OT: America - Forgot how to lead

[Merryprankster]

I have heard people complain that they can't get their stuff cheaper. Also count in those who shop at Wal-mart which is all about getting stuff cheaper even if it means sometimes compromising price for quality and you find yourself with. a lot of people who want cheap. If people didn't want cheaper goods and services then neither India or China would be where they are today.

Sorry. I meant with respect to the Pure Food and Drug Act.

I want to jump in here, but nah. NOt gonna bite into this rotten apple of back patting rancid wank fest of "oh america the beautiful aren't we great but where did we go wrong?"

That's probably best. You'll probably just spew some Noam Chomsky nuthugging America has been a force of evil for a century nonsense.

What actually got me thinking about this is the reason I want Obama to be president. Unlike either McCain, or Hillary, he seems to get that being the superpower doesn't equate to leadership, and it doesn't equate to leading. And yeah, it just SUCKS just SUCKS that some of us would like to see U.S. power used in ways that benefit a lot of people, around the world, doesn't it? We DESPERATELY need an attitude change, more than anything else.

Where we went wrong was quite clear. We got a wrapped up in ourselves and self-congratulatory. Winning the Cold War should have been just the start of something more. I'm not pining for some sort of imaginary golden age or lamenting to a sad sad tune. I want things to get better, and I believe they can. It will take a lot of hard work, and a lot of not listening to negative nancies who like to extole the evils of the United States. That's defeatism at its worse. "Oh, the US just ****s everything up -why bother?"

Merry, your statement of "power is just a tool" is off kilter.

To quote Pauli "That's not right. It's not even wrong." Power is THE tool used to accomplish an end. We're done here.

Oh wait, no we're not.

If anyone thinks power is just a tool, they've never had any significant amount of it.

Like Canada? (That's really not directed in malice. I just couldn't help myself. )

Rogue to answer the "space race" question - don't pick a solution, establish the goal, then start funding parallel paths of development.

[David Jamieson]

Claptrap BS.

quick to the point and not lacking in profundity.

seriously Merry, you have a lot of erroneous stuff in the first post and I think AJM was cutting to the quick as opposed to pulling it apart.

I'll give one short example.

You said:

We funded things like the space program. We helped build and sustain the UN.

yeah so what. You funded a space program. A space program that wouldn't have existed without operation paperclip and the immigration of Nazi V1-V2 scienec teams.
Operation paperclip wiped out the war crimes records of the founders of what is now NASA. This is hardly leadership, but instead is co-opting something for exploitive use.

As for the UN, you are inferring that america played a large role in the founding of it and the sustenance. Right now you have a president who has thoroughly diminished it, ridiculed it and created nothing but bad air about the institution in your country and elsewhere. Also, America has been consistent in being delinquent in paying it's fees with this organization.

I'd rip on your other stuff, but just wanted to point out the tone of it, in my view is rah rah USA and not realistic.

If you cannot approach the problem from a dead real perspective of what really is, then what is the point? You are only perpetuating a lie on which to found more lies.

[rogue]

Sorry. I meant with respect to the Pure Food and Drug Act.

Whoops, my bad. Too much Pepsi Max and Lou Dobbs.

[rogue]

As for the UN, you are inferring that america played a large role in the founding of it and the sustenance. Right now you have a president who has thoroughly diminished it, ridiculed it and created nothing but bad air about the institution in your country and elsewhere. Also, America has been consistent in being delinquent in paying it's fees with this organization.

Please take it, really, you can have it. Hell, we'll throw in all of the hookers from the area and teach you how to let "diplomats" and their families get away with murder in your biggest city.

FWIW, my mother in-law was a translator for the UN and my dad pulled duty at the precinct in the area. The first hand stories I've heard would make you blush.

As of 1 January 2008, the top 10 providers of assessed financial contributions to United Nations peacekeeping operations were: the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, China, Canada, Spain and the Republic of Korea.[8]

Contribution (% of total UN budget)
United States 22.00%
Japan 19.47%
Germany 8.66%
United Kingdom 6.13%
France 6.03%
Italy 4.89%
Canada 2.81%
Spain 2.52%
China 2.05%
Mexico 1.88%
Australia 1.59%
Brazil 1.52%

[David Jamieson]

Please take it, really, you can have it. Hell, we'll throw in all of the hookers from the area and teach you how to let "diplomats" and their families get away with murder in your biggest city.

FWIW, my mother in-law was a translator for the UN and my dad pulled duty at the precinct in the area. The first hand stories I've heard would make you blush.

lol.

you see my point then. While I agree reform is needed and in a constant cycle to maintain any working system, diminished stature rhetoric outbursts, ridicule and harping on peccadillo's of members is hardly the way to go about it.

In a democracy (especially an attempt at a global one), you HAVE to accept that you will not always get your way and that you can't just go ahead and do something because you disagree with what the majority of the voters say, or in this case, the security council. individuals do NOT represent the whole of the UN or what it stands for. humans are fallible, that is clear, and that is one reason why we create these institutions as opposed to letting oligarchies and thinly veiled aristocracies running the show.

as for the stats, if you look at per capitas and gnp with those percentages, you will see that America, even at 22% is just barely paying it's fair share. IE: per capita at 2+% Canada is making the same size payments and has as many boots with blue helmets on, if not more than many of the other countries above it!

Your description of the UN sounds like a paralell to congress or the senate. lol

[rogue]

It's actually worse than both Houses hopped up on viagra in a room full of congressional pages dosed with ruffies.

[Merryprankster]

As for the UN, you are inferring that america played a large role in the founding of it and the sustenance. Right now you have a president who has thoroughly diminished it, ridiculed it and created nothing but bad air about the institution in your country and elsewhere. Also, America has been consistent in being delinquent in paying it's fees with this organization.

Um, yeah, I know. That's part of the problem. I know you're not simple, but let me spell it out: NOT honoring our international obligations is part of not exercising leadership, and this president is arguably one of the biggest ****tards in human history ever to stumble his way into serious power.

Christ David - seriously? That's what you want to come up with on the space program? F-ing unbelievable. You sound like.... people in the neocon administration! Allow me to splain - they dismantled the Iraqi army and tried to forbid those who had been members of the Baath party from holding positions of power. Those are the same people who had all the expertise and capacity to perhaps help make some positive changes. But hey! They were "involved," so clearly they are all bad, evil people!

Here's the bottom line about WWII - the real criminals were put on trial or brought to justice in various other ways. But somewhere, it has to end. Below some level, you stop chasing them down. And you weigh the benefits against the cost and make those decisions. Is it easy? No. But this is the real world, where Kantian-categorical-imperative types of morality and ethical judgments simply don't work.

In real life, things are messy. And part of being human is making judgments in that messiness - some things are bright lines. But the vast majority of the decisions made are not.

As for the tone of my post, if you think that's rah-rah, then you need some comprehension lessons.

But, I do believe the United States can be a powerful force for positive change, and despite your own personal misgivings, there is much on the balance sheet that suggests I am right.

See, that's where you and I differ. You're pretty much the poor man's Noam Chomsky. If there's a problem somewhere, you're pretty certain it's the fault of the United States; AND you seem to be more interested in assigning blame or faulting motive than saying "how can we fix this?"

Nobody is suggesting all motives all the time are pure as crystal, or that there isn't significant NEGATIVE stuff on the balance. I am merely stating a few facts:

1. The US has significant power.
2. We have used that power in the past for positive change.
3. That took leadership.
4. I don't see it right now.
5. We need to start exercising leadership, and not just POWER, if we're going to reclaim the capability and ability to generate more positive change.

That's it.

Now, maybe you think that the real problem is that it's just hubristic in the extreme to exercise power. I would agree that it can be. It certainly was and is the case in Iraq - but I can build a house or break a window with a hammer. It all depends how I use it. Besides which, I'll go ahead and take the Mishnah to heart here: "It may not be yours to finish the task, but neither are you free to abstain from it." Admittedly, that refers to the study of Torah, but I think it's more widely applicable.

Rogue - I fundamentally disagree with you about the UN. The problem is that people expect far too much of it. To reiterate - the UN won't create paradise, but it can help prevent hell on earth. And I don't care that the United States has funded more of the peacekeeping efforts, etc. Our dues are overdue, and we need to pay them, because that's the responsible thing to do.

[David Jamieson]

merry, I don't even know what to say to you? YOu talk in such a glossed over candy coated dreamland way.
the "real criminals" of ww2? Where do you get this stuff? lol

YTOu think every country involved doesn't have some skeleton in their closet?

How about the US ally Stalin and his forced starvation and genocide of some 8 million Ukrainians? WW2 criminals were brought to justice? Guy, there was a smattering of nazis who were put on trial and then executed for the most part and that was that.

Real criminals in the meantime occupied offices of the highest order. You think every american is some altruistic angel or something in that war? you are wrong. You would be wrong about the allies in every instance if you positioned that only they were in the right. It is dirty and it is grey and you are mixing naive bs with facts and little ies and serving up what amounts to a load of obfuscation,

hence my point of if you are not ready to realy deal with what is there then you are setting a foundation for future lies and denial. that's it.

If your idea of leadership is wasting billions on endeavours that essentially don't do near as much as half the investment into public education (nasa and your military industrial complex)

If you think Bush is the only example of Poor leadership in America lately.

then again, I don't know what to say to you except that maybe you dream too much.

you want change, go make it, Go make a difference in your life and in the people around you. If more people did this, you wouldn't wind up with teh Bushes and the war criminals and the ne'er do wells running countries.

There is no eutopia. the "power structure" as it is is antiquated, foolish and will be our demise because we don't subscribe to sharing power equally. Least of all the USA.

[rogue]

Rogue - I fundamentally disagree with you about the UN. The problem is that people expect far too much of it. To reiterate - the UN won't create paradise, but it can help prevent hell on earth. And I don't care that the United States has funded more of the peacekeeping efforts, etc. Our dues are overdue, and we need to pay them, because that's the responsible thing to do.

The UN has done splendid in preventing hell on Earth for DARFOR, Srebrenica and the Congo. We expect much of it because it promises much.

[diego]

AJM!

A thoughtful riposte! Witty, incisive and arch!

Generations of thinkers and comedians bow to your mastery of the english language.

you sure seem wordy lately

as a canadian america scares me, as an outsider I see three americas...the elite whites, the ghettoe descendants of slaves, and the working people in between. All of the institutional corruption goes back to the history of white american gangsterism to be cliche...all the gang violence and full prisons, just the whole **** drug war is blacks natives and mexicans who were created by the whites. then you have the half breeds and the immigrant workers whole just work day to day to pay the mortgage on their condo in the florida keys while they prep for the next trip to disneyland. the elite whites and their cronies have a heavy greed consciousness and the ghettoe heads are head fuct off catharsis from living with the whites...and then bush goes and tells them not to smoke weed and go to the same church the kid's grandma was abused at......

anyway these things created the la riots of 91 and after that america changed abit you got more half breed type middle american multicultural peeps they all grew up on mtv and starbucks, friends seinfeld etc. 911 hit and everyone got onsome we are the world **** for like a whole two months and bush fuciked that up then new orleans happenned and bush hated on black people then the prison torture pic's...i stopped watching the war once they caught saddam


****ing 911 until they caught saddam that joker george tricked me to stare at fox and cnn channel zero type bull****, ****. dude's mad gangster...

yeah america scares me...now you got blacks and browns killing each other in LA, i'm worried about the ghettoes of america.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52KfVvgTAFM

[rogue]

Something I was thinking about while at the Outerbanks this weekend, does the American public want to be a world leader, does the American public want to elect a leader or just hire a manager to keep things running while they go about their business like the owners of the Outerbank beach home I rented?