by FullMoon » Sun May 04, 2025 12:05 pm
spottybrowncow wrote: ↑Fri May 02, 2025 8:31 pm
I would like to encourage all GD readers to to read this:
https://now.tufts.edu/2019/11/21/why-un ... superpower
It is somewhat dated (2019), but I think still highly relevant. In a time of increasing pessimism and doomsaying, it offered me an engagingly different perspective - maybe right, maybe wrong, but engaging, nonetheless. I look forward to others' feedback.
Spotty
Yale historian Paul Kennedy conducted a famous study comparing great powers over the past five hundred years and concluded: “Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power; nothing.” The United States is, quite simply, “the greatest superpower ever.”
People liked the fact that although John was gloomy about the terrible trials we're going to face, the USA will overcome and continue on afterwards. But even with our lopsided advantages in many ways, we're also dangerously weak in other critical areas. We're far too vulnerable in critical areas and most people have extremely limited ability to take care of their own basic living needs outside of the system that's known to be extremely vulnerable.
It's a time of rapid and radical change unseen in almost anyone's lifetime. It's easy now to be pessimistic and jump on the doomsaying bandwagon and we see the trend whereas before we were outliers.
But we have to hold out some hope and do our best, for those of us responsible for the lives of others it's important to both recognize the mortal danger we're all facing imminently but also hold out hope that we can make efforts to secure and protect them.
What happens on the society and global level we'll potentially never know... while we try to hold on living in what will be primitive conditions for an extended period of time. Better to get fully prepared now than wish you had done so when you're feeling like that clueless father in Obama's movie. That's my game plan. Good luck to everyone!
[quote=spottybrowncow post_id=91067 time=1746232289 user_id=3064]
I would like to encourage all GD readers to to read this:
https://now.tufts.edu/2019/11/21/why-united-states-only-superpower
It is somewhat dated (2019), but I think still highly relevant. In a time of increasing pessimism and doomsaying, it offered me an engagingly different perspective - maybe right, maybe wrong, but engaging, nonetheless. I look forward to others' feedback.
Spotty
[/quote]
[quote]Yale historian Paul Kennedy conducted a famous study comparing great powers over the past five hundred years and concluded: “Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power; nothing.” The United States is, quite simply, “the greatest superpower ever.”[/quote]
People liked the fact that although John was gloomy about the terrible trials we're going to face, the USA will overcome and continue on afterwards. But even with our lopsided advantages in many ways, we're also dangerously weak in other critical areas. We're far too vulnerable in critical areas and most people have extremely limited ability to take care of their own basic living needs outside of the system that's known to be extremely vulnerable.
It's a time of rapid and radical change unseen in almost anyone's lifetime. It's easy now to be pessimistic and jump on the doomsaying bandwagon and we see the trend whereas before we were outliers.
But we have to hold out some hope and do our best, for those of us responsible for the lives of others it's important to both recognize the mortal danger we're all facing imminently but also hold out hope that we can make efforts to secure and protect them.
What happens on the society and global level we'll potentially never know... while we try to hold on living in what will be primitive conditions for an extended period of time. Better to get fully prepared now than wish you had done so when you're feeling like that clueless father in Obama's movie. That's my game plan. Good luck to everyone!