USA Rapidly Becoming a Pariah State

TragicMonkey said:
...is there a connection between those two things? Are whales summoned by the eating of pancakes? I've eaten pancakes and can't recall observing any whale activity, but they weren't macadamia nut pancakes.
Click to expand...
Well you've discovered the key, haven't you?
 
I ate too many pancakes tonight (the particular style is unimportant), and now my tummy hurts.

Also, I tried to watch Trump's state of the nation tirade/ramble (I don't know how he managed to combine those two disparate things into one whole, but he somehow did), and now my brain hurts too. Additionally also and as well, my feet hurt.

This last one is unrelated to the others, as far as I know.
 
Resume said:
Just a few weeks ago I was enjoying macadamia nut pancakes while watching whales breaching. Now I'm dealing with Donnie Diapers creating not only a pariah state, but perhaps a failed state.
Click to expand...
I think, for us erstwhile allies, this is what we are seeing, not so much pariah. It's a good friend deciding that their ketamine habit can be fixed by starting up a heroin habit to counter it. And not listening to advice that trying to steal neighbourhood TVs is the definitely not best way to pay for both.
 
What I found astonishing in Trump's state of the nation speech was his open threat to take over Greenland and the Panama canal. Taking over Canada and Gaza remains on the cards. If any other leader was openly threatening territorial expansion sanctIons would be threatened, there would be a coalition of the willing to oppose any military action. If I were the Chinese leadership I would think the next three years are likely the best opportunity to 'recover' Taiwan.
 
Resume said:
Just a few weeks ago I was enjoying macadamia nut pancakes while watching whales breaching. Now I'm dealing with Donnie Diapers creating not only a pariah state, but perhaps a failed state.
Click to expand...
We are a failed state. It always happens when the middle class collapses. Only corporations and workers left.
 
Norman Alexander said:
I think, for us erstwhile allies, this is what we are seeing, not so much pariah. It's a good friend deciding that their ketamine habit can be fixed by starting up a heroin habit to counter it. And not listening to advice that trying to steal neighbourhood TVs is the definitely not best way to pay for both.
Click to expand...
The USA is ending with not so much a whimper as screeching cries of USA! and MAGA! There will be no Alex Garland style civil war, just the collapse of the government institutions that make the USA work and the disappearance of things citizens of the USA thought were theirs by right.
 
I think about the only thing that could stop what's happening is a general strike but too many people live paycheck to paycheck and can't do that or are too complacent and distracted by constant novelty and noise.

So for the next few decades we get to look forward to climate change and all the drought, famine, and disasters that come with it. Food and water shortages will result in increased conflict and wars. Microplastics are already in everything on the planet including our brains and at least in the US we'll see more pollution of all kinds as regulations continue to be removed. The economy will suffer another great depression and we'll have increasing fascism with all the formerly independent media and government agencies replaced with propaganda and loyalists.

I don't really see anything but an ever worsening state of the world for the rest of my life.
 
The_Animus said:
I think about the only thing that could stop what's happening is a general strike but too many people live paycheck to paycheck and can't do that or are too complacent and distracted by constant novelty and noise.

So for the next few decades we get to look forward to climate change and all the drought, famine, and disasters that come with it. Food and water shortages will result in increased conflict and wars. Microplastics are already in everything on the planet including our brains and at least in the US we'll see more pollution of all kinds as regulations continue to be removed. The economy will suffer another great depression and we'll have increasing fascism with all the formerly independent media and government agencies replaced with propaganda and loyalists.

I don't really see anything but an ever worsening state of the world for the rest of my life.
Click to expand...
The only wishful thinking scenario, highly untenable, is that Europe gets its ◊◊◊◊ together, and that everyone around the world who were trading with the US make an effort to now trade with each other. If, hope against hope, Europe finds the will to stave off Putin and reverse most of what he's gained in the Donbas, I think the continent will find new confidence in itself and perhaps gamely lead the world, a world dead tired of them, too, but so fearful of Trump et al that it goes along. Time was a rising India was my great non-White hope, but that seems to have been wishful thinking as well.

But "Goebbels" now has not only radio, but micro-targeted personal intelligence backed by AI. Mobile phones are so enticing that the young and old walk into lampposts, locked in. Bread and circus, and each so weak that going along seems the only choice.

Please, Trump, disgust everyone more, more, and much, much, more, until no one can avoid rebelling.

Small States vs the Three Big Powers, place your bets.:cautious:
 
Hlafordlaes said:
Small States vs the Three Big Powers, place your bets.:cautious:
Click to expand...
I never, ever thought I'd say this, but thank god Britain and France have nukes. There's people here in Norway seriously discussing if we should get our own nuclear ICBMs. Or that France and Britain should place nukes in every European NATO country as a deterrent.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
I never, ever thought I'd say this, but thank god Britain and France have nukes. There's people here in Norway seriously discussing if we should get our own nuclear ICBMs. Or that France and Britain should place nukes in every European NATO country as a deterrent.
Click to expand...
I think I've mentioned that nuclear proliferation is one likely outcome. Remember when the Berlin Wall fell, the heady days of believing in peace? That was when the US went full rogue, expanded into the power vacuum and started openly engaging in wars of choice, not of defense.* Then, for all to see, it openly blessed torture and extrajudicial remandering, in short, it brazenly stepped outside the law.

Of all mistakes, NATO going into Iraq and Afghanistan will be the ones we all most rue. Had it been a lone US, the sense that the world order has ended would be much less, our appraisal more aware for longer. NATO going outside Europe, seeming a self-authorizing world peace keeper, is Putin's one legitimate complaint, and the whole world lived through it as witness. I am afraid the heroes of the next war, whoever the winners, will write over our words with their own.

Normalized torture normalized the coliseum crowd, the hungry spectator wishing to see the empire's enemies paraded, humiliated, and brutally killed. It dehumanized the enemy, all enemies by extension. All the crowd needed then was someone to offer the best games, the best show, the finest rush of blood lust: Trump.
---
*Going after bin Laden never had to be part of a war of invasion, and as it turned out, required only a special operation.
 
Hlafordlaes said:
I think I've mentioned that nuclear proliferation is one likely outcome. Remember when the Berlin Wall fell, the heady days of believing in peace? That was when the US went full rogue, expanded into the power vacuum and started openly engaging in wars of choice, not of defense.* Then, for all to see, it openly blessed torture and extrajudicial remandering, in short, it brazenly stepped outside the law.

Of all mistakes, NATO going into Iraq and Afghanistan will be the ones we all most rue. Had it been a lone US, the sense that the world order has ended would be much less, our appraisal more aware for longer. NATO going outside Europe, seeming a self-authorizing world peace keeper, is Putin's one legitimate complaint, and the whole world lived through it as witness. I am afraid the heroes of the next war, whoever the winners, will write over our words with their own.

Normalized torture normalized the coliseum crowd, the hungry spectator wishing to see the empire's enemies paraded, humiliated, and brutally killed. It dehumanized the enemy, all enemies by extension. All the crowd needed then was someone to offer the best games, the best show, the finest rush of blood lust: Trump.
---
*Going after bin Laden never had to be part of a war of invasion, and as it turned out, required only a special operation.
Click to expand...
Ironically- the one country pushing for both of those invasions was.....
The US...
(the whole war of lies' thing after 9/11...)
Also the one time NATO has used Article 5 was again after 9/11- by (you guessed it) the US...
 
The_Animus said:
I think about the only thing that could stop what's happening is a general strike but too many people live paycheck to paycheck and can't do that or are too complacent and distracted by constant novelty and noise.

So for the next few decades we get to look forward to climate change and all the drought, famine, and disasters that come with it. Food and water shortages will result in increased conflict and wars. Microplastics are already in everything on the planet including our brains and at least in the US we'll see more pollution of all kinds as regulations continue to be removed. The economy will suffer another great depression and we'll have increasing fascism with all the formerly independent media and government agencies replaced with propaganda and loyalists.

I don't really see anything but an ever worsening state of the world for the rest of my life.
Click to expand...
I agree. I fully think we have past the peak of western civilization and are now on the downward slope. Its not just Trump, he is a symptom of a greater problem.

I can't say when exactly the peak happened. Was it the 1980s, 1990s, early 2000s? Historians can figure that part out. But the post WWII order that has enriched us all in the west is gone and I am convinced the good old days are not coming back.
 
arthwollipot said:
I put it at the Reagan administration's repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which changed journalism from a public service to a for-profit business.
Click to expand...

Thats a good demarcation point for sure. I wonder if this subject deserves its own thread. When was the peak of western civilization?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom