“:I ask, never mind the carriers what sort of country will we have in 50 years?”
We are on target to be another third world hell hole with fifty languages and an ignorant populace; no industry but clean air. Then we will fall like the Romans did. Perhaps we can reestablish ourselves elsewhere, but we’ll all learn Chinese to do it.
>>>We are on target to be another third world hell hole with fifty languages and an ignorant populace; no industry but clean air. Then we will fall like the Romans did. Perhaps we can reestablish ourselves elsewhere, but we’ll all learn Chinese to do it.<<<
Maybe. Or maybe we’re in the same place as the last years of the Roman Republic, in a culture beset by civil war, elites who had abandoned tradition in exchange for a power and money, and a population who had wholesale exchanged their traditions for the beliefs of the Greeks.
At the end of the chaos while the republic died, the Romans recreated themselves as a dictatorship, in which Augustus did a great job spouting conservative values while remaining emperor, and after a brief bit of trouble with Nero and Caligula, they finally created a system with smooth succession, economic power, civil peace, and a centuries more of rule.
I can easily see this as the path we’re on. At this point, we’re in chaos, and the world is teetering on disaster. I can see a time when the troubles might be so great that the world will beg for the Americans to return to be the great arbiter of their disputes. Likewise, I can also see the United States becoming a military hyperpower after a nuclear attack on an American city. (In this metaphor, the two world wars and the Cold War is like the long war between Rome and Carthage.)
So I am not ready to write the epitaph on the United States. The Romans eventually lasted about 2,000 years (counting the eastern Romans). I’m no prophet, but the emergance of a American fascist-style military power following the decline or destruction of the republic is just as probable as American extinction. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.