(05-30-2016, 07:45 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote:(05-30-2016, 03:41 PM)radind Wrote: I have considered Iran to be a threat for several decades. I don't see how we could ally with Iran without a fundamental change in the leaders of Iran. It would be good to have Iran, India and Russia as real allies, but so far this does not look feasible.An Alliance with Russia is actually quite doable even though at the moment we are seemingly on the brink of war. Let's say if Trump gets elected an negotiates a spheres of influence agreement that gives Russia de-facto control over Ukraine and orthodox eastern Europe and military support against China. Such a pact is quite doable. But this is not what JohnX is predicting. JohnX seems to predict that Russia and India would just get a liberal "velvet revolutions" and then sometime later gets attacked by China (which also attacks the US at the same time) and that Liberal college students students take complete power and turn Iran into a clone of Iraqi Kurdistan. After which all the countries would have stereotypical liberal democracies and would be allied with the US (which would be ruled by the same establishment that runs thing here right now, he assumes Hillary will be elected) to fight and defeat china, after which every country in the world would be a democracy and be directed by boomers into creating a world government. In regards to his Iran prediction John reveals his complete hypocrisy. He wants Iranian 20 and 30 somethings to have control over Iran's government, Military, Economy And foreign policy; but he does not want American 20 and thirty somethings to have any control whatsoever over the US Government, Military, Economy and Foreign policy. In fact he seems to prefer that the boomers ( and he means the current boomer elite, not "anti-mainstream" boomers like trump) to have complete power throughout the entire crisis and into the early 1T and then the boomer elites cede power directly to the cohorts that are currently in high school, middle school and college right now. Thus skipping over generation X and the first 2/3rds of the millennials altogether. This is simply so the boomers could build their world government utopia enshrined by "human-rights" in the aftermath of what he predicts a 4T WW3 in which hopes all western countries would be led by boomers and by conducted like a scaled-up version of the GWOT (fought with nukes and armies of millions instead of drone high-explosives and armies of thousands) in which our war aim is democratizing the entire planet.
1. Balderdash! Donald Trump must be elected. Erratic as he is, he will make Hillary Clinton look like a steady hand. Steady hands, or the perception of such, win against alternatives in America and I see no cause to expect otherwise this year. A Third Term in all but personality and name can be elected. Hillary Clinton has even more preparation for the Presidency than did Barack Obama in 2008.
People are coming to realize what a good President we now have. Clinton 2016 is at least George H W Bush 1988.
2. Sphere of influence? Who would want to be in the sphere of interest of any power being led despotically. I see Donald Trump no less authoritarian than Vladimir Putin. NATO would break up, with most NATO members choosing their own alliance. The difference between governments of the Netherlands and Bulgaria would be on whether Putin or Trump poses the bigger security threat to independence. Decisions to establish spheres of influence imply the loss of independence of countries to be absorbed into such spheres of influence.
3. India is already a democracy. Russia has had some experience with democracy and could have it again. China, in contrast, has practically no experience with democracy; overtures of democracy in China since 1911 have typically been traps set up by the dictatorial leadership to seek out dissidents to be crushed brutally.
4. The Kurdish quasi-state at the least wages war like a democracy. It accepts ethnic and religious difference while honoring the values of the majority. They have been closing in on the Infernal State. But the Kurds are not Arabs, and they are not Iranians.
5. China is not going to be defeated in war. If Japan could not defeat China decisively from 1937 to 1941 despite being on par with the United States in the Pacific Rim, do you think that America, Russia, or Indian can? China is even more powerful now than it was in the mid-20th century. It can do what America did in the early 1940s -- turning a machine of production of consumer goods into the production of military goods.
6. Boomer power as if the Boom generation is a monolithic behemoth in support of its economic elites is a myth. Read the generational books, and you will find that the last set of Idealist leadership establishes the legacy of that generation. The last set of Boomer leadership will not be people who believe that Humanity exists solely to enrich and pamper elites irrespective of the hopes and desires of the rest of Humanity. Imagine Boomers not as selfish, ruthless, and arrogant as the current elite who have more of a focus on culture, principle, and workable beliefs. Those Boomers can have an appeal to X pragmatism and Millennial reason.
7. People in their 30s are typically on the brink of achieving influence in public life, especially as older adults die, retire, or get discredited. There will be plenty of openings for Millennial adults in politics as the Silent and early-wave Boomers die off. Rational as they are, Millennial adults are going to challenge the Tea Party types whose rationality and pragmatism are suspect. But don't forget that the best of a Reactive generation in public office might well be those associated with minorities making advances in economic life. Asian-Americans seem to be following the Jewish pattern of economic and intellectual success. Hispanics are doing far better than some white groups (especially those in the Mountain South) in educational and economic achievement -- completing their education and starting businesses. Middle-class blacks are legitimate peers of middle-class whites in everything but social organization -- and in that difference, middle-class blacks are far -better organized than the white middle class and are more effective at appealing to poor blacks than middle-class whties are in appealing to poor whites. Just consider this: the first non-white President is a black man of Generation X.
8. How stable is the Iranian theocracy? It is corrupt and politically isolated. People are finding ways to evade its power. Even the burka, long figured a tool of suppression of women, has become a canvas of expression. There are designer burkas. People are finding ways to dissent without naming quite the current leadership. The Iranians aren't stupid. They know enough that they can replace "The Shah", "The Great Satan", or "The Zionist Entity" with their current tyranny and make sense of their own reality.
9. The worst Boomers are likely approaching the end of the road in power.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
