Understatement of the week!
(hat tip to @ImplodeOMeter)
Discussing security worries, Gen. David Richards, the British chief of staff says the strategic landscape is "worrying" and the outlook "bleak."
He says "America is sleepwalking into economic and geopolitical decline."
That's serious talk, from Brits, who are experts at both forms of decline. Have we become British, from rising royalty to a growing serf class to rampant financial & royal crime? Should we be worried that the Rothschild's firm just bought 37% of the Rockefellers investment arm? Maybe the two are racketeering to stockpile both US politicians & poodles in Labour.
While the good general is talking primarily about military/security policies and a choking bureaucracy overall, his assessment could be applied to most other aspects of domestic as well as foreign policy. Wall St is still brimming with crooks and SDIs, the very mortgage fraud that started our current mess is still continuing, and the core ideologies that created both of those ills is still very much in control of absolutely all policy direction, even campaign finance. Are we asleep? Is this all a bad dream?
Wake up America.
Significantly distinct from most other declines, though. Unless we just magic away the Republican party or have an outstandingly reforming series of legislation or constitutional convention (which the Republicans either wouldn't allow or would sabotage), we seem pretty screwed.
ReplyDeleteBut it's a decline of our own construction - kind of like Poland. The fundamentals don't suck. We're pretty much the same percentage of the global economy that we've been since the post-war recovery of Europe. We're a bigger percentage of the global economy than we were in 1913.
Yes, it's not the static or instantaneous position, it's the dynamics of sleepwalking that's irritating. At least if you love your kids, and everyone else's too.
ReplyDeleteLong before it collapsed, Rome abandoned Britain - which lost all archaeological signs of advanced civilization for ~500 years.
Do we have to repeat that in some form, somewhere, even here?
"Have we become British, from rising royalty to a growing serf class to rampant financial & royal crime?"
ReplyDeleteSteady on old boy.
Some of us Brits are worried that we heading down the US route.
Its all a matter of perspective old boy.
Hopefully a sign that the Warrior class is finally starting to look with ire at the Acquisitor class....
ReplyDeleteResp,
"Are we asleep? Is this all a bad dream?"
ReplyDeleteWe seem locked in a death grip of ideology. Call it a bad dream, if you like. But it is all too real for damn near half our people living at or near poverty while the aristocracy argues over the spoils of the kill.
@Andy,
ReplyDeleteBrits worried about heading down the US path?
All in jest, of course, but you mean you're considering dumping the Queen & returning all the tourist traps to the electorate? Not to mention her salary & expenses & land holdings?
Ireland did. India too. Even our 13 colonies - which if you remember all started with a fight between our locals and your damn banking lobby (the drain both countries are still swirling down).
Who's next? Scotland? Wales? Maybe Britain will try to secede from High St., and trigger Crumbwell's 2nd revolution. :)
Until then, since the Khyber Pass is no longer available, just "Carry on up the High St. Pass"
EIC forever? No thanks.
It would be interesting if there were any data showing comparative social mobility in UK vs US. It might not necessarily be that the US is better on that metric.
ReplyDeleteI think to begin to move forward again we need to break out of the dominant pattern of political alliance that has prevailed throughout the neoliberal period, which has been based of the conflict between secular and cultural liberality, on the one hand, and various forms of cultural conservatism and traditionalism, on the other hand.
ReplyDeleteWe need to move toward a new dominant pattern of political allegiance based economic, class-based commonalities. This will require that a lot of secular liberals and conservative traditionalists swallow their cultural and regional bigotries and reach out across those lines to meet on the plain of common economic concern.
Roger
ReplyDeleteI was thinking more about modern history.
We have absorbed McDonalds of course and the average waistline is showing the results.
The Compensation culture is well on its way to being embedded. Lots more lawyers here.
The banking model ? lets not go there.
MTV and celebrity infatuation
Looking down on the unemployed. Changing your employment status on your policy now costs an extra 300 dollars.
These are the immediate concerns here but I think we will keep the Queen.
But, as you say, all in jest.
@Andy
ReplyDelete"These are the immediate concerns here but I think we will keep the Queen"
Not complaining having an extra day off this weekend ;)
God bless her
ReplyDelete@DanKervick
ReplyDelete> to begin to move forward again we need to ..
now's the time to formulate a succession plan for the USA
http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2012/05/succession-plan-for-usa-how-to-re.html
@Andy
ReplyDeleteMcDonald's?
If you're trying to curry sympathy for British cuisine, you're better off talking to India. :)
But seriously, you like divine right royalty only because they got you reconnected to ancestral cuisines? You guys need to get out of the lower classes more often!
You can't get rid of the banking lobby without removing their queen. Face the truth old boy.
The US hasn't seen anything yet. I haven't posted on it yet but the dominant political trend in the coming decades is the changing demographics of the US with minorities becoming the majority circa 2030-50. Whites are going to do everything in their power to prevent this through all sorts of institutional arrangements, barriers, etc. People were horrified when Pat Buchanan surfaced this some time ago, but he got the politics of it right (pun intended), even if he is not in the right about it morally. This is an issue that began in the US from the outset with Native Americans and then African slaves. It has also been a running theme in all significant immigrations. The northern Europeans who were here first even resisted the inclusion of southern Europeans who cane later.
ReplyDeleteEven the Irish were marginalized almost until Kennedy's victory, and his sons' entrance into politics was due in no small measure to his father's reaction to anti-Irish prejudice.
This is the underlying reason for the anti-Latino immigrant kerfuffle now, and the handwriting is on the wall, but US and Latin America are going to become increasingly integrated over the next century.
While this is not politically correct to talk about much outside of sociology, it has been a force that shaped the US and will continue to do so.
Matt: "hich if you remember all started with a fight between our locals and your damn banking lobby (the drain both countries are still swirling down)."
ReplyDeleteThe City is still the dominant financial force in the world and is to the the Brit economy what the military-industrial complex is to the US. The chief focus of the Cameron govt is to keep it that way, just as it is the chief focus of the GOP to keep the military-industrial complex economically dominant in the US, even more than the financial sector.
Roger
ReplyDeleteOur Indian food bears no relation to any colonial ancestry, I assure you.
I'm intrigued by your idea of the Queen as the figurehead of our banking lobby. I shall certainly now investiagte that.
We are under the impression she now exists to bring the tourist dollars in.
"Our Indian food bears no relation to any colonial ancestry, I assure you"
ReplyDeleteMostly Bangladeshi ish anyway
People were horrified when Pat Buchanan surfaced this some time ago, but he got the politics of it right (pun intended), even if he is not in the right about it morally.
ReplyDeleteYep, including a variety of new tricks and initiatives to suspend, weaken or impede voting rights.
Some of the libertarians over at Bleeding Heart Libertarianism and elsewhere are part of the new intellectual trend in the United States of open hostility to democracy, and write academic books and papers defending "epistocracy" (rule by the educated), and also arguing that voting by the uneducated is immoral.
" Bleeding Heart Libertarianism and elsewhere are part of the new intellectual trend in the United States of open hostility to democracy"
ReplyDeleteDan that sounds like the opposite of Libertarianism and very Authoritarian if they advocate less Democracy...
Resp,
Take a look Matt:
ReplyDeletehttp://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/04/epistocracy_and.html
A lot of libertarians object to democracy because it subordinates their individual liberty to rule by a democratic community. Combine that libertarian tendency with the natural trend toward self-approving elitism among well-educated intellectuals (particularly those on Ivy League campuses) and these are the dangerous doctrines that result.