Thursday, February 9, 2012

The Pre American Age

Purple Mountain Majesty!!

44"s recent stealth shout out to a guiding daemoneoconic avatar "bout how doofus declinists couldn't pop n and wash down xanex with the directions written on their lap dancing BGF"s forehead sparked tons of boring assetted inappropriate handwringing. Even Sunday's World Series Super Bowl featured shamefully uncrunked chiz 'bout Great Satan circling the drain at halftime.

Ye olde Zero Sum thingy
"As a result of "the rise of the rest," U.S. power is declining in a relative sense. Blah Frickin" Blah Blah Blah"
And, must. 

Stay. 

Awake.  

More than a mouthfull is a waste in this regard (not so much the traditional regard haha!), so let's just cut to it shall we - with a few well placed shots at a pair of Declinationism's biggest boobs.

Perhaps the easiest diss is the caboose end of the Little Satan Hating Posse. Indeed, if Great Satan is truly in decline - then why on earth craft a "Binding Great Satan for Dummies" book (reliably informed the 1st editions make great rolling papers)?

Skippy Wainwright (not his real name) is a prime example of being way more suspect in the critical thinking department than the Jolene Blalock lookalike Hootress with 3 boys ( ages 3, 2 and 2 months) by 3 diff poppas 

1st off, this cat unAssed his very own subcontinental caste afflicted mommieland - jetted to Great Satan and made it big. Prob his most awesome book ever was "Future of Freedom" in which he LOL'd decliners repeatedly, sans modesty or restraint and sweetly sang Great Satan"s hyperpuissant praises in any each and every endeavour of humankind

Fareed Zakaria described Great Satan as enjoying a“comprehensive uni-polarity” unlike anything seen since Rome. But a mere four years later in his dotage was scribing chiz like “post-American world” and “the rise of the rest.”

Check his sour mouthings to one of the GOPeabodies
This is a new world, very different from the America-centric one we got used to over the last generation. 44 has succeeded in preserving and even enhancing U.S. influence in this world precisely because he has recognized these new forces at work. 44 has traveled to the emerging nations and spoken admiringly of their rise.
By emphasizing multilateral organizations, alliance structures and international legitimacy, 44 got results. It was Chinese and Russian cooperation that produced tougher sanctions against Iran. It was the Arab League’s formal request last year that made Western intervention in Libya uncontroversial.
LOLing  this approach to foreign policy, arguing instead to expand the military, act unilaterally, and talk unapologetically. Chest-thumping triumphalism won’t help  secure America’s interests or ideals in a world populated by powerful new players.
Counter battery fire - engage!!

42 and 43 also trekked to emerging nation states. So what?
The latter's’s multibillion-dollar initiatives to help battle AIDS in Africa have saved millions of lives. Long before 44, the G-something meetings were already more than “the old Western club.” Unlike 44 in Libya or 42 in Serbia, 43 did not intervene in Afghanistan or Iraq without first obtaining congressional support. 43 also obtained United Nations approval for  intervention in Afghanistan and tried to for Iraq. 
In contrast, 42 did not go to the U.N. before bombing Serbia, and 44 obtained U.N. resolutions to enforce a no-fly-zone in Libya and offer humanitarian aid, and he then summarily far exceeded both by bombing ground troops.
The opening of a U.S. embassy in Syria accomplished nothing, while China and Russia hand-in-glove block American efforts to impose sanctions on Damascus. The Arab League authorized American action in Libya and then whined when we interpreted its so-so support as a green light for bombing rather than merely giving the rebels military and material aid. Libya is a blueprint for nothing, and that pattern will not be followed in Syria. (Dang it)
Unfortunately, the U.S.-forced removal of a tyrant without the presence of American ground troops — completely different from what we did in Germany, Italy, Japan, Serbia, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq — gives no guarantee that something just as bad cannot follow, as we are seeing with the Arab Winter.

“Chest-thumping triumphalism?"  LOLZ!! More like the cold hard truth of Great Satan's bombshell bona fides sir!! 
Even worse is naïve and clumsy deal-making at the expense of American interests and allies. It cannot be seriously argued that since 2009 China, Iran, NoKo, Russia, Syria, or Venezuela are either more reasonable toward, or more deterred by, Great Satan. The old hot spots in Afghanistan, Cyprus, Eastern Europe, Iraq, the Falkland Islands, Mexico, North Africa, the former Soviet republics, Taiwan, and the West Bank are not cooler than in 2009, for all the 2012 of 44"s cool, but more likely warmer and more unstable.
 BFF"s like Great Britain, Mapleleafland, India, Little Satan, or Poland are more rather than less friendly.
 Our own massive debt, the rise of China, and the emergence of India and Brazil as major economies are often offered as proof that post-Americans should accept a new “lead from behind” role abroad. Yet in 1939 there were more multipolar contenders — France, Britain, Germany, Russia, and Japan — than there are now. And in varying ways all those rivals deprecated an isolationist Depression-era America, despite the fact that the U.S. had the world’s largest economy and had miraculously, just two decades earlier, sent a million men to Europe in a single year to ensure the allied victory over imperial Germany.
Long ago we first heard faddish talk of post-Americanism. Supposedly superior models in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan energized throngs and produced modern arms far more than did a Grapes of Wrath America. Next, the declinists warned us about the ascendant Communist Soviet Union, which overran Eastern Europe and Asia, and whose missiles went up, unlike ours, which crashed on the launch pad. Then followed Japan, Inc., in the 1970s, which was to own American golf courses, while we were to tend them. Then in the late 1990s it was the turn of the utopian European Union, which reminded Americans what a waste was our military budget and how silly was our suspicion of man-made global warming. 
Currently, the fact that China has a bullet train and we do not is supposed to convince us that half a billion Chinese never having been to a Western-style doctor and the Chinese industrial landscape resembling the area around Lake Erie circa 1920 simply don’t matter.
Unemployment remains high, economic growth sluggish. Federal oil leases are canceled and pipelines not built. We did not pacify Iraq quickly, and we remain bogged down in Afghanistan.
 American population growth is robust; post-Japan, post-Europe, and post-China are aging and shrinking. We are daily increasing our known fossil-fuel reserves; those in Europe and China are declining. Copying and rivaling America’s free-market economy are impressive Chinese achievements, but hardly proof that China can likewise emulate our Constitution, racial inclusion, transparency, or cultural dynamism. 
 And the 'rest"?
India is still straitjacketed by caste impediments, Europe by class boundaries, China, Japan, and South Korea by sharp racial distinctions, and the Arab world by insidious tribal loyalties.In contrast, America, alone of the major powers, is a multiracial open society bound by one culture, where merit, more than race, tribe, birth, or class, determines success.
When post-Americans unwisely talk about slashing the military, we still should remember that all the world’s other carrier battle groups combined will for decades lack the power of one of our eleven. The productivity of American agriculture continues to be unsurpassed, in a world that will become increasingly food short and hungry. And a notable thing about American farming is that it has millions of acres idle or allotted to subsidized biofuels, suggesting that we could easily produce even more food than we do now.
China has riots; Russia has riots; Europe has riots; the Arab world is one large riot these days. America has a few sputtering Occupy Wall Street street carnivals.
Nor does the United Nations offer much hope of replacing American influence. In Libya, the U.S. bragged that it had obtained U.N. approval for a no-fly zone and humanitarian relief — but then had to violate those resolutions in order to join its NATO allies in bombing Moammar Qaddafi’s forces. Whether Iran lets off a nuclear weapon, or North Korea uses one against South Korea or Japan, depends not on the U.N. Security Council, or Chinese deterrence, but only on whether those rogue states fear a response from the United States. Again, as far as Syria goes, the U.N. is irrelevant.
A new Shanghai airport, a Brazilian Olympics, a new Russian pipeline, or a new Indian enterprise zone still does not tell us much about the underlying principles and values of nations that so far have not been able to create transparent institutions, stable consensual constitutions, sustainably lawful societies, and meritocratic, rather than racially or tribally based, advancement of the sort that allows a nation to meet crises, adapt, and grow stronger.

Pic - "As far as the 21st century goes, it's like way more likely Great Satan is in a pre-American than a post-American age b!tches!!"

1 comments:

Melissa said...

You're fucking amazing and just earned yourself a new admirer. KEEP IT UP COURTNEY!