CHANGE you can believe in

[tyrannosaurus vex]

If the US crashes tomorrow, it will bring down most of the global economic system. If the US crashes 5 or 10 years from now, that might not be the case, even if we are as militarily powerful as we are today. Foreign powers continue to consolidate wealth and power that isn't dependent upon American primacy. Eventually, American power and influence will either stand on the merits of our society and the solidity of our own economy, or it will falter and collapse.

The rest of the world is going to survive no matter what happens here. In fact, for fifty years, financial and political circles have been hard at work to ensure just that outcome. The American Dollar has fallen from a sound investment, to the de-facto world currency, to one option among many, and now to a liability. With the upcoming "Bailout" of Wall St., the trend will only accelerate. Because there are more intelligent and direct ways to address the problems the Bailout is supposed to fix, I am convinced that this scheme has been cooked up with the intention of affording the financial sector enough time to slip away from our doomed economy and set up roots somewhere else while the American economy continues to deflate at the expense of taxpayers.

America does have some growing up to do, but it is something that I question whether we are capable of doing anymore. The years since WW2 have seen America progress socially, but in terms of maturity and responsibility we have never been less developed than we are at this moment. We are a nation of coddled, insulated children, ignorant of global events and apathetic toward the ideals under which this nation was founded except as cheap, commercialized slogans that hold no intellectual power. It is this attitude out of which we must grow, and at the same time it is this attitude which demands we never outgrow it. So I think it would take a pretty big 'black swan' for America to change course before disaster strikes.

In some ways, I wonder if the Neocons aren't the true patriots after all. Maybe their plan is to drive our government into such corruption and our nation into such abysmal ruin that there will be no option for survival except a revival of the revolutionary spirit in the American People.


</rant>

[Jenne]

I disagree fundamentally--I think, vex, you discount how truly tied economically we are to the rest of the world.  Our gas prices go up, so does the rest of the gas in the places where it's not subsidized; same with our stocks, they fall, so do the rest of them, same with credit crunches, housing bubbles--you name it, we actually set the temperature and everyone else somehow feels the heat.

I'm not saying no one will survive an American economic meltdown--but to make it seem like 5 to 10 years will be different wholesale from NOW, no, that's laughable to me.  You can't disentangle this world economy (that's essentially what it's begining to be, really, in so many many ways) so quickly or easily, let alone clinically.

[wade]

I think for the most part if you give a person a house or a car for free, they are going to treat it like shit, no respect or care will be given to it.  If they however bought it, they will treat it with care, and respect.   Same goes with "freedom"...  

I am convinced that most people in the "freeworld" do not deserve the "freedom" they have.  mainly because they are good for nothing shitheads.  

am I so wrong to beleive that?  

[Jenne]

I think for the most part if you give a person a house or a car for free, they are going to treat it like shit, no respect or care will be given to it.  If they however bought it, they will treat it with care, and respect.   Same goes with "freedom"...  

I am convinced that most people in the "freeworld" do not deserve the "freedom" they have.  mainly because they are good for nothing shitheads.  

am I so wrong to beleive that?  

Yes.  You have no right to take away someone else's FUNDAMENTAL BORN-WITH-IT right.

[wade]

I think for the most part if you give a person a house or a car for free, they are going to treat it like shit, no respect or care will be given to it.  If they however bought it, they will treat it with care, and respect.   Same goes with "freedom"...  

I am convinced that most people in the "freeworld" do not deserve the "freedom" they have.  mainly because they are good for nothing shitheads.  

am I so wrong to beleive that?  

Yes.  You have no right to take away someone else's FUNDAMENTAL BORN-WITH-IT right.

SAYS WHO?   the lard gawd?

people aren't born with FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS.

Freedom is something the meanest asshole mother fuck in town allows you to have.

it's a privledge, not a right.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

[jesus christ i'm too verbose today]


It is a gobal economy. It's moving to a new model -- more like a network than the traditional house of cards. America is still by far the biggest and most influential node in that network, but precisely because of the interconnectedness of the global economy, everyone else is more likely to survive an American economic meltdown.

Gas prices are tied to oil, which is a global commodity. The global oil market is a single market that everyone shares. The price of gas in the US is just as dependent on OPEC politics as the cost of heating oil in the UK is dependent upon the price of gas in the US. The US does not set these trends in oil prices, we react to them like everyone else does. Even if we did set them, the absence of the US would only mean one less variable in the market as far as everyone else is concerned. OPEC could just as easily stop shipping oil to America at all, and everyone's prices would go down.

[Jenne]

I think for the most part if you give a person a house or a car for free, they are going to treat it like shit, no respect or care will be given to it.  If they however bought it, they will treat it with care, and respect.   Same goes with "freedom"...  

I am convinced that most people in the "freeworld" do not deserve the "freedom" they have.  mainly because they are good for nothing shitheads.  

am I so wrong to beleive that?  

Yes.  You have no right to take away someone else's FUNDAMENTAL BORN-WITH-IT right.

SAYS WHO?   the lard gawd?

people aren't born with FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS.

Freedom is something the meanest asshole mother fuck in town allows you to have.

it's a privledge, not a right.

No, and so now you show the true measure of your ignorance.  You need to read up on freedom, the right to live, to choose, etc.

Don't go and fight for something you know nothing about, wade.  That's stupid.  Freedom is not a privilege, and when you start down that road, you might as well expect a dictatorship for your government.

History, read it.  It's your friend.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

As for "Freedom," I actually tend to side with Wade here, in principle. You are not really free until you've asserted your freedom. A lack of tyranny guarantees nothing except a false sense that tyranny is either defeated or fictional.

[Messier Undertree]

Oh shit, serious argument underway. I will keep my silly joke posts to myself until this is over. You may continue.

[Jenne]

[jesus christ i'm too verbose today]


It is a gobal economy. It's moving to a new model -- more like a network than the traditional house of cards. America is still by far the biggest and most influential node in that network, but precisely because of the interconnectedness of the global economy, everyone else is more likely to survive an American economic meltdown.

Gas prices are tied to oil, which is a global commodity. The global oil market is a single market that everyone shares. The price of gas in the US is just as dependent on OPEC politics as the cost of heating oil in the UK is dependent upon the price of gas in the US. The US does not set these trends in oil prices, we react to them like everyone else does. Even if we did set them, the absence of the US would only mean one less variable in the market as far as everyone else is concerned. OPEC could just as easily stop shipping oil to America at all, and everyone's prices would go down.

No.   No and no.  You're discounting what WE do for the global monies circulating around.  And the influence we have on where those monies go.  We salt the coffers of the "right" people, and all hell could either disappear or break loose.

Not to mention our military actions worldwide, and what they mean for where they land and how they operate.

vex, come on, do you really think America has that little influence on what happens globally?  Because that's where you see why people truly hate/love/give a flying fuck about us.

[Suu]

As for "Freedom," I actually tend to side with Wade here, in principle. You are not really free until you've asserted your freedom. A lack of tyranny guarantees nothing except a false sense that tyranny is either defeated or fictional.

That's very Starship Troopers. You can't be a citizen with rights until you've done your time serving for freedom.

Speaking as former military, they drill in your head that if it wasn't for us, there would be no freedom, and that freedom isn't free, which is why we exist, to preserve it. I support the troops, but I always hated that idea.

[Jenne]

As for "Freedom," I actually tend to side with Wade here, in principle. You are not really free until you've asserted your freedom. A lack of tyranny guarantees nothing except a false sense that tyranny is either defeated or fictional.

That's not the same thing.  You are born into this world with certain fundamental things--life, liberty...yadda yadda.

Now, what you do with that, it's up to you.  You can sheep your way through life, or you can embrace that freedom and do more with it.  That choice, whether you're born in Afghanistan, Mogadishu, or Bumfuckville, USA, is always there.

[Jenne]

Oh shit, serious argument underway. I will keep my silly joke posts to myself until this is over. You may continue.

I don't mind jokes.  I'm just running off at the typing fingers today anyway.

[LMNO]

I think for the most part if you give a person a house or a car for free, they are going to treat it like shit, no respect or care will be given to it.  If they however bought it, they will treat it with care, and respect.   Same goes with "freedom"...  

I am convinced that most people in the "freeworld" do not deserve the "freedom" they have.  mainly because they are good for nothing shitheads.  

am I so wrong to beleive that?  

Yes.  You have no right to take away someone else's FUNDAMENTAL BORN-WITH-IT right.

SAYS WHO?   the lard gawd?

people aren't born with FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS.

Freedom is something the meanest asshole mother fuck in town allows you to have.

it's a privledge, not a right.

I really want TGRR to address this.

[Jenne]

As for "Freedom," I actually tend to side with Wade here, in principle. You are not really free until you've asserted your freedom. A lack of tyranny guarantees nothing except a false sense that tyranny is either defeated or fictional.

That's very Starship Troopers. You can't be a citizen with rights until you've done your time serving for freedom.

Speaking as former military, they drill in your head that if it wasn't for us, there would be no freedom, and that freedom isn't free, which is why we exist, to preserve it. I support the troops, but I always hated that idea.

Exactly.  The notion that you have to pay a price to GET freedom is just an excuse for the mighty to prevail over the weak.

"Well, he didn't DESERVE his freedom because he never arm-wrestled 20 alligators to get it/preserve it/ etc."

In a democratic society, it's deemed born-into (you know, "God-given")...there's not initial fight--just the fight to be born.  We essentially have no choice in that matter.  One of the few things we actually DON'T have a choice in:  whether or not to be born.