Do Nations Matter?

I was just watching a documentary on China's pollution problem and realized that it is created by the same global, free market capitalism that will allow the people responsible for it to simply migrate to Canada or some other country where the environment is in better shape, leaving the poor behind so that they can deal with the mess (and die in it).

So I guess my questions are:

1. Do you identify more with your nation, culture or socioeconomic class? (American or Chinese vs. underclass, working class, middle class, etc.) Do you think you have more in common with a wealthy American or some other nationality with equal socioeconomic standing?

2. If you had to choose, do you think that making money and maintaining your current standard of living (or at least, the average American's standard of living) is more important than preserving the environment?

3. Would you be willing to live in a tougher economy and 'do without' in order to preserve the environment? And no, libertarians, you can't do both-- that's just silly.

4. Do you think it's important that the US remain the dominant economic force no matter the cost?

5. What exactly do you believe that you personally have gained from the US being the dominant economic force in the world?

6. What do you think you would you lose if the US was no longer the dominant superpower?

My answers to these questions play a very large part in my political perspective.

 

1. Do you identify more with your nation, culture or socioeconomic class? (American or Chinese vs. underclass, working class, middle class, etc.) Do you think you have more in common with a wealthy American or some other nationality with equal socioeconomic standing?

I can identify with about anyone but I need to stay identified with myself first or I'm just a nothing boop boop floating around good to eat.

2. If you had to choose, do you think that making money is more important than preserving the environment?

I am klatu. (Eeek sorry)

3. Would you be willing to live in a tougher economy and 'do without' in order to preserve the environment? And no, libertarians, you can't do both-- that's just silly.

We already have been with full dedication and selflessness. Pretty quick others will join us like it or not.

4. Do you think it's important that the US remain the dominant economic force no matter the cost?

I think the constitution, de-obamafied, is the peasant persons best hope at all besides jesus for a king and guess what? I'd really rather not have a religious king besides god.

But to me it is not as much. I have more than that but it is all most I see have. If the ignorant fools keep tearing it up, they will be very unhappy for a short time then not.

5. What exactly do you believe you have gained from the US being the dominant economic force in the world?

An MD exceeding my peers. The free will, free reign right to alleviate suffering and heal the sick because it is to be done. The right to say no, the right to choose whether to live in the country club or a box. The environment where I could fight for what I thought I wanted.
Nazis may keep a prettier town, but it's a bit competative and up stuck.

6. What do you think you would you lose if the US was no longer the dominant superpower?

The power to uphold higher human standards especially since france and the brit leaders have gone as insane as ours (just to cheat for money)
The right to walk free and make the world and life seem better in little ways.

My answers to these questions play a very large part in my political perspective.

Well I hope that you are capable of thinking about hard things. Gonna be gnarly for a bit.

 

In my opinion, the USA is about more than geography. It is about abstract values, also. Freedom of speech, and self defence, are protected by the USA more than anywhere else. The USA was the first nation in history to enact separation of church and state, and today, many nations fail to do so.

I think anti-American sentiment is often a sign of privilige. A sign that one could afford a college education.

Sorry if that is blunt. You may not fit into that category, but still, I see the USA as about more than geography.

 

I don't identify with any class,am not nationalist,and would rough it a bit and go without many of my luxuries if I really thought it would help the environment.

 

No

 

I believe in different parts of the world retaining regional character,indigenous language and culture,but nationalism such as we are seeing increasing today is a terrible thing.Only leads to war,and now sporadic outbreaks of perpetual war which only goes to support military industrial complex.

 

6. What do you think you would you lose if the US was no longer the dominant superpower?

I like this question. I don't think I would lose anything, but I do think the overall quality of life might improve for most citizens. We could drastically reduce military spending, and re-invest that money directly to citizens or lower taxes. There are several countries with a comparable quality of life (Canada, the Netherlands, Norway) that aren't the type of superpower that the US is. I would sacrifice several luxuries to be more eco-friendly, but I could also gain many.

 

Believe me, no one would like living in a world where tyrants fear the US to a lesser degree. Really, there is no problem with being the only superpower except that it bothers those with extremist agendas. With all due respect. Also, the USA has earned superpower status by its ingenuity, and the sacrifice of countless soldiers. Which doesn't mean we activists can't oppose the "military industrial complex". The very term was coined by a Republican, President, Army general: Dwight Eisenhower. Who stopped collectivist Europeans from slaughtering Jews, Gypsys, Communists, non-Communists, etc.

There are better issues for progressive activists to focus on.

 

I was floored by this. Thanks for such an amazing perspective. It does seem that a life of privilege is one thing the US detractors have in common. But it's not just people who could afford a college education. It's also people who were given a college education. Often at the expense of taxpayers.

Education is a privilege. Going to school is a requirement but it's also interpreted as a "right" in the US. Though what you receive is marginal because of political experimentation and outright lies about the capabilities of different classes of students. I think the "1 Size Fits All" education approach for the sake of people's feelings has been a fucking disaster. Some kids need different treatment than others. We all know this. So why do we subject our children to this nonsense? Merit is the only way to go.

Either the kid can read or not.

 

1. Not being at all flippant: I identify most with human beings. Class distinctions (nationality, economic strata, race, gender, etc.) don't really matter to me.
2. I believe that preserving the environment is most important. My wealth should not come at the expense of everyone else's planet.
3. Yes. See (2) above.
4. No. I'm sick to death of the US killing people and destroying nations to prop up the value of the petrodollar.
5. I can't see past my privilege to objectively answer this question.
6. Same as (5), above.

As for "Anti-American sentiment is... a sign that one could afford a college education": I've no college education. I'm just curious, rational, intelligent, and empathetic, a combination which leaves me appalled at the actions of the United States both at home and abroad.

 

nice reflective thoughts OP, good job

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!
-Isaiah

 

Obviously depends on the context or issue at hand, and the individual you ask. In general, they matter as much as anything else.

 

Nations are on the way out. Corporations are on the way in.

A long time ago people were nomadic, then they invented agriculture and people settled down, and then there were City States. Later on these were replaced by Nations. And in the future these in turn will be replaced by the Corporations (possibly called something different, of course)

Some companies have more employees than the entire population of many countries (2.1 million work for Walmart, for example) and have more money too.

In another couple of centuries or so, Nations will be history.

 

If you have a more advanced society, rights cease to be some sort of basal set of things like breathing.


Some people need different education - don't mix that up with the fact that education is a right - and we're not talking about some sort of education for the sake of being good corporate stooges, I mean classical education, where you learn to think and reason.

If nobody has anything, you can sell me that nobody has a right to expect education be given to them. We do not live in a society without the means to improve it's general level of knowledge and capacity for reason, we live in a society of extreme excess for some - which, like it or not (and no matter how it's rationalized or what number games are used against the ignorant) involves taking an extremely excessive amount from the rest. Inequality is fine and great and necessary, but there is a point where it ceases to be, and we are long past it.

Inapplicable caveats aside, education is an absolute right, and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to rob you blind, and is doing their damndest to keep you blind, that the robbery might continue (or, they are a total sucker, playing a type of sick collective lottery in which they sell their fellow man down the river for the "right" to extreme personal greed at the expense of their fellows, should they themselves ever happen into any good fortune).

 

I find no, 6 interesting

Because I don't think anyone else wants to be

China doesn't seem interested in world affairs or I don't think they think they are ever going to be able to pull their whole population out of poverty

Russia has a lower GDP than Italy and Brazil, they never really did have a chance of being a superpower, they sometimes talk like they want to, but lets face it, theyd have to rely on Russian made aircraft

 

Which, just like the US, is made with Chinese electrical parts.

 

Russia has just threatened Norway with nukes if it joins the nato defense shield.These people are psychopaths.Makes me feel relatively sane.I'm not in favour of one world global system,but this kind of bluffing and huffing should have no place in the 21st century.But that's "civilization" for you.

 

Which inapplicable caveats do you mean? I'm also more inclined to see education as a necessity for survival than a "right". Any nation that doesn't education it's citizens is not likely to advance very far as a whole. But what we call education these days is not about building the nation as much as building the bank accounts of the people running the nation.

A classical education, where children learn to actually think, is rarely when we get with state schools. These days schools teach conformity and have become political ping pong balls. I went to school during the height of busing-mania. Some years I rode a bus over an hour to school. The reason given was that we needed better integration so we as a society could grow closer. The real goal was to flatten the grades in the schools so we wouldn't have such a massive number of poor-performing schools, particularly in minority neighborhoods.

While this effort seemed like a good idea, it screwed minority children in the long run and the shadow of this still haunts us. This drive for perfect results is what created the DC and Atlanta cheating scandals. In Atlanta an entire generation of school kids, mostly minority, were cheated out of their education so that administrators (I won't call that evil gaggle "educators") could show amazing results to win awards and promotions. The right to and education was easily usurped because the education system has been hijacked for the sake of numbers and money.

I almost think we'd be better off with corporate schools. Under such a scenario the students would get the education needed to immediately compete in the working world. For available positions. With the courses adjusted regularly so that the corporation can remain profitable. Sure, it's nearly pure communism, but that's what corporations are. But I know we actually were better off when schools taught kids how to learn and how fascinating the world is. Not a trivial pursuit of memorizing material to pass the next state-sanctioned mega-test.

I didn't mean to really get deep into the rights aspect of this as that becomes a quagmire of opinion fast. Aside from rights, a decent society should actually WANT to education their people so they can succeed as individuals. Instead we raise corporate drones who can fill out forms quickly. And we raise a growing number of poor people who can't readily conform to the tricks and trade of corporate life. For our part Jane, my wife, and I have augmented the education of our children in spite of the school system.

We expose them to lessons today's schools seem to have forgotten. Physical education is nearly gone in favor of sanctioned sporting events (which have a sharp life curve and steep risk potential). Manual arts of nearly every sort are being squeezed out. Most of the music instruction is dedicated to supporting the athletic program, usually football. What has replaced the classic, liberal arts education is this weird government translation of both political goals and the goal of corporations who own our politicians. Even the school boards are more concerned with their own hides than a single child under their control.

And control is a big factor.

 

i don't think any nation matters more then the people and cultures that live in them. i would rather have those (traditional indigenous) cultures be the nations, but also have them be at peace with each other. modern nations are all too big.
well all. i suppose there are invariably exceptions. tiny island nations for example. but those really are exceptions. the really big countries everybody's heard of, and the really powerful ones, yes they are too big for anyone's benefit. even their own.

every country has a different combination of things right and wrong with it, and every person has a different combination of things right and wrong with their surroundings they would be more and less comfortable living with, and for that reason, every nation should be forced to keep its borders open to unarmed peaceful civilians wishing to relocate to wherever felt most right to them. that is what a world government should exist for and do, and very nearly the only thing, other then to keep one or a handful of powerful nations, from dictating to the rest of the world like we have now. and to be the sole agency of human exploration beyond the planet and the establishment of relationships with other worlds, should the opportunity arise to do so.

1. Do you identify more with your nation, culture or socioeconomic class?

what i identify with is nature and the diversity of reality, with my dreams of a what a word is perfectly capable of being. what, if anything is preventing us from doing so, it is the combination of ideologies and egos.

2. If you had to choose, do you think that making money and maintaining your current standard of living (or at least, the average American's standard of living) is more important than preserving the environment?

without the environment at some point, there is no 'standard of living' because there is no living at all. people are whistling in the dark to imagine otherwise.

3. Would you be willing to live in a tougher economy and 'do without' in order to preserve the environment? (as for libertarians, what calls themselves that in the u.s., well market forces aren't some kind of magic wand that fixes everything.)

i'm not sure what you're saying or asking there, but i believe the underlying assumption to be mostly erroneous. solar panels on every roof, isn't living without electrical energy. public transportation, in sufficient abundance and scaled to meet smaller needs as well as larger ones, isn't living without mobility. government, not in the sense of existing governments, but in the sense of local community consensus, has some role to play. as would regional authorities governing and providing infrastructure and protecting environment in the manor of doing so.

4. Do you think it's important that the US remain the dominant economic force no matter the cost?

certainly not. nor can it nor will it nor can nor will any one government or place in perpetuity.

5. What exactly do you believe that you personally have gained from the US being the dominant economic force in the world?

pretty much the loss of the freedom to build and live in the kind of house i would like to. i mean its paying for my rent and groceries now, but its also the reason payment for these things is needed.

6. What do you think you would you lose if the US was no longer the dominant superpower?

absolutely nothing. if it fell entirely, i would lose what i'm currently living off of, but there is some actual possibility, that under that condition i might no longer need it.
in many ways the u.s. has already become less dominant. it no longer dominates by leadership, if it ever did. only by belligerence is it maintaining its dictatorial influence now.

there is one thing i'd like to point out: i'm NOT singling out and picking on JUST capitalism. i simply refuse to give it the free pass, NO ideology deserves, because i know what EVERY ideology is, and that is an excuse, to not base policy decisions, on the conditions everyone has to live with as a result of them.

 

Trigger warning: not proofread, don't give a fuck, been over this shit waaaay too many times.


Those caveats concern the fact that we're just monkeys and nothing means anything. Nobody has any right, rights are constructs, but we live in a constructed world with a "meaning" that we must determine. You can scoff education being a right, and you can scoff breathing being a right - many right wingers literally do just that (with their borderline schizophrenic "opinions" of the EPA or anyone else who tries to protect the environment), but we don't have to drink the kool-aid. My philosophy is driven by a desire to make life as good as possible for as many people as possible.

I'm not talking about how screwed up the system is, I'm talking about how it needs to be. I don't care if standardized tests are currently bad - know how long that takes to fix? Exactly as long as it takes to carry the scan-trons to the dumpster.

No, having corporate education would be the absolute worst option, that would put us in a totally unrecoverable tailspin, not only as a nation but probably for the world, with no hope of a just society or saving the planet long enough to even preserve our species more than a few further (miserable) generations. Corporations want you competing in a working world, but they want you competing for them, not for you. Things needing improvement does not mean that the best option is to throw everything away in an unrecoverable way.

There are misinformed and often intentionally misguided principles shaping our education, and they need to be fixed.

Reform means you fix the problems - the problems are things like underpaid teachers with no power or incentive to improve their courses, corporate-driven standardized tests and books, religion-influenced courses and books, right wing ideology injected everywhere they can fit it, general underfunding and privatization (a self-reinforcing cycle of disaster).

When people talk about educational reform, they usually mean addressing a bunch of totally made up problems, like paying teachers less, breaking the unions that get teachers their current minimal pay, filling textbooks with neocon and creationist bullshit, and getting kids out of public schools and into private schools (even and especially on the public dime, because our "private" sector is all about doing public work, but for more money and results that suit magnifying that same sick agenda and it's results). Standardized tests are big business, bullshit textbooks are big business, private education is big business. Business does not have your best interest at heart, they only want money (and power, but mostly as a means to get (infinitely) more money). The problems are created by exactly the forces that you are arguing to give the whole thing over to.

Business has a place, but some things need to be handled by a government that acts as an arbiter and protects people (and businesses), and sets them up to do well. Some people don't like the fact that doing right by people as a whole requires some redistribution and such - well I've got news for you: we're a socialist species - you only have anything because of redistribution and central planning since prehistory and right down to a tribal level. You didn't earn a damn thing you have, it's the fruits of the collective toil of our species and societies. Corporations exist to redistribute your wealth to them and them only. It is very important to keep business from controlling the agenda concerning public good.

It's a shitty short-term cop-out that doesn't even help in the short term, just like privatizing prisons - suddenly you have a prison system designed around not working, because prisons working or running efficiently does not make money. Schools working efficiently does not make money, what makes money is robbing everyone blind and changing them for the privilege of being robbed, and blaming their misfortune on the fact that they have not given all of their sovereignty over to said businesses yet. Corporations don't make money off an informed population, they make money off people who can think just well enough to buy shit and go to jail - their own kids go to totally different schools to learn how to function in a race for high paying jobs, that yours couldn't go to even if you had the money.

The current problems are a result of cronyism and corruption and money in politics. You're right, it's about control, and corporations are buying ever more - it's high time we stop them, not roll over as you appear to advocate.