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Zonie63 -> RE: ARE YOU SCARED, BOOBY? (3/1/2015 10:44:42 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: vincentML
This is from the March issue of The Atlantic Magazine (newsstand edition p.19):
President Obama catches flak for his supposed underreaction to crises in the Middle East, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Instead of leading, the professorial president lectures the American people not to be so darned worried. “If you watch the nightly news, it feels like the world is falling apart,” he said last August. “I promise you things are much less dangerous now than they were 20 years ago, 25 years ago, or 30 years ago. This is not something comparable to the challenges we faced during the Cold War.” Blame social media, he tells us, for shoving so much upsetting stuff in our faces.
Naturally Obama’s pontifications draw protests. “I strongly disagree with the president's assertions last night that America is safer,” said Senator John McCain. “By no objective measurement is America safer.” Danger abounds! In 2012, General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pronounced the world “more dangerous than it has ever been.” That was before The Islamic State, or ISIS, took over swaths of Iraq. Senator Lindsey Graham has warned that failure to defeat ISIS “will open the gates of hell to spill out on the world.” Obama appears to have his doubts: a few months after Chuck Hagel, then the Defense Secretary, pronounced ISIS an imminent threat, not just to the United States but “to every stabilized country on Earth,” Obama sacked him.
Is Obama right, or is he clueless?
Are McCain and Graham right, or are they self-serving politicians?
I'm not sure who is right or whether America is any more or less safe than we were 20-30 years ago. I suppose much of it would depend on how one defines "safe."
One thing I've noticed is that the interventionists and warmongers of America seem to count on the fact that not very many Americans can read maps or know much about world geography. This way, they can easily manipulate people into thinking that there's some sort of "imminent threat" to American soil, when a simple look at any competent world map outlining the current geopolitical situation would quickly disprove any notions of any "imminent threat" from the Middle East or Ukraine.
If their concern is terrorism, then that's a domestic security issue. Taking military action in the Middle East would not do thing one to protect us from terrorists who could potentially already be on our soil. But concerns about internal security, questions of who might be a terrorist and who might become "radicalized" - those can lead to another political can of worms. History has shown that whenever the public is worked up into believing that there are "enemies among us," it does not usually go well.
The situation in Ukraine might be a bit more complicated in that it has the potential to become a threat to the United States - but only if the warmongers and interventionists want it to be such. Russia itself has generally been viewed as a potential "threat" to some degree or another - even long before they ever became communist. Other would-be world conquerors viewed Russia as a prize to be taken.
If McCain and Graham are really trying to drum up public opinion and suggest we get involved in a war with the Russians on their own soil, then they might consider brushing up on their history and take a look at what happened to the last guy who tried that. Being a self-serving politician is one thing, but crazed megalomania based on paranoid fear is a far more dangerous threat to a nation's well-being than anything else.
quote:
Are you scared, booby? Are you worried about dangerous times? Are there geopolitical or technical monsters keeping you awake at night? Or are the MSM and the social media giant boogie men beasts feeding us a line of fright to serve their own ends?
Obama: What, me worry?
McCain & Graham: the sky is falling, the sky is falling?
Fuck em, take another toke on this good shit and keep on truckin’?
I'm not particularly scared of any imminent threat. The world outside my window seems rather peaceful at the moment, which is rather typical for a Sunday morning. Of course, there's the usual threat of street crime - along with a fair number of poor drivers who might be deemed a "threat" from a certain point of view, considering the number of auto accidents out there.
As for the times we're living in, I suppose I've gotten to the point in my life where I've been hearing about all these "threats" around the world, as well as growing up on a slew of post-apocalyptic and nuclear war movies...perhaps it doesn't faze me as much as it used to. Then there are those who are really big on Bible prophecy and see every crisis in the world as some sort of harbinger of doom and that we're heading towards Armageddon.
Of course, there are potential long-term concerns one might have about the overall future of America and the world as a whole, and if we look at those concerns rationally and try to prepare for them before they become "imminent threats," then that would be a wiser course of action.
Then there are potential environmental threats which may be a problem even if we solve all our geopolitical troubles and all nations and peoples come together as one big happy family embracing freedom, truth, justice and the American Way. So, even if our policy is successful in creating a peaceful and stable world (not that I'm saying that's their actual goal), we may still have other things to worry about.
For many of the problems in this world I may worry about, I think we'd be better equipped to handle them if we really could set aside our differences and work in common cause for the betterment of our species and planet. But human beings are too fucked up for that to ever come to pass.
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