Damned Democracy

[shereads]

We've sunk 500 Billion into Iraq with absolutely nothing to show for it and everyone's laughing their ass off at us, with our $75 million "smart bombs" that can't even kill this one bearded renegade.

"It's like Rambo versus The Hobbit."

~ from 'Get Your War On'

 

[shereads]

Paddy Chaveysky predicted the current state of the world pretty accurately in the 1970's movie "NETWORK."

"There are no nations. There are only currencies."

 

[Handprints]

One of the things to remember when reading Friedman (and similar analysts - Naomi Klein is one of the usual suspects for this) is that economic outcomes are only one of a large number of forces acting on governmental decisions and usually not the main one, even when it's cited as the top reason. This is one of those observations that seems utterly obvious when you read it in isolation but, if you keep it in mind, it's difficult to find a page of Friedman's that doesn't contain a cause-effect statement that isn't better explained by nationalism, religion, the desire to stay in office or even pure dumb luck.

The American right tends to blame the influence of Marx for this tendency among non-conservative economic/political thinkers. In truth, I think it's common to most writers who approach the world from an economics mindset: the broader the setting, the less explanatory power economics appears to have...

Hope that's of interest,
H

 

[rgraham666]

My favorite writer points out that the last functioning Marxist philosophers are neo-conservative.

Why? Because, as Marxists do, they are quite economically deterministic. Like Marx they believe society takes place inside economics, rather than economics taking place inside society.

 

[TheReapersWife]

I was looking at Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree about globalization and the rise of the world economies (and the sinking of the US's) and it reminded me of something I always wondered about American foreign policy.

Why were we so damned set on bringing democracy to all these communist countries? Didn't we know they'd start competing with us economically and eventually be eating our lunch for us? Didn't we have it a hell of a lot better when the Russians and Chinese were living under the iron heel of controlled markets and Great Leaps Forward? Now look at us!

I was just reading where the dollar has fallen so low that New York is now only the world's 22nd most expensive city, and it's going to get worse. We're headed for Second Nation status. This is all from bringing democracy and free markets abroad. We should have kept them commie.

Uh, HELL-O! Democracy is only a bit of it. I think you mean Capitalism, yeah? And you've got it wrong: Communism says there is a pie and only so many slices. If you get a piece, that means someone else is either not getting one or one not as big as yours. In Capitalism, the pie is so endless, the metaphor ceases to make sense.

We should have kept them commie.

Nobody benefits from a restriction on pie.

And as far as the problems you related about the competition with the U.S. and other countries economies, and the value of the dollar: They're not Communist anymore. They're Fascist. It has all the restrictions of Communism but a pretend freedom of choice. But it behaves the same as Communism: If we're over here enjoying our endless pie, and going on and on about how great it is, the common people will start to wonder why they don't have such a big piece. It's like that old saying, "Misery loves company."

 

[rgraham666]

I like you, ReapersWife.

You're funny.

 

[TheReapersWife]

I like you, ReapersWife.

You're funny.

Oh. -^^- Why thank you. Politics makes me laugh.

 

[rgraham666]

The other choice isn't much fun.

Oh my God! I love that song in your sig. That was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen on The Tube.

 

[TheReapersWife]

The other choice isn't much fun.

Oh my God! I love that song in your sig. That was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen on The Tube.

Dude... There's another choice?? Wait, for politics, or finding them funny?

Oh, and thanks. My username was a toss-up between being the Reaper's Wife or Mrs. Joker. I flipped a coin.... ~_~

 

[rgraham666]

Oh look. You've got 100 posts. So you get an avatar. That's the little picture in people's posts.

The other choice in politics is cry. I try not to do that these days.

 

[TheReapersWife]

Oh look. You've got 100 posts. So you get an avatar. That's the little picture in people's posts.

The other choice in politics is cry. I try not to do that these days.

Cry? It's all a game we play until Christ returns. Oops! Did I say that aloud(not that you'd hear it)?

 

[rgraham666]

I seriously doubt He'll be back in my lifetime.

I'm probably going to hell anyway.

 

[LordMithras]

I seriously doubt He'll be back in my lifetime.

I'm probably going to hell anyway.

That depends on if you face Christ or someone else at the Day of Judgment....after all, the notion of a resurrection and last judgment is not a Christian invention, but a Persian one. It appears first in Zoroastrianism/Mithraism, which rubbed off on first century Judaism (much of it later to be abandoned) long enough to be central tenets of Christianity.

But that makes it more likely than not that you could face Ahura-Mazda or Mithras at the Last Judgment. One can't predict that outcome.