George OT:
If there is a huge resentment by foreigners, or envy, then I welcome it. It reminds me of the early 70s when there was a similar resentment against El Yanqui. Then the cost of LBJ's mindless escalation of Vietnam coupled with the OPEC shock gave us Nixonomics and Jimmy's "national malaise" and helicopters crashing in the desert. While I'm not in favor of any Japanese style hubris (and that is really the thing to guard against, more ill-fated pan global fantasies that can lead to another land war in, say, Asia) being the target of envy and regular potshots is just a cost of doing business as Numero Uno. Look in any industry and see how the top dog is treated (Microsoft, Nike, etc.). To borrow a metaphor from Slider, there are always going to be chihuahuas around, and the British intellectual from the 1930s on has simply been the Chihuahua nonpareil. The only thing more ridiculous would be to listen to a Parisian intellectual in the tradition of, say, Sartre.
It won't be the outside forces which take the U.S. down a peg, in any event, it will be internal.
With the European economy still tottering, the Euro an absolute fiasco, most of the European welfare state still intact, and with many countries still operating under de facto class sytems, it must be a nasty thumb in the eye to see the American colossus bounding from strength to strength. I can sympathize with them, but I wouldn't want to trade places with them, or listen too much to their policy views. It would be like copying the Super Bowl game plans from the Eagles in 1982.
We will definitely take a breather, maybe even a recession, in the next 1-2 years, but our recession will still be more prosperous than any French or German (or British!!) boom you'll see in the next 10 years.
JMVVHO, of course. |
