Mary, that reads like a pean to the British Empire.
Your description is of what has been, and is, not will be. People have great difficulty imagining anything but a linear projection into the future. Unfortunately for them, nature works on a bubbling cauldron, fractalized crystallisation process rather than a straight line of present into the future, despite the indubitable causal relationships linkage to the past.
I'll explain:
<the leadership role that we naturally fulfill.>
Sun of God emperor status, long live the King, natural right to rule, beloved of all at the zenith of their glory. Be very afraid. Hubris comes before a fall. And pride. And who is "we"? Hangers-on and scions of great men often mistake themselves for the producer of the glory. That's tribal affiliation and natural dominance hierarchy attachment. Would you say "we" includes the Jerry Springer crowd scenes? Giggle. I know you know the Jerry Springer crowd does NOT have any innate right or natural role of leadership in the world.
When one is feeling glorious is the time to be most concerned about what comes next.
<There is a leadership vacuum, and we know nature will not let vacuums exist for long. The US will inevitabley fill that vacuum.>
Ah, the inevitable inevitability, albeit misspelled [inevitably being correct] and going wrong before it was even past your fingers on the keyboard. Despite American being the lingua franca. The glories of Manifest Destiny. pbs.org
There are other possibilities than USA Manifest Destiny to be the glory of the world. Most things have a product life cycle. In fact, offhand, I can't think of anything that didn't, though the universe is still only middle-aged and the sun has a billion years to run [so they say].
I'm not sure what the USA's reign will be, but downfalls can come quickly, and usually do, because fear and collapse and destruction are much, much, much quicker acting than a century or two of arduous day by day effort in bit by bit construction of an almost infinitely complex system.
An all-out panic at the prospect of a US$ implosion for example would do the trick in not much longer than an instant. But you have nothing to fear, but fear itself. I'm sure you can control the fear of people around the world. Just threaten them with death, if they look like panicking or otherwise going awol. They should control fear. After all, with the world's biggest and best military by a long, long way, you can order people to do anything, include not being scared.
Meanwhile, not that this is a threat, just a natural event underway, I am planning on the demise of the US$. I expect that the US$ will have zero value in about 20 years, replaced by my new all singing and dancing, complete with bells and whistles, cyberspace currency, run by the people, for the people, not by a clique of Washington central planners enjoying the profits of control, funded by the other 6 billion of us.
<1. We are strategically located between East and West. We border both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans.>
In a non-dimensional world, a geographic location is meaningless. The idea of oceans as being significant is a quaint 19th century notion, which lasted into the 20th century, like the industrial revolution.
You mean the land mass where most of "we" live. But "we" also live in other countries and more importantly, have investments all over the world and have supplies from all over the world. "We" being Americans, are fully integrated with the rest in a borderless world [borderless for many purposes which are increasingly important].
<2. American English is the de facto global language. All programming languages are rooted in American. All technical manuals that have global relevance have to have an American version.>
Now that's a giggle Mary. American is the lingua franca, but think where American came from and what happened to the people who gave English to the world. It wasn't Americans. Americans were given English by the English and while changing a bit of spelling, kept it.
We the Sheeple of the world can do as we did with English, namely use it and ignore the people who provided it. It's convenient for Americans that American is the lingua franca, but there are more people using English in India than in the USA. Well, that might still be a slight exaggeration, but if I include China, Japan, Europe then I think I'm well ahead in numbers already. So I don't see that leadership inevitably goes to the USA because most people around the world use American.
I've adopted English [or American at times] as my lingo, but that doesn't make me kowtow to Jerry Springer's crowd, or King George II, or even my great idol Uncle Al KBE. I use them for particular purposes, while they are useful. We have a symbiotic deal but I haven't signed up for a lifelong arrangement and neither have they. They might get lazy and I might have to fire them.
<3. We own the intellectual property that cyberspace feeds on eg., Intel, Microsoft, CDMA, google, etc.>
Actually Mary, I own the intellectual property of QUALCOMM [CDMA] along with other shareholders. I paid for it to be developed because I figured out that Fourier transforms in cunning little ASICs would be a good way of moving data through the aether. Jerry Springer's gang doesn't own it - well, they do in that they control the legal system which protects it, and my ownership. They can steal my property, once [some of it]. But that's not really ownership. Theft has been proven around the world to be a very poor way of remaining in a leadership position and often a good way of ending up dead [like Adolf, Saddam, Pol Pot, Idi Amin etc].
I also pay, by taxation, for the legal, police and military systems to protect my property. I pay a LOT of taxes! More than many of the Jerry Springer mob. But I don't get a vote. No taxation without representation say I [I just invented that phrase, but Americans don't seem to like it - I think it has an excellent ring to it].
<4. You may hate it, but the global culture is American - Coca Cola, Starbucks, StarWars (the movie), Mac Donalds, Brad Pits, surfing. For Abba to be recognized globally, they have to sing in American. There is no way any Chinese Pop group that will make it globally can do it if they don't do it in American.>
The global culture isn't actually American. It's Mqurician. I am self-defining and create my own reality, using tools symbiotically provided by millions and billions of other people who are also self-defining. Have you heard of free will? It's a particularly human idea, which parents of 2 year olds learn is an intrinsic part of being human.
The fact that many cultural things adopted by millions and billions have emanated from the USA doesn't mean that is a permanent feature of the cultural landscape. If you visit other countries and wander around their villages, you might be surprised how little the glorious culture of Disneyland has permeated the planet. There's more to culture than what happens on tv. Though Calvin [of Calvin and Hobbes] asserts that reality is defined by tv. If not on tv, it's not real, like a tree falling in a Siberian forest isn't real, or a butterfly taking off in a Siberian forest isn't real, though it could well produce a hurricane in the USA. Look out for those butterflies and falling trees, even though you can't see them or hear them.
<5. Our capitil markets are the biggest and baddest. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.>
The capital, the capitil, the Capitol? Pfft. Actually, it's not quite true that "if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere". A guy by the name of Jay Chen has made money helping people "who can make it anywhere" get into China. Then he helps them get out again, licking their wounds and counting their losses.
Yes, it's true that the capital markets, financial instruments, laws, regulators and prisons make the USA a great place to invest and I admire it greatly. And entrusted all our investments to it. It's much better than the rorts of New Zealand for example [though Enron, Worldcon and others show that nowhere is completely safe or trustworthy and one can't depend on bureaucracy completely and should also trust trustworthy people, such as Irwin Jacobs, rather than institutions].
Other places are pretty good too.
<But, I shouldn't really underestimate George Bush. If anybody can screw it up for us it is the Bush, Cheney, and Rove team.
Give them another term or two in office, and you are not going to recognise the landscape.>
They are okay. I quite like King George II in many ways. I don't think he's going to play a big part in the transition to the USA as being just another also-ran in life's long history. Speaking of which - rant here on "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing", from another King, from a time gone by ... Message 21341288
<<Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
SIGNIFYING nothing.
--MacBeth V.v. >
>
It's later than you think Mary. And that's my Sunday sermon.
Mqurice |
