I don't see how America gets through this while remaining a super power. We won't turn into a third world nation (at least, not permanently,) but with a forced reduction in spending we'll have a smaller military (I guess we can lose the trannies and dog soldiers) and our economy will contract - hard.
Maybe that's what Q meant about the ending won't be for everyone... we all grew up with "USA #1!" and that self-perception will be difficult to let go.
Yes, without 1000+ military bases around the world (Rome ruled their empire with roughly a tenth as many) the US will have to settle for being a free society with a government that doesn't meddle in the affairs of every other nation on Earth.
The meddling has always been sold as "compassionate" and "necessary" and sometimes there was an element of that in the plan of the moment, but even in the best cases much corruption seeped in -- and in most cases (wrecking Libya comes to mind as a particularly awful example) there really WAS no compassion or honest necessity involved.
Good points. I always chalked up our meddling as a way to promote our economic interests abroad, which is sort of good... except of course profits were funneled back to politicians for their cut and then the military industrial complex had to be expanded to secure all of those economic interests.
I don't see how America gets through this while remaining a super power. We won't turn into a third world nation (at least, not permanently,) but with a forced reduction in spending we'll have a smaller military (I guess we can lose the trannies and dog soldiers) and our economy will contract - hard.
Maybe that's what Q meant about the ending won't be for everyone... we all grew up with "USA #1!" and that self-perception will be difficult to let go.
Yes, without 1000+ military bases around the world (Rome ruled their empire with roughly a tenth as many) the US will have to settle for being a free society with a government that doesn't meddle in the affairs of every other nation on Earth.
The meddling has always been sold as "compassionate" and "necessary" and sometimes there was an element of that in the plan of the moment, but even in the best cases much corruption seeped in -- and in most cases (wrecking Libya comes to mind as a particularly awful example) there really WAS no compassion or honest necessity involved.
Good points. I always chalked up our meddling as a way to promote our economic interests abroad, which is sort of good... except of course profits were funneled back to politicians for their cut and then the military industrial complex had to be expanded to secure all of those economic interests.