War. Necessarily that strategy also played off religions as they were practiced in the South.
What is the result as seen today? Over the last forty years politics in the US have become as surely a "belief system" as are the organized religions.
"Socialism"= "satan"
The party is regularly cleansed of the less faithful. There is one truth. Our way or the highway. Contests to see who the “super republicans” are. In a post above we even have willingness to have political war. An American jihad? One can go on at length.
What are the consequences?
First, we no longer have to have reasons for “believing” what we believe.
Jeff is off the hook.
More seriously
Political processes, certainly in modern nation states, involve compromise. Unending compromise. Mind numbing compromise. That is the nature of the beast. Compromise is anathema in modern organized religion and is unacceptable to the party and to the faithful.
You look at the theocracies in the world and you see a plentiful supply of tyrannies and failed states.
I hope my vision is imperfect. But I suspect it is too close to reality for comfort.
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Deemed Useless
Social climber
Ca.
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"The US has been decaying for a long time. The country is soft & flabby. China & India are industrious & ambitious. They want what we have."
Yes, and watch. Their industrious-ness will turn into arms. All nations are the same...at the top levels lie ambition, there can be no room for morality, just strategy.
We at our basest are animals....cheers! ~Bob~
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willie
Trad climber
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You can pry my cheesy-poofs from my cold, dead hands.
Oh, and awesome post rrider!
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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I hope my vision is imperfect. But I suspect it is too close to reality for comfort.
Thanks John. Sad to say, I believe your vision is all too perfect. The only quibble I'd have is that you only take to task one of two equally diseased political parties. As you say, the Republican Party (to my foreign eyes, at least) seems to have substituted theocracy for politics, but has not the Democratic Party substituted pork for politics? And for much the same reason that Nixon (and Karl Rove) pursued their policies? i.e. the perpetuation of power?
What do I know? Well, I travel to Europe and Asia a fair bit for work, and what I see there is pretty much what the author of the article you posted earlier saw. The excitement for the future, and the can-do attitude that characterized the US in the first two-thirds of the last century are now shining brightly on those other two continents, and returning to the US from those places is like stepping backwards in time.
It reminds me of my first visit to England many decades ago, during which I was invited to the home of an old friend of my then wife's family. This friend was an elderly woman who, while wrapped up in a great pile of sweaters and huddled near the few lumps of glowing coal that were providing the only heat in her house in mid-winter, gave us her sympathy for the hardships we must endure living in such a primitive place as Canada.
If some of the Americans (and Canadians) who think their current circumstances are the crown of civilization did a bit of traveling, they might tone down their shouting about third-world Asia and decayed Europe.
D
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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just some THINKING will help "people" see decay & poverty
I wish that were true. Or true for everyone. But sadly, most people can't see beyond the outskirts of their home town unless they actually travel beyond those outskirts.
(Which applies as much to Euros and Asians as it does to Americans.)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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It reminds me of my first visit to England many decades ago, during which I was invited to the home of an old friend of my then wife's family. This friend was an elderly woman who, while wrapped up in a great pile of sweaters and huddled near the few lumps of glowing coal that were providing the only heat in her house in mid-winter, gave us her sympathy for the hardships we must endure living in such a primitive place as Canada.
I laughed and laughed at this quote Ghost ! I too have lived in Britain, huddled around a few lumps of coal listening to the Brits talk about how they're lucky not to live out in the colonies. I have also thought many times in the past few years, that the U.S. was headed down the same path for the same reasons.
Both countries have a great past but you can not progress based on memories of the past and sentimental nostalgia, especially when most of the world has a younger and more energetic population. If a person never traveled beyond the airports of the world, it would be a rude shock to Americans to discover how backward and inconvenient their own are, and how rude the staff at every level - and that's before you actually set foot in the country.
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willie
Trad climber
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GB is going down as we speak. They can't heat themselves.
It's hard to believe that in an era of computer cell phones that could happen.
But it is
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