Uh, no, just your apparent disregard for facts and statistics (though thanks for your opinion) will come under dispute (attack is so dramatic, quit being such a drama queen please) so I would opine that makes some of us a "Gang of Informed's" instead.We are merely being propped up by 1 trillion a year in QE2, 600 billion a year in deficit spending, and accumulated capital from great companies and inventions, all of which were formerly run by white men.Apparently you haven't read a whole lot of US history and you didn't note the steep decline of voilent crime all over the nation beginning in the 1990's? But of course you didn't if you see any of the lamestream news (especially local) that tends to just show inflammatory and sickening violence for ratings.
Didn't you hear about Prohibition and all the organized crime (speaking of drugs and gangs) if fostered or how about the killings of slaves and blacks in the South before 1865 or for 100 years after under Jim Crow, speaking of racism. Then there is the genocide against Native Americans (technically it may not classify as genocide for a couple of reasons, but pretty damn close) not to mention the incarceration of the Japanese and laws against Chinese immigration, plus the violence of the West for most of the 19th century. America has always been a violent and degenerate country in many ways which makes its contradictions all the more ironic and interesting. If anything, we actually may be better than we ever were (except if you take Andy Griffith and My Three Sons as documentaries) in terms of degenerate violence and racism. Very few of us were even alive when this nation was the "once great nations" that JL is eulogizing so who really gets to define how "great" our nation was? The old white men who wrote the history books of the time or women, jews (JL - that one was for you. Ask some older Jews how great this nation was to them since many had to change their names and even discard their religion and culture to fit in) blacks, Native Americans, gays? Do any of them count?
If you are talking about decline in the international sense, then I would submit that because other nations have grown up and gotten stronger does not make it a decline for us. If you were the older brother in a large family with boys, just because you could always beat your younger siblings up until they grew up and became men does not mean that you have declined. Besides, just being the strongest industrial and military power (which we actually were for a very very short period of time) does not necessarily make us the greatest nation, so conversely, not being that industrial/military behemoth does not diminish us IMHO, but actually may make us a better nation overall. That is just my opinion so take it or leave it, but I think there are some salient points I made against your thesis.Originally Posted by austxjr
Without us in charge, you will eventually crash and burn. Then you will be begging your Chinese masters not to slay you.
