America is a sick society

[Classic-Xer]

(10-05-2018, 01:20 AM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(10-04-2018, 11:18 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Author Robert Kaplan answers questions from readers

My thoughts: The parochial, provincial, insular character of red America was revealed to Robert Kaplan on his tour of America, as reported in a PBS Newshour interview. It makes clear to me again how the red-state Trump voters have created their own suffering. It's the very anti-globalist, narrow-minded, pro-free market, anti-socialist, anti-diversity policies they have voted for for decades that keep them in decline, while the coasts and the university towns that are connected to the world thrive. And yet they keep voting to keep themselves in pain and in decline. In voting for Trump, the towns in the heartland have voted to make themselves even MORE cut off from the world, through erecting immigration and tariff barriers and empowering an American administration that encourages the rejection of knowledge and the understanding of other peoples. It is just the opposite course Kaplan says they need to take in order to recover. Can they wake up? Or must they be dragged into a better future through political victory OVER them?




g divide?

Robert Kaplan:

It was stunning, what I saw.

Outside of the two coasts, outside of the university towns and college towns, and outside of a few, a smattering of state capitals, which are doing very well, much of America are towns of 20,000, 30,000 people with shelled-out storefronts, nobody on the Main Street, people having lost all hope.

This book was written and researched before the last election, before the campaign even began for the last election. And I saw a heartland which was economically and socially devastated.

Jeffrey Brown:

And how does that play into what then followed in the election?

Robert Kaplan:

And then all I could think about is, how to bridge the divide is, we can't go backward, we can only go forward, because the only future is global.

You have to get more of these places hooked into the global economy. Like, I'm traveling along the Ohio River, and I see one devastated town after another. But then I get to Marietta, Ohio, which is a tiny college, but it has students from dozens of countries. It's very highly rated. And it's part of the global world.

Suddenly, I'm there, and then I leave it again.

Jeffrey Brown:

OK, let's go to one more question.

Brandon Irwin:

Mr. Kaplan, you say in the book, "Americans, I find more and more each day as I travel, do not want to know the details about foreign policy."

Is this disconnect with foreign policy replicated around the world?

Jeffrey Brown:

You do — we should say you travel all over. You have written about many other parts of the world.

Robert Kaplan:

Yes, I do. Yes, I have got reported from 100 countries.

And in most, but it's — you only see it replicated in large, massive countries, continental-size, like the United States, where there's so much going on internally, that the outside world seems almost to disappear in a way.

But in many — Europe is mainly small countries, and even the biggest countries is small by our standards. But, in Europe, in Africa and the Middle East, people are much more connected to world events, I find, than in the United States.

It's almost as if you know intellectually that every place in the U.S. — the Oklahoma Panhandle has agricultural ties with cities in China and everywhere. You know all this intellectually, but when you actually see it, and drive across it, the continent is so big and variegated, that the rest of the world seems abstract almost.

OMG, what a case of stupidity.  Yeah, the global economy has one way to go, to destruction.  Let me lay it out.

Let's take the Oklahoma panhandle.  I know the place after all. The Oklahoma panhandle produces wheat and cows. The Oklahoma panhandle is also on top of the Ogalalla aquifer.  Now here's the joke. The global economy is mining that aquifer. Guess what happens when it runs out of water? You can only have a few cows per acre and do dry land farming because, no water, no irrigation.  Hahahahahaha.  The joke of the future is that link like a lot of other globalized shit's gonna come crashing down on fucking idiots like Robert Kaplan.  The moron can't see beyond his cloistered big city living.  Can't  morons see that mining water is a one way trip to oblivion?  I guess not, huh? Oh, and the cow farts in the stinky feedlots are a gas too, heheh.   Just think of all of that methane.

Mideast?  Yeah, I'm sure the folks over there are well connected.  They can't fucking help it after all. All of shitfuck Neocons made that happen. I'm sure they know about every bomb, aircraft, missle, etc. our  MIC has to offer. Well guess what? I bet they also think like like ole Rags does and hates globalization/Neocons.  After all, they experienced the nations getting wrecked, their infrastructure destroyed, family killed and the like. I also perfectly understand why IS lopped the heads off those Americans.  If some country did that to my family, fucking A, I'd like to lop some heads off with an AR-15.  Just shoot enough bullets at the neck and heads will roll, man.

Small towns?  The idiocy here blows my mind.  Globalization is what wrecked the economy there. We exported jobs and imported cheap shit in its place , yes because globalization. 

Immigration/borders.  Guess what? We need fewer people because resources are going to become scarce and we'll have our share of climate change refugees.  Charity begins at home, man.

Besides, local resilance is a better way to go.  Problem is, is wrecks the profit stream of multinational corporations so that's why few know of it. Oh well, we'll get to it later after globalism crashes and burns.

https://www.resalliance.org/

Yeah, reds need to wake up to being screwed over by a facet of globalization being tinkle down economics and no regulations concerning workers, that being neoliberalism.

Blues likewise need to wake up to being duped into supporting cheap labor and the importation of more consumers and screwing over their concerns about mother earth and  poor citizens.

Neoliberalism/Neoconservatism the true axis of evil of our times.

Well, Eric associates himself with those who have been prospering the most from globalization. Eric hasn't seen the devastation caused by globalization. Eric doesn't seem to stray very far from the comforts, the safety, the familiarity and the good feelings associated with home. Hilary saw it and heard about it for years, ignored it or excused it and offered more government welfare and more educational programs and more federal money for support and so forth. I'm not an isolationist but I'm not blind, foolish or a sucker either. My only issue with your views is you keep looking to the government to provide this or that for your sake, legalize this for your sake and tax us more for this and that in order to support this or that and increase the amount for government to spend on this or that for your sake. At what point in your life have you been able to have it both ways, have your cake and eat it too and so forth. The way I see it, I gave you my support in the last election. I didn't have to but I did with my support of Trump. I make really good money working part time.