Moderator: bbmods
a few??? Don't get me started!David wrote:^ Even if you don't care about people, blowing China up would kill a pretty damn large amount of animals. Perhaps if you'd spent time there you'd have a more nuanced view of Chinese people too and be quicker to rush to their defence, rather than castigating a billion based on the behaviour of a few.
Perhaps. But China, too, is riddled with corruption and hidden economic weakness masked by its its improvement from a terribly low base. China's ability to misallocate capital compared to the USA is characteristic of all dictatorships, where the uS has the resilience and reformability that comes from a free press, an adversarial system of government, and a long institutional tradition of separate powers. The Chinese have many potential strengths, but their system of government has many weaknesses. If you see the change of hegemon from a democratic power to a dictatorship as neutral, I strongly beg to differ.Tannin wrote: They won't. It's 20 years too late for the USA. they are part the point of no return now. You and I won't live to see it, but it's going to be a Chinese century. The USA is riddled with division and corruption and weakness. It is still a mighty power - militarily, culturally, economically - but it is rotten at the core and will fail just as surely as others like it in history - think the Ottomans, Imperial Role, Byzantium.
It's no secret that I dislike the USA, but make no mistake: when we are forced to exchange our national subservience to America with subservience to China, as we surely will be, we will be stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire. But it won't be us that see that day (unless it arrives faster than I expect) it will be our children.
Ok fair enough, I stand corrected.David wrote:Well, me too, but not because I think Chinese people are barbarians or subhumans. For starters, the amount of cultural and ethnic diversity in the country is staggering, and from what I recall the dog festival is a specific cultural tradition only followed in a specific part of the country. As a counterpoint, there are many people (I'm guessing you included) who think bullfighting is cruel, but I doubt you'd encourage the bombing of Spain as a result.
I understand your comment was at least somewhat flippant, but I still hate that because, ultimately, we live in a world in which thousands can be and are casually bombed with little regard for their humanity. Such sweeping dehumanisation is a key reason why it's allowed to happen.
They've certainly been followers in many respects as well. Slavery was abandoned there decades after much of Europe had banned it; women, too, received the vote 15-20 years after suffrage was won here and elsewhere. More recently, the push for same-sex marriage in the US followed its success in Europe and Canada, and the US still lags behind the rest of the Western world in terms of its healthcare system, whereas their education and prison systems remain primitive compared to those of more innovative European countries, a situation borne out by the data. None of this is to deny that the US has had a profound influence on the way the world has been shaped at times, but merely to point out that they are part of an overall global exchange of ideas, one in which they are often among the stragglers, not the trailblazers.Mugwump wrote:
As for your view that we only hear so much about the US because of media ownership, I think that's almost certainly untrue. Nearly every major cultural movement since the Second World War, and many before, have emanated, for good or ill, from that extraordinarily fertile society. Feminism, political correctness, litigation-frenzy, racial pluralism and multiculturalism (aka "diversity"), drug and youth culture, not to mention most of the ideas that guide modern business (again, for good or ill) have all been largely shaped by the US. That's why what happens there matters, and why it is reported. It's also why the BBC (inter alia) reports on American trends so heavily.
We always seem to hear just how bad the health system is in the USA. Well according to the WHO, they're not too bad, are they.....David wrote:They've certainly been followers in many respects as well. Slavery was abandoned there decades after much of Europe had banned it; women, too, received the vote 15-20 years after suffrage was won here and elsewhere. More recently, the push for same-sex marriage in the US followed its success in Europe and Canada, and the US still lags behind the rest of the Western world in terms of its healthcare system, whereas their education and prison systems remain primitive compared to those of more innovative European countries, a situation borne out by the data. None of this is to deny that the US has had a profound influence on the way the world has been shaped at times, but merely to point out that they are part of an overall global exchange of ideas, one in which they are often among the stragglers, not the trailblazers.Mugwump wrote:
As for your view that we only hear so much about the US because of media ownership, I think that's almost certainly untrue. Nearly every major cultural movement since the Second World War, and many before, have emanated, for good or ill, from that extraordinarily fertile society. Feminism, political correctness, litigation-frenzy, racial pluralism and multiculturalism (aka "diversity"), drug and youth culture, not to mention most of the ideas that guide modern business (again, for good or ill) have all been largely shaped by the US. That's why what happens there matters, and why it is reported. It's also why the BBC (inter alia) reports on American trends so heavily.
