The Scourge Of Nationalism.

I hear you Ajay.I hear you.

 

A former CIA & State Dept. intell. analyst named Mel Goodman had his "National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism" published in 2013. A couple things in it I was wholly unaware of regarding Soviets/Russians: back in 1988, when the Soviets were planning on departing Afghanistan, USSR forn. minister Schevardnadze got tacit approval from U.S. SecyState George Schultz to prop up old guard Soviet puppet Nabijullah; turns out, the Soviets even then were worried about this radical Islamist band called the Taliban wreaking havoc across Afghanistan. The new G.H.W. Bush admin. nixed that idea in its haste to forget all about Afghanistan.

Later, after the USSR indeed collapsed, Bush I's SecyState James Baker made his own tacit promise to his now-Russian counterparts that the US of A would not annex old Warsaw Pact nations under the NATO aegis; of course, the Clinton admin. & its successors did just that. Moreover, Clinton forced by two stellar Senate lights, Helms & McConnell (yes, THAT McConnell), to divest the State Dept. of its forn. policymaking power by shoveling the old Arms Control & Disarmament Agency & the U.S. Info. Service into its bailiwick, thereby turning State into just another bloated Cabinet dept. Since the early 1990s, forn. policy made by W.H. Natl. Security Council, the Pentagon, & the CIA. (In return, Helms & McConnell forced thru some lame anti-chemical weapons act Clinton wanted passed.)

One may well also recall that the collapse of the USSR left 50 million Muslims in its former republics hungry for revenge for 75 yr of religious repression. A U.S-Russian partnership might have contained some of this jihad fervor, but our warmongering types like Cheney et al. were too eager for more enemies to fight. & We got them, didn't we!?

 

Weapons are the largest manufactured export of the wealthiest country in the world with a military equal to the next six or seven largest combined. Of course, the politicians all insist spending a quarter of our budget on the military is just for "defense", but you don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Islam has largely thrived in the third world on the argument that neither laze fare capitalism nor atheist communism can offer a real sense of community with the enforcement of something draconian like Sharia law. As ye sow so shall ye reap and the US drove the Soviet economy into the dirt, conquered Afghanistan when they couldn't, and established themselves as the unrivaled empire of the world. Without Jihad, the US would be out of business. Next come the robots which will make the situation all too clear to even Libertarians that their peashooters are outdated and they've sold themselves up the river.

 

As a citizen of the U.S. I couldn't care less about nationalism.
There is a reason though that people from all over the planet come here to live, at considerable expense and often at risk to their life and safety.

The people in D.C., the president, the congress, the supreme court, are not the government.
The constitution is the government.
Those people in the White House and congress are the elected and salaried administrators of that government.

The constitution is the product of men, and is therefore not a perfect government, but it is by far the finest government yet devised by the mind of man. It's sad that government should be required at all, but when you've lived long enough you will begin to see how vicious and evil human beings are, and from that you can easily see and understand why governments are necessary.

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Lots of broad views in reply to the OP.
Let me start by saying I'm an anarchist in spirit.
In my heart though I know it could never work.
You know that big family down the street? The one with 10 kids 30 cousins and 20 aunts and uncles? With no law (which is controlled by the government aka country) who is to stop them from taking all my stuff that I worked hard for...well I could join a bigger group. Like a city maybe. What if a city decided to attack a small town? Well we can have a state step in...we could have a country protect us from large groups of attackers. We can have a united nations protect us from groups of nations.
Yeah it would be great if we could live under an apple tree and have all the food we want and live in harmony with the wildlife and not fear of bombs going off in the middle of the night...but then it's back to reality.

 

The guns are what enforces everything, but now the guns are increasingly being handled by computers and robots with the entire semiconducting industry, including Intel, Microsoft, and Google, now putting everything they have into AI research. Hopefully, the robots will do a better job of it because its hard to believe they can screw it up any worse.

 

The Constitution is a piece of paper with words written on it. It's only as good as the people who enforce it, as we'll soon discover.

 

Yeah. LOL @ words.
What have they got going for them anyway?

 

The constitution is the lawful government of the United States of America.
That is fact.

It is only as good as the people it governs.
Perhaps you've heard the quotation "in the end, people always get the government they deserve". Here in the US, if it is indeed "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" then how can it go otherwise?

We allowed the elected administrators to begin ignoring that lawful framework many years ago.
The people were not paying attention, and those benefiting from the abrogation and corruption of that government, abusing the power that circumstance provides, then took advantage of it.

Once that process is begun, over enough time the foundational law of that government begins eroding away.
And from that point, you are correct.... it becomes only a piece of paper.

 

Often the brightest lights are left on when nobody is home. The American public didn't just "allow" congress to suspend our constitutional rights indefinitely, they supported their efforts. Go ahead, walk down any street and ask anyone you want if they know what is occurring and they'll tell you they are fully aware of the situation. Despite their awareness, they elected a bigot president who contradicts every word that comes out of his mouth and sent Bernie Sanders, the one guy running on combating corruption who didn't contradict himself and made his intentions perfectly clear, packing. The constitution has become mere toilet paper for those who can afford such things.

When you can no longer identify that you have identified nothing you have personal bullshit to deal with. My advice is to run in circles screaming and shouting.

 

"Go ahead, walk down any street and ask anyone you want if they know what is occurring and they'll tell you they are fully aware of the situation."
I disagree.
I've found that the vast majority don't even understand the question and don't really care.
It's been observed throughout human history that most human beings just want a "daddy" to take care of them.


"When you can no longer identify that you have identified nothing you have personal bullshit to deal with. My advice is to run in circles screaming and shouting."

This is nonsense and I don't understand what you're trying to tell me, unless it's just a snide insult, as it appears to be.

 

Occupy Wall Street was, arguably, the most successful protest movement since the Vietnam War. The idea that the American public doesn't know they've been taken to the cleaners by the banks is absurd. Likewise, the idea they are unaware that their constitutional rights have been suspended indefinitely, that the NSA is reading everyone's emails, that lobbying congress has become a billion dollar a year business, that all of their own politicians are now lawyers, that the whole voting system has been gerrymandered to death, and so on and so forth is just completely absurd. The silence is deafening, while they choose to elect a huge professional wrestling fan and reality TV star president.

In over ten years of asking not a single person has been able to tell me the simple distinction between a lynch mob and a democracy with almost all of them claiming it has something to do with a piece of toilet paper they call the constitution despite the fact every cop in the country is now using warrentless searches and wiretaps and congress have given the military the legal power to round up citizens like so many cattle.

It is the American public that is mindlessly running in circles screaming and shouting.