JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum America's Watershed Election.

Once again Mike hits the nail on the head. And your point about Russia and Kosovo is eye opening. Now it makes sense and I hadn't made the connection until your comment.

Empires come and go througout human history. Even the biggest and baddest of them all always eventually fail. The US dominance will eventually fall back no matter who is running things because human history really does repeat itself as much as we all like to think we're intellectually above falling into the same exact traps our ancestors have. With the rapid speed of technology, empires come and go even faster as well. Even the biggest bully eventually grows old and dies and so does the biggest hero and supporter of the little guy. It's a life cycle.

We're fortunate right now in the US in particular, but also most of the Western World, that our way of life is on top right now economically and quality of life wise. And it will likely continue that way in the short term no matter who is at the helm. But it will come to an end, in this case out of sheer numbers, when some of the other rapidly expanding populations simply expand beyond their borders, not neccessarily though battle, but through immigration, legal and otherwise and also the export of their culture (in the current form, their religious beliefs more than their art or music) and none of that can be controlled. Like it or not, if your population grows at a 7 or 9 to 1 margin each generation and others are shrinking, you WILL in fairly short order, rule the world by default no matter how smart or powerful you are or aren't. It's simple numbers and biology. The Romans were powerful and advanced and still fell to the immigrant populations that took over by having way more kids and expanding while the fat and happy (literally and figuratively) Romans shrunk. Eventually a tipping point occured where people simply held on to their own less enlightened way of life in larger numbers than those who were more educated and successful could overcome. As we entered the dark ages, knowledge (like sanitary conditions) was lost and people died off and the masses literally lived in mud until it all started over again. We may well see a version of that in the next 100-200 years, maybe sooner, maybe a little longer. But for now, those of us alive in any Western culture should feel happy that we're living with the best conditions of any society that has come before. and we should accept that just as surely, our way of life will give way to a new revolution of the weaker but more numerous among us. In the meantime, we should try to make things are good as we can while we're here for as many as we can. And if we work hard we're more likely to live a better life, and that's not always true in every society. We're the lucky ones in this era. We should appreciate it more.

Brian