Gut check time

[whosinpower]

The United States is dominant - the alpha of world affairs, the lone superpower sitting atop the entire world.

My question or enquiry to historical DU buffs - is how did the US get there? Was it the benevolent democratic ideal where people could in fact control their destiny? Did America become so dominant because their policies are correct....or did America become dominant and enjoy great wealth, power and influence by a variety of means in suppressing other nations - economically and militarily?

You see - our entire culture is at stake. Perhaps the only way to preserve the status quo is the Bush way - when I say status quo, I mean our economy, our culture, our wealth, our influence, our power....and yet I cannot stomach that.....thoughts anyone? no flames please - this is just a friendly discussion....

[Avalux]

1. The Bush Way

will not preserve the status quo, it will lead to the destruction of our country and perhaps the rest of the world. At this point, I don't think the "status quo" is a good thing. Our country has experienced numerous significant changes since it's birth and I think it's time for another. We do control our destiny. We must believe that.

[indigobusiness]

3. The status quo

is the enemy.

[democratreformed]

2. Dear Sir, No flames from me.

I have often leaned toward believing that, as you say, the "Bush way" is the only way to maintain our current economy, wealth, influence, and power.

Having pondered that notion and, at times, pretending that it is true, I came to the conclusion that I do not WANT to maintain our current economy, wealth, influence, and power if that means killing thousands of innocent people.

The other conclusion that I came to is this - the mistake he made, if this is true, was in assuming that people were too stupid to understand the true implications of Sadaam's switch to the euro for oil trade. If he had been honest, some people might not have been so against what he did. Sadly, they would have thought only of their own economic interests. I still would not be one of those people, though.

Lastly, having pondered this some more, I tend to believe that there is rarely ever only one solution to a problem. I don't pretend to know a great deal about all the implications of our potential economic collapse. But, it seems to me that this war has only added to our economic problems. And, surely, there was (and still is) some other way for us to make a transition and still be viable in the world as a whole.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. The United States of America needs to take heed because every day

the world rolls over someone who is sitting on top of it. True that.

[aquart]

5. Honey , recheck your gut. We are not what we were.

This "lone superpower" has been exposed as having a military totally inadequate to our frightening ambitions of empire. If attacked, right now, we might be able to get off some nukes, big deal, but defend ourselves?

Our economy is in RUINS. China fucking owns us. If they call in the debt, we crumble. So far, they've needed us. But this week they cut major major commercial deals with BRAZIL, the new nuke power. Brazil, which, under the radar of the planet, sent an envoy to deposed Aristide. What does it mean, talking to a deposed nobody? It means that Brazil is bidding to occupy the power vacuum in the Americas left by idiot George's arrogant incompetence.

So let's see. China holds our debt, and is becoming best friends with the new competition. Gee whiz, I feel safe and secure, don't you?

Superpower, my ass. People are still living in the nineties, if they believe that. Wake up, smell the wreckage. This is a second, soon to be third rate banana republic and pretty soon we won't be able to afford the bananas.

[whosinpower]

11. You misunderstood

My writing is not as clear as it should be...look - the US holds dominance in the world today. That is simply a fact. What I was enquiring was if anyone ever really considered how it got there - was it luck? Was it just good planning and correct policies that uplifted its people to the point where its society prospered? OR was it by suppressing other nations - either economically or militarily or coercion or all of the above???

So - perhaps we are just a paper tiger - but the fact remains that the US currently spends more than DOUBLE what the rest of the entire world spends on defense. And the US economy rules or influences all others.

[aquart]

12. And I am saying your first statement is false.

I didn't misunderstand a thing. You want to discuss history, but your now is on quicksand.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

17. US economy rules or influences all others.

freeper friends... it is a sort of a beast that so say cannot be challenged. Yes.. it is responsible for untold human suffering that the average American will never read about, never be made aware of.. and even if they were... they would prolly never give a hoot anyhoo.

[OrwellwasRight]

18. It was a combination of all you describe--

Taken together, the responses here paint a very good answer to your question.

Basically, the US had the great luck to be endowed with the richest natural resources of any nation (and we did make sure of that endowment by engaging in genocide against Native Americans) combined with skilled, hard-working immigrants driven out of Europe by religious intolerance (again foreshadowing what may happen to us as our religious intolerance increases). But until WWI pretty much destroyed Europe, it wasn't entirely clear that the US would be the next "core" economy; Germany was giving us a great run for our money (literally) during the UK's economic decline.

Our prosperity increased with our imperialism and military might from 1898; since 1945, there has been no doubt that the US was the greatest economic power in the world. We engaged in the overthrow of popularly supported governments--that were NO threat to us--in places like Nicaragua and Chile in oder to maintain our world economic hegemony. We've also been very wasteful, using more of the world's resources on an absolute and per person basis than any other nation.

Unfortunately, Bush or no-Bush, we have stop manufacturing and focused on financial sectors. This same pattern prevailed in Spain, Holland, and the UK before their respective downfalls. We came to prominence using protectionism, but now we preach globalism. Globalism will likely save the wealthiest families and corporations, but it is clearly harming our workers' rights and our environment. Again, protectionism switched to globalism as the previous core countries faced their decline.

Perhaps the most productive question to ask is not whether Bush & Co's policies can keep us at the top, but what kind of culture will we become in our post-ascendancy? Will we become a banana republic, as some on this post have predicted, or can we figure out a way to make it work, not only economically, but with each other in our multi-religious, multi-racial, multi-language society?

[OrwellwasRight]

6. I highly recommend that you read Wealth & Politics by

Kevin Phillips. It reviews the history of wealth & its relationship to political power in the US, while comparing the US's rise to ascendancy to the ascendancies of Spain, Holland, and the UK.

I haven't finished the book yet, but one major theme is that the US is already showing signs that we've past our peak and we are on the downhill slide. He marshalls evidence and makes a good case, particulary since I have seen similar arguments from post-Marxist economists studying "core," "semi-periphery," and "periphery" nations.

Anyway, what do you mean by "culture?" If our culture of racism, misogyny, and homophobia is at stake, I say rot in hell, let's get a new culture. If our bullshit rugged individualism is at stake, I say bye-bye, bring on the communitarian ideals. Many western and scandinavian European countries have higher average incomes, shorter work weeks, longer vacations, better health status, less obesity, and longer lifespans than we do. But we are not even allowed to discuss this in mainstream political debates.

If the downfall of American culture means we can actually expand the agenda of options that are open for discussion and we can discuss in what ways the European culture is superior to ours, then I say bring the American culture down. BTW, I also recommend Two Faces of Power (I think that is by Bacharach & Baratz), which is about controlling the agenda and limiting public choice. I think Rove uses it as his bible.

Interesting post. Thanks for the question.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

7. suppressing other nations - economically and militarily?

Absolutely this... absolutely.

Read All the Shah's Men, Silence on the Mountain, Power Politics, you know... the books they rather didn't exist that were birthed out of people who found their conscience after being involved in this debauchery in some instances.

[canuckforpeace]

8. Combinations of things

My opinion in a nutshell.

When the Europeans first came to North America they literally seized a continent bursting with natural resources which they reaped and used to build up the country and sell to Europe. Of course first they had to subdue the native populations and add to that slavery and, well you know.

That's the bad side.

On the good side, the newcomers brought brains, initiative, desire, innovation, etc.

Now natural resources are running out and I fear war will be an inevitable part of life for future generations.

[pop goes the weasel]

9. it does make you wonder about our culture

In words that could have come from the Bush White House, Josiah Strong described Americans, in his 1885 book Our Country, as a "race of unequaled energy, with all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth behind it--the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization--having developed peculiarly aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutions upon mankind...."

There was great dissent in the US about the country going this way, with people ranging from Samuel Gompers to Andrew Carnegie ultimately forging an Anti-Imperialist League in 1898, but by that time it was too late by several decades. Maybe too late by centuries. The US is, after all, the child of British imperial ambitions. The expansionistic social structure nurtured during the colonial period was never seriously challenged even during the early years of the Republic.

[BlueHandDuo]

14. We don't have a culture...

...we live in a multicultural society.

But the current government seems to want to impose a Christian fundamentalist, macaroni-and-Velveeta culture on the whole country, in the name of "preserving" it.

[scarletwoman]

10. The answer is your 2nd option: suppressing other nations

Some educational material to check out:

Chronology of American State Terrorism
http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/ChronologyofTerror.html

Killing Hope by William Blum (excerpts)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/KillingHope_page.html

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn (excerpts)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/PeoplesHistory_Zinn.html

The Origins of the Overclass by Steve Kangas
http://mirrors.korpios.org/resurgent/L-overclass.html

War is a Racket by Major General Smedley Butler
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

Even now, we lie to ourselves about Vietnam by Robert Jensen
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/clinton-vietnam.htm

I could post links all night, but these ought to be plenty to help you wrap your mind around the fact that the U.S. government has been rampaging around the world dealing death and disorder for a very long time.

edited to add: American culture is based in massive denial -- from the initial genocide of the Native peoples out of which this nation was formed, to ongoing atrocities it commits all over the planet.

sw

[DireStrike]

13. Right place, Right time, Right basic government.

America rose above the powers that were at its inception because of our land and potential population, and lucky/good weathering of conflicts among "equals", like the Mexican war.

Once that happened, the stage was set for our dominance of the western world. Population expansion and a shared national identity ensured that we would pool the resources of our vast country in a way unheard of in the European states. The Span-Am war let us cut our teeth as a world power. The Monroe doctrine was a toothless gambit that nonetheless may have helped scare off the Europeans. The "Land of opportunity" myth pulled in countless immigrants. The general populace never likes immigrants because they mean job competition, but what usually happens is that when immigration is fairly difficult, intelligent/successful immigrants are the ones that make it over, and that influx helps the nation.

WWI messed up Europe. We joined them halfway through to reap the benefits of the war, but not most of the damage. See also WWII.

Russia was the only nation poised to challenge us in terms of population, land, shared goal... and they lost countless millions of men in WWII. They were at a disadvantage from the start. After WWII, they were surrounded still by potential enemies. Afghanistan was right at their doorstep; Vietnam was on the other side of the world for us.

I'm not sure enough about Asian history to posit a guess as to why a large superpower hadn't yet developed in that area. Anyway, China is coming along nicely.

[mmonk]

15. The bush way threatens our way of life

and our institutions. The EU now pretty much controls international trade rules and product standards. With some crazy notion that we can can control the world by a 19th century classical definition of empire and the "empire of bases" concept, we delude ourselves. No, the bush way accelerates our decline.

[DireStrike]

16. I agree. Read Sun Tzu - Art of War

Small countries, or groups, can beat large countries, or groups. It's all about riding the waves of circumstance.

Bushco doesn't ride at all. They stride brazenly about. They are paragons of privelege. They don't understand who they are or how they got there, and they extend that misunderstanding to America.