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Topic	Stephen Harper's wife tweets that someone must have a small penis b/c they hunt
ParanoidObsessive 12/21/17 11:47:28 PM #95:	Nightengale posted... Do you people really not pay any attention to other countries? Not even your largest trading partner? That is nothing if not worrying. Americans never have. At best, we've paid cursory attention to what we consider our "mother country" in England, and we've always kept an eye on autocratic countries we consider "the bad guys", but we rarely pay attention to anyone else, and we've never paid attention to Canada. Hell, China is probably the most significant nation in existence right now from the perspective of global politics and economy, and most Americans couldn't name a single Chinese leader post-Mao (assuming younger people even know who Mao was, either). Nightengale posted... No wonder your empire is falling as we speak. Nah, that's a much more complicated discussion, and rooted in a ton of other factors. But to basically try to sum it up as simplistically as possible, the US was basically only on top at all because Europe crippled itself with two major wars, and US hegemony was doomed the moment modern agricultural techniques and fertilizer was introduced in China and other Asian nations decades ago. European/Western ascendance happened solely due to a period of unnaturally increased resources (which allowed for the development of an industrial base), and US ascendance occurred because the US had all the European/Western benefits without suffering the setbacks of two world wars to its infrastructure, but global parity in terms of agriculture and industry is now allowing population to become the key factor (like it was for 95% of human history), which makes Chinese and Indian ascendance almost inevitable. (And the main reason why China seems to be skyrocketing while India seems more handicapped is because India is still too fractious to present a truly unified position, whereas China is much better able to leverage its gains.) Which is why I always laugh when US politicians talk about making things better or attempting to reverse downward trends - our government actually has very little to do with most of those problems, and has very little power to reverse any of them. We basically stole affluence and got away with it for 50+ years, and now the bill is finally coming due. But yes, those factors aside, most Americans still couldn't give a shit about foreign politics most of the time. --- "Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76 "POwned again." --- blight family <cite>ParanoidObsessive posted [p:892665649] in Stephen Ha... [t:76122234]...</cite> <quote><cite>Nightengale posted...</cite> <quote>Do you people really not pay any attention to other countries? Not even your largest trading partner? That is nothing if not worrying.</quote> Americans never have. At best, we've paid cursory attention to what we consider our "mother country" in England, and we've always kept an eye on autocratic countries we consider "the bad guys", but we rarely pay attention to anyone else, and we've never paid attention to Canada. Hell, China is probably the most significant nation in existence right now from the perspective of global politics and economy, and most Americans couldn't name a single Chinese leader post-Mao (assuming younger people even know who Mao was, either). <cite>Nightengale posted...</cite> <quote>No wonder your empire is falling as we speak.</quote> Nah, that's a much more complicated discussion, and rooted in a ton of other factors. But to basically try to sum it up as simplistically as possible, the US was basically only on top at all because Europe crippled itself with two major wars, and US hegemony was doomed the moment modern agricultural techniques and fertilizer was introduced in China and other Asian nations decades ago. European/Western ascendance happened solely due to a period of unnaturally increased resources (which allowed for the development of an industrial base), and US ascendance occurred because the US had all the European/Western benefits without suffering the setbacks of two world wars to its infrastructure, but global parity in terms of agriculture and industry is now allowing population to become the key factor (like it was for 95% of human history), which makes Chinese and Indian ascendance almost inevitable. (And the main reason why China seems to be skyrocketing while India seems more handicapped is because India is still too fractious to present a truly unified position, whereas China is much better able to leverage its gains.) Which is why I always laugh when US politicians talk about making things better or attempting to reverse downward trends - our government actually has very little to do with most of those problems, and has very little power to reverse any of them. We basically stole affluence and got away with it for 50+ years, and now the bill is finally coming due. But yes, those factors aside, most Americans still couldn't give a shit about foreign politics most of the time. --- "Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76 "POwned again." --- blight family</quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
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