Posted on 07/15/2017 5:03:35 AM PDT by Kaslin
You don’t wish the worst for people or nations that you care about. You don’t want your friend who’s driving drunk to crash his car. You don’t want your cousin who has unprotected sex with a prostitute to get a STD. You don’t want your kid who’s pointing a realistic- looking toy gun at a police officer to get shot. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
It’s bad when someone you care about plays those stupid games because it can wreck his life and the lives of the people around him. It’s worse when your country is involved because it can hurt all those same people and their children, along with everyone else in the nation.
That’s exactly the situation we’re in here in our country because the truth we all hate to talk about is that America DESERVES to fail.
I don’t want that to happen. After all, this is the greatest country ever on God’s green earth. We have the most incredible military, the most powerful economy and we’ve done so much for the world. Without us, the bad guys would have won WWI, WWII and the Cold War. We’ve been the indispensable nation.
Are we still?
Today, Americans would rather sit out a war, no matter how important, rather than see our soldiers die as they did during WWI. We weren’t able to deal with less than 4,000 deaths in Iraq while we lost more than 13 times that number in WWI. Our industrial production was the decisive factor in the Allied Victory in WWII. Just to give you one example, when the war started, we had 3,000 planes and by the time it was over, we had produced 300,000. Could we do that again? No. Just no. Do we still have the sort of leadership it took to win the Cold War? The jury is still out on that one, but I doubt it. If the Soviet Union was still around today, half our military secrets would be leaked to it through the New York Times while idiots would laud the leakers improving “transparency in government.” Even while Reagan was taking the steps that brought the Soviets down, Hollywood and the Democrat Party were fighting him every step of the way & we’ve gone even further backwards since then.
Along those same lines, Hoover Dam was built in five years. Today, there would be hashing things out with lawyers and environmental rights wackos for that long and it is doubtful that it could be built at all. Remember when we shocked the world by putting a man on the moon in 1969? Well today, we’re no longer capable of going to get the flag we left there. Instead, we’re obsessing over whether men with mental problems who believe they’re women should be treated like real women. There are more educated people than ever before, but fewer people who seem capable of thinking. We’ve gone so far backwards that as the great Thomas Sowell said, “The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.”
So what are our politicians doing about these issues? Our country owes trillions of dollars it never intends to pay off; Social Security and Medicare are both in the red and unsustainable; our borders are unsecured; basket-case enemy nations have acquired nuclear weapons; thanks to Obama race relations are at their worst point since the sixties and more Americans hate each other over their political views than any time since the Civil War. So what’s Congress working on? Well, here’s the hot new topic that Congress seems to really care about…
A number of female House Democrats wore sleeveless clothing on Friday, tweeting in support of "Sleeveless Friday." The action was part of the push to modernize the House dress code. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) said, "It's 2017, and women vote, hold office, + choose their own style. Time to update the House rules to reflect the times!"…Pingree's comments were aimed at Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who said he would work with the sergeant-at-arms to modernize the dress code that includes requiring men to wear a suit and tie in both the Speaker's lobby and House chamber.
This sort of trivia is now the rule, not the exception in politics. As America’s problems have gotten bigger and more intractable, our politicians have created phony problems to solve instead of dealing with real issues. They may not care if North Korea can hit America with a nuclear weapon or whether Social Security will still exist in its current form in a decade, but they can talk your ears off about the women’s dress code, civil war statues and the name of the Washington Redskins. Unfortunately, our Congress is a reflection of our culture which prizes celebrity, outrageous behavior, attention whoring and meaningless expressions of how much people claim to care above all other things. There was a time when being a jerk prone to emotional outbursts of nonsense was looked down upon, but today it means you get a reality show at best and a bigger Twitter following at worst.
There are still a lot of good people in this country, but as a nation, we’ve become complacent, decadent and jaded. We’re the trust fund kid living off the money great, great-grandad left us while the family business we don’t understand fails. What we have in America? It’s rare. Historically, there are not a lot of extremely prosperous, free nations that don’t have to fear invasion because of that powerful military. That means we are squandering an inheritance left to us by previous generations of Americans that we may never have again once it’s lost. We foolishly assume it will be this good forever even though we laugh at and impugn many of the ideas, attitudes and principles that were responsible for our success in the first place. America is not on track for a happy ending and as much as I hate to say it, we’re going to richly deserve the pain, misery and disaster our own actions are going to bring down on our heads one day.
I think we're more like the kid who has blown all great-great-granddad's money, and more, but we're still able to get credit because word hasn't gotten around that we'll never be able to pay.
This country is in serious need of a purging. The only question is who is going to do the purging and who and what will emerge after the conflagration.
Pretty hard to argue against this essay.
Congress has abdicated its job... or rather.. congress has refused to represent the foundations of this country. Instead p, they want to give insurers 70bBillion taxpayer dollars as a bailout. I heard it was a total of 280 Billion in “stabilization funds”. We are entering second decade of presidential rule by edict or writ.. something wholly UN- American.
My civilization doesn’t deserve to fail. Is his the same as mine? Maybe he needs a spine an an attitude adjustment.
“The only question is who is going to do the purging “......
If the liberal “obstructionists” were out of the way, perhaps Pres. Trump could get a good start on draining the swamp that is so badly needed. Problem is even those who are supposed to be on his political side are fighting him tooth and nail which I believe, is because they too are part of the swamp dwellers.
We haven’t had even 65% eligible voter turnout for a national election for 100+ years, yet the state is involved in our lives more than ever.
Freegards
Whatever point this guy was making, he lost me right there. Our leadership - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their neocon "underlings" - did not have a strategy for Iraq. Destroying Sadam's army and hanging him is not a a strategy.
I for one am not willing to licence even one American combat death to naifs, idiots and fools.
Kill a bunch of people and good things will happen is not a strategy.
And by the way, another person who has been saying the same thing is Mattis.
Not just this country but western civilization is in serious decline and probably already too late of a decline for it to be saved.
The Boomer generation had Vietnam, but a lot of them escaped that too. And their children inherited a world without the Soviets, without the "Red Menace" or the "Yellow Peril," without the goose-steppers or the Dust Bowl or the Great Depression. They've been handed a safe, secure, comfortable world and they think it was free.
They haven't seen the bills paid in blood. And they haven't shed any of their own. So where there is no natural adversity, they create it by manufacturing petty grievances like unisex bathrooms and faux racism and environmental obstructionism.
They're rebels in search of a cause and in search of something to give their lives meaning.
Depends on who they are.
Unless Trump destroys the very foundation of the uni-party, it will simply re-appear at some future point. To fully eradicate the threat, the country will have to undergo a type of 'De-Nazification' process. That is why Trump will ultimately be faced with the decision on whether to conduct a military tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials.
If the criminals are not held to account, if all the dirty laundry is not aired, if resolution is not reached, then these threats to peace & security will not only be destroyed, but will re-appear stronger than before. I find it hard to believe that anyone - including Trump - who fully understands the issues at hand can seemingly wave away what has occurred as merely some heated political disagreement.
We need to be clear that this was/is an unlawful use of state power to quash/alter political freedom & choice.
Today, Americans would rather sit out a war, no matter how important, rather than see our soldiers die as they did during WWI. We weren’t able to deal with less than 4,000 deaths in Iraq while we lost more than 13 times that number in WWI. Our industrial production was the decisive factor in the Allied Victory in WWII.
Actually, I suspect most Americans recognize the idiocy of sacrificing even one soldier's life -- let alone 4,000 -- toppling a government in the Middle East and establishing a new one -- in which Islam is enshrined as the official state religion.
And remember that our government does this sort of sh!t while at the same time it allows a massive invasion across our own southern border.
I don't see this as people losing courage or conviction over time. I see this as people wising up to the fact that their own government -- not some monarch or dictator in Europe -- is the biggest threat to their life and liberty that they'll ever face.
Ughhh....RAT-filth. Get the bitch a burka.
Not really. We got Al Qaeda and ISIS that way.
And our so called NATO Allies are even worse off
Because they are incapable of dealing with any real issues. Worst political class ever.
Look at the health care mare's nest. The government created it and now they are incapable of solving the mess they created. I was in the doctor's office on Thursday and of course CNN was on the monitor. Lind-seed Graham was spouting off about health care. I thought 'how does this pipsqueak senator from South Carolina have a voice in what I choose for health care and how much I pay?'. Tar and feathers and rails came to mind....
I believe remnants will survive. Otherwise the world is facing a dark ages of 1000 years.
The American people are a victim of the successes of our past citizens. There are no great pandemics. No problems of any note, not poverty or drugs or crime. While it is true these are all “problems” they don’t make the large mass of citizens feel personally threatened so that mass would take collective action; like after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The two biggest potential disasters facing the public are liberals and Muslims; neither of which has triggered a fight or flight response. Even if there was something to draw the public together in what could be called One Public Opinion, the talking heads in the Media would be on the other side. “If we destroy the planet killing asteroid, think how badly it would feel!” (Those type people.)
In America the “poor” probably average fifty pounds overweight. The rich donate to the Democrats. The colleges have safe spaces for snowflakes “triggered” by seeing a bad color or hearing a “cisgender” joke.
The closest we have come to survival type thinking is with President Trump. And, literally hundreds of people are so “triggered” by him I fear for his safety.
The world has gone crazy and “we” are doing nothing to bring it back from the brink.
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