Let's close as many overseas bases as we can, but let's do it for the right reasons, not because of the delusion that the US is an empire.
Again and again I run into people on the right and left sides of the political fringe who hold to the bizarre idea that the United States has some sort of international empire because we have troops deployed overseas. While I agree that we have far too many troops in other countries and could save a lot of money in these hard times by bringing some of them home, these deployments certainly don't seem to fit the characteristics you would expect of troops who are part of an international empire.…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - roger nowosielski
A question: What has "the economy crashing" got to do with it?
27 - Cindy
"I'm Sorry That I'm Such An Ass: But So are You...." :)
That's great Jeannie. lol
28 - Cindy
Write more.
Yes, Mark, please do.
29 - mar k
What has "the economy crashing" got to do with it?
Economic crashes manifest in human misery.
30 - Jeannie Danna
I never get anything done around my house anymore .....I have to leave now :(
31 - roger nowosielski
Well, yes. But if you can limit them to cycles, they're bearable.
Besides, if you're a humanist you present yourself to be, you'd go along with the proposition that we don't live by bread alone.
32 - Cindy
Not sure how one is going to benevolize Capitalism's requirement for treating people like objects to take advantage of. That's the real biggie. Sorta would be like trying to become a Buddhist by reading Wayne Dyer...or Somik.
33 - roger nowosielski
One's perception of "being an object" - regardless of the inclinations or tendencies of "a system" to make them believe they're so - are solely up to the individual.
Which isn't to say the system is good or bad, only that a human being has the power as regards his own self-conception and sense of self-worth.
34 - ma r k
But if you can limit them to cycles, they're bearable.
I disagree. I had a hearty bowl of soup last night. Who am I to claim that my brother's growling empty stomach is bearable? The cycles are unacceptable.
35 - Cindy
Roger,
I am afraid you aren't familiar enough with my ideas to understand them. Maybe when I develop the ability to write I'll explain them in more detail to you.
Not that you wouldn't find fault with them. But at least then it would be fault based on actually understanding what I mean.
It is not about perception Roger. You're not really getting the point. Partly my fault for not writing--at least then you'd have a chance at getting it.
36 - roger nowosielski
I should like to believe that under the best case scenario, we can eliminate poverty and hunger - in fact, most abominable conditions of life, such as in parts of the Philippines, for instance. We certainly don't have a hunger problem in the US, I don't think. It's just a matter of spreading the condition of relative well being worldwide. And I don't see why it couldn't be done.
Perhaps it's too early to talk about the future, especially since the world hasn't taken personal responsibility yet for the human condition. I'd like to believe that these problems are solvable.
37 - Cindy
10,000 children go to bed hungry every night in the US. Almost a shame, really to be developing 'ideas' about what exists, when we have the option of looking up facts.
The children in the Philippines still existed and were hungry even when you failed to know about it.
38 - roger nowosielski
The reality is what we make it. We're the masters of it all. No one can make a person a slave unless they consent to it. It's more a matter of mind than the body - even if you have to die for what you believe.
And people have. And such is our history.
39 - Ruvy
Jeannie,
Mark Eden's article had nothing to do with the comment section. He called for fact checking and an ombudsman to turn to when the politics editor didn't do his job.
Oh, the comments section got mentioned enough all right. But we have two reasonably capable comments editors as volunteers here. Considering how bigoted comments editors can be (and are) elsewhere, they are almost tolerable.
Lately, though, they seem to need a little prodding to do the job of eliminating personal attacks here. Maybe, it's the new format we have here....
40 - Cindy
Dave has ideas, for example, that people 'deserve' what they get under Capitalism. Some people are just lazy. 1 in 4 homeless are crack moms.
Whoops...sorry I meant 1 in 4 homeless are veterans.
41 - zingzing
"Lately, though, they seem to need a little prodding to do the job of eliminating personal attacks here. Maybe, it's the new format we have here...."
well, they caught you recently, then wen terribly overboard in deleting comments left and right. it was strange to watch. they even deleted the one where i'm complaining about their... enthusiasm, i guess. i wonder if this one will survive.
42 - Baronius
Can you even talk about an American "cultural empire" anymore? No one listens to our music. Our TV shows are imports. Most of our movies are written for overseas markets, so they're not particularly American, and 1/3 of the stars are Australian.
We're important in literature and video games (which is a pretty big industry).
43 - roger nowosielski
That statistic is bullshit. We have sufficient safety net in US to the effect that no one can suffer from hunger.
It's a typical attitude of a well-to-do American who has no conception how privileged they are when compared to the rest of the world. To speak of hunger in US and then to go on to speak of hunger in other parts of the world is the epitome of hypocrisy, or at least of being deluded.
There are no relevant comparisons!
44 - Cindy
Roger,
I am very happy you are so brave on behalf of people who were subjected to slavery, Jews who were murdered. Palestinians who are being murdered as we write. Children who are starving to death, literally.
How very kind of you to consider that all they have to do is just say no to starvation. Or just submit to death--kill themselves for the cause. How noble of you to volunteer them It's all their own doing that way. Almost sounds like some Western Buddhist philosophy you've got going on there.
45 - Cindy
Roger,
We have enough food to feed the entire world. So, I guess all statistics are bullshit. No one needs to starve--so I guess there actually is no hunger.
46 - Baronius
Hey, you know what might be interesting? If Cindy and Roger don't turn this thread into another discussion of the evils of capitalism.
47 - Cindy
Guess I am still a warrior. Better go involve myself elsewhere.
48 - roger nowosielski
You can't eliminate human brutality. It's a fact of life. Do I condone it? Definitely not.
But you're escalating my remarks beyond the what is intended. I was speaking of Americans by and large - by all means the most privileged of the crop. And I was speaking of OUR ability to rise above the exploitation system, not anybody else's.
So go ahead and keep in misinterpreting what I say. Whatever you heart desires.
49 - Cindy
And I was speaking of OUR ability to rise above the exploitation system, not anybody else's.
Okay. I am with you on that goal.
50 - roger nowosielski
Baronius,
If you do pay attention, I do regard capitalism as evil, but as necessary evil.
The other party is vehemently opposed to any rendition or version thereof.
So that's just for starters.
51 - roger nowosielski
The main disagreement is - you think it's doable by changing political/social relations. I happen to think that apart from whatever social/political conditions we find ourselves in, it's in the mind. Especially in the US, where our freedoms and liberties haven't been abrogated yet.
52 - Cindy
#9 - Mark
Oh, I see. But our nature can be changed, don't you think? :-)
53 - Ruvy
As for the article, Dave, raised in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria as a child, ever insists that America is not an empire. I find this assertion astounding, considering that the reason he was raised in my neighborhood at all (Israel is just a grenade's throw away from Jordan and Lebanon) is that the kinds of agencies the American government keeps overseas are those of an empire, even though there is no imperial purple in the American government. Dave's parents, American government employees there (I don't remember the name of the agency Dave mentioned in an article or comment thread) may well have viewed their role in the Middle East in an idealistic light, and may well have passed on that view to Dave, a view we see reflected in the article here (and Dave, I'm not attempting to cast aspersions or insult your parents at all. Let that be clear. Please do not regard my words that way. This is not meant to be personal or nasty).
What Dave continually misses is that imperial control need not involve legates controlling the internal affairs of foreign countries directly. Indirect control and coups d'état, real or threatened, are often enough to do the job. Jeannie's comment on how Germans regarded America as an empire are most telling, in this respect. West Germany, in 1980, was not an American dependency.
Not to worry though, folks!
Empires that are broke either implode - or find a way to fill up the kitty.... There is only so much shit and shinola that creditors will tolerate, and the Blessed of Hussein, running out of shinola, will have to resort to shit shortly.
Meow!
54 - Baronius
Roger, it's not a matter of me paying attention; the running debate between you and Cindy is simply unavoidable on BC Politics. I'm questioning whether it belongs on this thread. You paid lip service to the original article. Cindy didn't. Then you both headed down the most-travelled section of road this side of the New Jersey Turnpike. I just don't understand why it has to be re-argued here.
55 - Baronius
Ruvy, Jeannie didn't say that 1980's Germans regarded America as an empire, just that Americans were unpopular. Just because something is unpopular doesn't mean it's an empire. That accusation is tossed around so casually. And since when do you care what Germans think, anyway?
56 - Ruvy
well, they caught you recently,
Had they gotten rid of the vicious personal attack that prompted my verbal disemboweling of the person who made it, that disemboweling would never have occurred. They didn't and I did what I felt was necessary. I wasn't going to take that shit lying down. And I still won't.
The best defense is a good offense.....
57 - Cindy
The whole evil Capitalist thing is just not Bar's cup of tea Roger.
58 - Mark Schannon
Jeannie--hey, you mixed up Mark & Mark. Big deal, LOL. But glad you liked article.
There's a certain quality of violent agreement going on here. Roger, except for his comment about no hunger in America (oy), is basically echoing what some wise founding guy said, "Democracy's the worst form of gov't...except for all the rest."
It seems that capitalism is the worst economic system...except for all the rest.
Everyone agrees about its faults, but I'd rather work to fix them, increase sane, rational, honest government oversight (oh, he's so naive), minimize the obscene misdistribution of wealth, and try to make some form of capitalism work.
Anybody got another system we can try?
As to Dave's original article, it might help if we step back and try to define how we're using words like "empire," "imperialism," "sphere of influence," and even Baronius' question about "American culture."
I'm guessing that a lot of the argument stems for having different definitions for those concepts.
But what do I know. I'm no longer an expert.
And that's the truth.
In Jameson Veritas
59 - Ruvy
And since when do you care what Germans think, anyway?
I don't. But they do think, and what they thought 29 years ago affected Jeannie's ability to go out and have a good time when posted there.
60 - roger nowosielski
I truly believe it cannot. It's not our "nature" that is the problem, I think. That's a given. It's more a matter of elevating a human to the best they're capable of. We're both angels and devils, take your pick, capable of both Auschwitz and the finest in beauty and the sublime: Rembrandt, Beethoven, Keats and Shelley, Pindar - all these are monuments to human greatness. We're not monkeys, as your recent video tried to represent us. We're more like gods, aspiring gods perhaps, but still way closer to the divine than the animal, the mundane, the pedestrian. It's our makeup, our destiny perhaps.
It's only a matter of having Everyman believe that. And when that happens, only the sky is the limit.
That's why I shy from stressing our differences, It's the commonality we all share which should be the rallying point, the point of human convergence.
61 - Cindy
Well, I have all the faith in the world that Mark E. can change his nature. Maybe he will even write an article and not defend it (too much). :-)
(wow! you watched my video Roger!--thanks)
62 - Ruvy
the running debate between you and Cindy is simply unavoidable on BC Politics. I'm questioning whether it belongs on this thread.
Baronius, while I agree with you, if Roger and Cindy want to spend the next 170 comments arguing over what color eggs Mother Goose laid, or argue over the standard bullshit they continually lock horns over, that is well within the limits of the comments policy here. Having seen an alternative style of comment editing on Desicritics, and its disastrous results, I much prefer what I see here.
63 - Cindy
It seems that capitalism is the worst economic system...except for all the rest. Everyone agrees about its faults, but I'd rather work to fix them...
For me, that is like saying, this glue is fun to sniff, we have to fix it though so it doesn't cause brain damage.
"Except for all the rest"...all the rest contain the exact same problem, plus some extra ones...Capitalism just creates a group who benefit from it and like hypnotized sleepwalkers they are able to follow along like it is the pied piper of Hamlin, without ever developing the empathy they need to see what is going on around them--unless the economic ceiling falls down close by where they can't fail to hear the crash.
64 - Baronius
Ruvy, I'll grant you that the US military wasn't popular in Europe in 1980. That doesn't make us an empire. That's such a non sequitur that it's weird to even write it.
65 - roger nowosielski
I don't believe the comment cited in #63 are attributable to me, except by the faintest stretch of the imagination.
As to the sleepwalker comment, all I'm gonna say is that we're in charge of our own destiny - or at least in charge of whether we want to subscribe to anyone's definition of who we are or who we ought to be.
Exploitation, or attempts at exploitation, will be with us always. Fact of life. The point of difference has got to do with how we relate. It's beyond my powers to bring every human up to snuff. Only a god can embark on such a project. I can only hope that more and more will listen. Beyond that, it's out of my hands, as is the rest of my short life. I can only implore.
66 - Mark Schannon
#63 is me...and I was simply saying that you don't appear to be a blind, flag waving, capitalist is good for all and any type of person. You've already acknowledged its problems. But if I've mischaracterized your position, Roger, my apologies.
But Cindy, you're describing the worst, the excesses & you seem to refuse to see any of the good. And--if you don't like Reformed Capitalism (kind of like Reformed Judaism, Ruvy, LOL), then what do you suggest.
Provide an option...please.
In Jameson Veritas
67 - roger nowosielski
Thanks, Mark. Apparently, we're are on the same page - hoping for the best in humankind. And I'm just as certain that Cindy is too - otherwise I couldn't see her straight in the face.
And yes, that's exactly what I would like to see - a replacement. Because for all the talk on BC - never mind the theorists such as Marx or whomever - none have yet been able to come up with an alternative.
Which isn't to say I condone "the system." Only issue a challenge: Come up with something better, something that would preserve our individual freedoms and liberties as well.
I dare you.
68 - m a rk
Oh course capitalism has positives...without it we would not be in a position to move beyond it and 'feed the world' without worrying about getting a fucking percentage. We need the high level of productivity and technological innovation that capitalism has produced.
I agree with Rog about individual responsibility for the shape we're in. Things will change when the rich man realizes that he is worth no more than the beggar and that there is nothing necessary in the way things are.
69 - roger nowosielski
PS: "the (only) issue is the challenge . .. "
70 - m a rk
Mark, you call for an alternative. How about the ol' time idea of community and giving labor away. Why do we produce? To feed our comrades. Unrealistic on a mass scale, you say? How do you know?
71 - roger nowosielski
Exactemudo, my friend. I haven'tt been exactly handicapped for lack of money, though I'll be the first admit that lack of it has been the most debilitating influence in my own stinking life - more importantly, however, in the lives of others, too.
Which brings us to the next question, I suppose. Where do we go from here?
72 - m a Rk
Where do we go from here?
...try to come up with how if we eliminate price we can figure out what and how much to produce.
73 - Cindy
But Cindy, you're describing the worst, the excesses & you seem to refuse to see any of the good.
But Mark, actually I'm not merely describing the worst. Although I could see why you would guess that. I really have quite carefully and very thoroughly thought this through. Had I enough time and space to explain all the details...but it is much like your experience. How does one explain the details of a lifetime of work on a problem in the comments section?
The 'good' part is only 'good' for a few (if such unfairness to the rest can even be called 'good' in any meaningful way) and is only even of partial benefit to them (exclusively materially) whilst being the cause of much detriment to them in other ways.
74 - Baronius
Ruvy, I don't think that this site needs more external oversight. I think that those who keep repeating the same conversation should show personal restraint as well as respect for the authors.
75 - Mark Schannon
maRk--I fear you speak of a world that never existed and cannot exist. We live in a globally interconnected economic system. It's not as simple as a community coming together and working towards their common good. The "community" must now include raw materials from Africa, labor from Asia, drugs from South America (to keep the workers happy), and technology and knowledge workers from the U.S.
And because the economic standards of the various world regions are so different, price becomes an essential way to either screw them over OR reverse decades/centuries of mistreatment.
Cindy, capitalism has created more good than harm for more people in the West. By any standard--life expectancy, health, free time, standard of living, quality of life, we're a lot better off than our grandparents. True, over the past ten-twenty years or so, we've managed to mangle the middle class and create a uber-class of absurdly wealthy, but that can be fixed. Capitalism also gave rise to unions, environmental groups, consumer groups, and regulation. And now, one hopes, we have a Prez who'll use all those tools wisely.
Of course, one has to admit that we may have destroyed our own environment & ability to survive, which is a bad thing.
But hey, you don't break eggs, you don't get shells.
And that's the truth.
In Jameson Veritas