by americandream » Sat 06 Aug 2011, 23:23:38
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he first world nation bit is puzzling I have to admit. Smacks of exceptionalism.
Yes, American exceptionalism. We have been the best colonialists in the world. We sucked the world dry taking a full quarter of it's resources for ourselves even though we only made up 5% of the population. And only a smidgin of that 5% actually got any of it.
We pulled off the biggest concentration of wealth in the world. Capitalists everywhere should be proud.(or envious) Our Pirate ancestors are smiling down on us right now.
Too bad it's over. When the rest of the world takes it all back, and we only get a small percentage of the resources we once considered our own, our people will starve. Well at least the poor ones, the ones that were fooled into thinking Middle Class was a real thing. The ones that aspired to a dream of wealth in a rigged game that they lost just by playing.
If we are only getting 1/5 of what we were and the top 1% gets 90% of that, what's left? Not enough. What fools.
You let them do it. You even voted them into the House in the midterms so they could bend you over.
I reserve my compassion and pity for those that deserve it. You did it to yourselves, now you will watch your children die as a result of it.
Thats where I disagree with you. I don't think that Nixon gave the Chinese, Taiwan's Security Council seat, only to see Deng conveniently appear on the scene to take Mao's place, without there having been some agreement for American capitalists to benefit from the new rapproachment..... access to China's compliant labour force.
Hence, whilst Joe Blow America may well be on the slippery slope to an unexceptional lifestyle, I also happen to believe that Joe Blow worldwide including China is headed that way BUT that the "we" America who set the stage for the contemporary world are doing very well. They left the British Isles to stake a place in the New World, they ascended to the top of that new and idealised republic, they fought a brutal Cold War and; ourtsmarted the communists in China only to make the place the most profitable venture known since the rise of production line manufacturing, and; beat the shit out of the Soviets in '80's USSR, reducing that super nation to a rump of gangster republics.
Quite some achievement and one that suggests to me that they are anything but not at the top. I don't know how far up the diplomatic food chain you were, but I should not be having to tell you this stuff.