So, I read the whole Der Spiegel piece (in the original English) which you can read here:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,726447,00.html
It very concisely lays out - in clear Prussian logic - why America is DOOOOOOOMED. And, yeah, we probably are sort of doomed. No, not probably. We're DOOOOOOOOMED.
Basically, we have an unsustainable way of life. We value the wrong things and then pursue those wrong things through dubious methods. And it's not ACORN's fault, or Clinton's, or Greenspan's, or Bush's, or Fannie Mae's. It's all of us. (Although our future Teutonic overlords put a larger share of the blame on the Right.)
The broader question is: Are we OK with that? Is American Exceptionalism so ingrained in us that we might as well swallow the business end of a shotgun if we slip to number two?
Britain fell pretty far down the ladder of awesomeness, but it doesn't suck to be British. Except for the weather, but with global warming the weather will suck for all of us anyway.
What would it mean if we forfeited our (atypical) place at the top of the ladder? China's going to supplant us economically at some point anyway. Can we live an a multipolar world?
I find myself strangely ambivalent about not being Top Dog anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment