The Decline and Fall of the America Empire: Part One 1945-2011

Okie

I agree but I would say that neo-liberalism was already becoming the dominant ideology and if it hadn’t been Reagan it would have been someone else just as it was Thatcher that promoted neo-liberalism in the UK.

It was neo-liberalism that hugely increased inequality, it was neo-liberalism that was behind outsourcing, it was neo-liberalism that brought about deregulation it was neo-liberalism that was behind the rundown of social services, it is neo-liberalism that is behind the lacklustre reaction to climate change and it was neo-liberalism that was behind the crash of 2008.

Basically neo-liberalism is behind most of the social and political problems that we, especially in the US and UK, are facing today, including Trump and Brexit.

 

Churchill supposedly said “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities”

The thing is that while the US got a lot of things wrong, it was at one time, the least worst option, when the alternative powerbases in the world were fascism, Stalinism and Maoism. That was the reason people and leaders looked to it for help and willingly or grudgingly followed its lead. Others were to bedazzled by its seeming dynamism and showmanship to see the bad sides (such as segregation). Instead they saw the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, the infrastructural and technological advancements on display in such things as the Apollo programme and interstate highways.

It wasn’t an empire as such but its influence was hegemonic in nature.

The problem was and is that two ideologies led the US down the wrong path and have brought it to its present state, the first was anti-communism, which meant that many in the US came to see anything slightly left wing as part of a communism conspiracy to take over the world leading to many disastrous foreign policy decisions (Iran, Afghanistan, Vietnam etc) and the domestic suppression of McCartharism and the non-American commettees.

The second ideology (that grow out of and because of that anti-communism) was neo-liberalism which tries to sow division wherever it goes.

We still face many threats but increasingly the US doesn’t look like the colossus it once was, its feet definitely look increasingly like clay and its once golden crown is tarnished and flaking.

To many people it doesn’t seem worthy of leadership or emulation.

 

Bush, True statesman in what way?

 

America is “falling?”

 

In putting service to country above personal gain and regarding even his opponents as fellow Americans who deserved his concern. These are valuable qualities that stand in sharp contrast to the self-aggrandizement and petty partisan divisiveness of the current occupant of the Oval Office.

 

If neo-liberalism is the culprit, I think the rise of that can be traced to the second CNixon administration when the Heritage Foundation (1973) and the Cato Institute were set up in response to Nixon's endorsement of Keynesian economics, and Milton Friedman's libertarian economics began to gain ground. Friedman was able to use the energy crisis and especially stagflation to shake economists' faith in Keynes.

 

I suspect you are a fool.

 

You really should clarify that a bit, or it could be interpreted as a personal attack, something we still don't allow.

Which perspective are you addressing? And what drives this choice of response?

 

What is a fool?

 

Fool is a made up a word, a politicians word, a word designed so that you can sit there with your fancy opinions and judge those different to you.

 

Okie

The thing is that there is a difference now between what neoliberal free market theorists envisioned (1) and what the wealthy individuals and institutions corrupted it into (2), the mad free market nationalism of populists like Trump (3).

So for example and this is going to be incredibly simplistic but we had

1 – The theoretical idea that tax cuts and deregulation (and economic globalisation) would somehow free up the dynamism and drive in society that had been stifled by socialist left wing ideas (involving state aid and protections).

2 – Wealth pushed neoliberalist the ideas because they were the ones that benefited from the deregulation, tax cuts and outsourcing and they used the extra power and influence to corrupt the system even further in their own interests which impacted adversely on virtually everyone else.

3 – Looking for someone to blame for what 2 had done many didn’t turn on neoliberals or the wealthy but on ‘others’ migrants and foreigners, they want to pick and choose who faces the hardships of the free market and who benefits from state aid and protections. If it is others they have to face the hardships of neoliberalism if it is them they demand state aid and protections.

 

Certain important aspects certainly seem to be in decline.

 

Decline?


More like freefall...

 

There is no government, there is no empire, the money has simply taken on a life of its own, and people are such idiots they believe they can control mother nature. Guess who gets the last laugh. My work is in proving to the idiots they are totally clueless, for only in that manner can they possibly hope to make progress. While that might sound impossible, modern physics and mathematics disagree, and I have a thousand pages of empirical evidence including unique predictions. Modern civilization is about to receive the biggest pie-in-the-face in history.

 

robert goulet what kind of fool am i - Yahoo Video Search Results
fools rush in song - Yahoo Video Search Results

 

Send in the clowns, these days, professional wrestlers and reality TV stars.

 

All I know is Donald Trump is finishing us off.

 

Breaking your tailbone only hurts, if ya never learn nothing!

 

Imagine a spinning top, the closer it comes to falling the more erratically it spins, that doesn’t mean it will fall because it could be given a spin to get it back up to speed.

But at the moment the US does seem to be spinning erratically at the moment.

And that is helping toward an imbalance in the world in general.

I contend that the US’s and World’s problems started after the move from one social and economic models to another.

The model(s) that was dominant at the end of WWII were based on ideas of co-operation and collective action (socialism and Keynesianism)

So in domestic terms this often led to things like the setting up of social services and welfare systems along (at least in some places) universal healthcare (like the NHS set up in 1948)

It also lead to certain internationalist institutions (United Nations 1945, World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1948, the begins of the EU in 1957)

*

Around the 1970’s the wealth sponsored ideas of new economic model began to become dominant based in competition and individualism (free market neoliberalism) been based in competition this model often encouraged selfishness leading to division

In domestic terms neoliberals saw public assistance as creating ‘dependence’ and wish to replace co-operation and collective actions with a market where everyone was in competition with everyone else. Tax cuts that theoretically were meant to simulate that market favoured wealth which became increasingly influential to the detriment of all other sectors of society.

It also encouraged globalisation but only economic globalisation the internationalist institutions that were set up to bring about cooperation were often subverted to promote competition, with wealth been given the advantage. This lead to what became called the Washington Consensus that forced on countries ‘financial’ reforms that caused more harm than good and favoured wealth which became increasingly influential to the detriment of all other sectors of global society, dismissing real global problems like climate change in favour of the type of deregulation that made it worse.

The backlash to that was anti-globalisation movements and the rise of nationalism.

*

The US became unbalanced as it tilled to the interests of wealth to the detriment of everyone else and the country which declined as wealth sucked the life from it.

Basically the US went out of balance and it took a lot of the world with it.

So now the US and much of the world running down and spinning erratically.

It needs to be given another spin to get it back into balance.

 

We see always see the same thread (or similar)

Different year

Every year

“Are we wit the end of America?”

Again and again