Outliving the US: the comments

[nancylebov]

The other day, I asked whether people expected to outlive the US, and got some very interesting replies.

The most noticeable similarity was that no one expected anything good to come of an end to the US, which probably supports the idea that the US is very stable.

tahkhleet posted a substantial core dump about politics and the state of the culture. I'm feeling rather swamped. This is unfair. Overloading people is *my* job.

Still, I'm going to pick out some bits. However, I recommend reading the whole thing.

Is Obama genuinely that awful? I'm disappointed that he isn't prosecuting those responsible for torture (and NPR did a bit about how he used the word torture before he was elected, but has dropped it since then). Is he letting *everything* important slide?

I'd have thought he's at least smart enough to take a lesson from what Katrina did to Bush's reputation.

Two "do my homework" questions:

Are his foreign policy advisors really all hawks?

How did he handle things when he was a community organizer? Did he get useful work done?
Slightly different angle about the financial elite: One of my friends believes that credentialism is part of the problem. The most likely way to get one of those very well-paid jobs is to be totally focused on the exhausting work of getting the right degrees. Aside from tahkhleet's point that only someone who's got bad values will be willing to do the work, getting the credentials means being totally focused on incentives rather than paying attention to the larger system.

Back to my pov: Having a system which makes room for competence is a very subtle problem. If people are totally shielded from consequences, whoever is good at social climbing will get the rewards, and the quality of work goes to hell. If there is too much effort to make sure the right thing is done, people game the measurement system, and the work goes to heck.

Genocide: I've been wondering for a while whether I'll see a nation commit auto-genocide (over 75% of population killed). It just seems as though people go nuts that way occasionally, and people are much more dependent on infrastructure than they used to be. Still, I don't know that the elites are dreaming of wiping a lot of the rest of us out, though worries about overpopulation can be read that way.

For purposes of this discussion, it isn't necessary that the elites would actually benefit from genocide, just whether enough of them strongly believe they would.

Comments

(looks wry (part 2))

[tahkhleet.livejournal.com]

On military affairs: he's on auto pilot. People trumpet "oh, he's pulling the troops out". He has no choice. Even BUSH would have had no choice. The Iraqis have served notice that the troops cannot stay. And where is he sending the troops? Afghanistan. Into a re-enactment of Vietnam because we dare not consistently pursue the Taliban into Pakistan. The fact there have been strikes there are pushing Pakistan to the brink of civil war. He's nothing special for foreign policy compared to Bush. He talks big about we're all friends now and everyone's so happy to see him. But he's not DOING anything basically different. Plus, bet you when the Iraqi civil war flares up again, he'll find a pretext to put the American troops BACK in Iraq.

Remember : He's already said he's in favor of a war on Iran "to protect Israel". Israel's existence is already threatened by Iran's massive biological warfare program. There is no qualitatively new threat in their nuclear program. So this is another fool's errand. An Israeli attack on Iran will SPIKE world oil prices at least $150.00 a barrel, perhaps more if Iranian vandalism of the shipping lines in the gulf succeed even somewhat as well as they claim. We'll forget the political fallout: this consequence alone should have him saying "I'm revoking the blank check Bush wrote for your policy". So how is he an improvement here?

Cowardly in the face of Republican opposition: you mean the way he hemmed and hawed about the budget begging the Republicans to play nice and then finally he gave up and just bribed a few of them, costing billions in pork? Oh and remember what Brad Hicks noted: if you say "this bill must pass" that's code for "send me your bribe price now". He's either a noob or he doesn't care about being efficient with the government's resources. He's so "bold" about Republican opposition he refuses to prosectue WAR CRIMES. He's so "brave" in standing up to their financial lobby that the most he could make himself do was repeal Bush' tax cuts. Yah, quite a deal we have here a real wonderpup.