So, let's make a list:
Immigration
Let's discuss border policy, the number of hispanics coming into the US, what that effect will be. Let's discuss the opening or closing of the borders and immigration, from other countries. What if the demographics in the US shift, to a majority of the population being non-white? Is that bad? Like to hear your thoughts.
The role of government
What is it? What should it be? Is the government too intrusive, and control too high? Do we pay too much taxes? If so, what is to be cut? Are schools and roads and health the province of the individuals, and if so, how do they pay, and how much? Was Roosevelt wrong when he instituted the New Deal? Are we willing to pay, through taxes, for the roads, infrastructure, schools and poor? What about the seniors....is ss something you working people will continue to fund even though you may not get any? Clearly, we have economic limitations to what we can do, with our current taxation. Look at Europe's taxation....are you willing to do that, to continue with something like our present system? If not, what are you going to do with the poor and seniors who cannot support themselves, through whatever circumstances? Do you think that 'get a job' is enough incentive?
Health Care
Should every American be responsible for the cost of health care he needs? Should a smoker have to pay, up front, for every lung function test? Someone who ate red meat pay out of pocket for each bypass or stint? Should they have to have health insurance, of some support? Should someone with a genetic disposed disease, such as alpha-one-antitrypsin deficient be required to pay for their lung care? Should alcoholics be made to pay up front for alcohol-related problems? Drug addicts? How about pregnancy, that's a choice, or isn't it? Birth control?
Our Education System
By every measure, we are falling behind the world. Math and Science in particular. We encourage video games, watching television, going to the mall, all instead of studying. The rate of descent is remarkable. What is to be done, if anything? We rely on the television, and other similar things as parenting tools. Does this play a role? Few American high schooled could go to Europe, Japan or China and work at the levels their peers are at in science. Is this a concern, or are all our kids going to McDonalds?
These are only a few of topics, but enough for this. I'm not asking for answers, just to see if anyone is interested. You and your generations are going to have to deal with this, and I'll be gone before any solution is found. If there are solutions.
One final note. Like my generation, yours might think that it cannot happen to us, it's too far off. I leave you with T. S. Elliot's famous line:
This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
Cheers,
Wow! That's a heavy biscuit to chew upon this morning, but I'll give it some thought throughout the day and get back to you, Mike.
ReplyDeleteGood grief! You might want to consider posting those topics one at a time. That's way too much to tackle in any coherent way.
ReplyDeleteSAW...yeah, thought of that, but I figured I'd get no meaningful responses either way. No one is disposed to discuss this, put their opinions out on the line. One could be coherent on one at a time if a responder wished. I didn't say one had to comment on all or nothing.
ReplyDeleteThis is actually two more responses than I thought there would be, I figured most would read part of it and move on.
Seems kind of sad that this, among many 'high-tech' communications venues, seems so.....not shallow, but near that. Ms. C recently posted something that made me think about this, hence my post.
I suppose I'll continue to post the events of the trip, pictures, things that don't make people think too hard. It seems that the days of the Algonquin Round Table are far past us; we live for the 15 second sound bite. Just thought I'd give it a shot.
Cheers.
Well, hon, how much time do you have to discuss these issues? Seems to me that to do them justice, we'd need more than the "sound bites" of the blogging venue. It isn't so much that your questions make me think too hard as it is this is some serious shit, man, and I don't know if I can come up with something cogent that quickly, without sounding like a smart aleck. I'm a good thinker, but not a fast thinker. Not anymore, anyway.
ReplyDeleteDottie Parker and the Knights of the Algonquin met for long lunches and took all afternoon to raise and discuss heavy issues like this. Give us some time to mull these questions over and get back to you, if you're serious about talking about them.
You've surprised me with this facet of your personality, not that I know you at all, but this is good.
In retrospect, I should have either put the post in my other blog, or even started a new one. This is supposed to be about my road trip, not about grilling people on their views of society. I may have too much time on my hands in the evening, and if I wandered around RV campgrounds asking people these questions, I'd be quickly banned from RV parks.
ReplyDeleteYeah, well, the campground crazies is all part of road trips, especially long ones into unknown territory. Plus, RV parks seldom come equipped with Algonquin-type tables.
ReplyDeleteSo, do you want to continue with this - here, or do you want to move it to someplace else? I'm game if you are, no matter where you take it.
I suppose here is as good a place as anywhere. I went fishing earlier from the shore a mile away, it got up to 84f or so today. I do have a initial subject that seems to bridge a gap in the random topics I came up with on the fly: the role of the US in the world today. Let me compose it in my head, I'll see if I can make it coherent tonight.
ReplyDeleteCheers, Martha.
Oh, my daughter Kate emailed me, saying she'd jump in if necessary, but I already knew her commie views. Shocked, I am. She was raised in a conservative, bible-thumping household....
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite quotes is from Martin Luther King Jr.:
ReplyDelete"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
Each of your topics is important and thought-worthy. Perhaps we are all too silent or too worn down - but not yet out.
Ok, well I've procrastinated enough, I suppose. Anyway, the role of the US in the world....
ReplyDeleteBackground
Early on, we were a nation of expansion, the Monroe Doctrine if you will. Expand the boundary, sweep those in the way (native peoples, Mexicans, Spanish, Russians)aside and establish our territory.
This is all in simplistic terms, and leaves out details, and some important considerations in favor of an overview.
We then, around 1890, went into a semi-isolationist, semi-nationalist state. It was punctuated by our expansion into the the Spanish territories, and later our refusal to join Wilson's League of Nations.
We continued the isolationist period up until Japan bombed us at Pearl Harbor, before that Roosevelt would have found it impossible for us to give aid to England, to continue their war against Germany, and to give aid to the USSR, our new, uneasy allies.
After the war, in which we beat Japan and the USSR beat Germany (with our and the UK's aid), we started the rebuilding of Europe; the Marshall Plan. We seemed to have learned, at this point, the failure of the Versailles Treaty, with it's restrictions on the German economy. We also started the policy of containment, authored by George Kennan, among others, which was translated as stopping Soviet expansion into other, non-communist countries. It's worthy to note that in the following years, Kennan said it was being misinterpreted, that diplomacy would work better than military intervention.
This policy continued, in various forms, including our interventions in democratically elected regimes in South and Central America and Africa and Southeast Asia past the fall of the Soviet Union, marked by the falling of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
It varied, from one President to another; stalled slightly by Eisenhower, furthered by Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, stalled somewhat by Nixon, and pushed on by Reagan.
With the lack of the Soviet Union as a focus point for our international policy, it appears we've wandered without purpose. Still serving somewhat the same master, though it's no longer in the castle.
I think we missed a golden opportunity in the mid-nineties, to become something else: a world elder statesman. We were the last remaining 'superpower', at that time there was no other nation to lay claim to that title. We had no nation to oppose us in a serious military conflict.
What we did instead, and I blame Clinton to a degree for this, is follow a limited containment policy; intervening in places like Kosovo and the Balkans, but not in other places, and not with diplomacy and military combined.
We had a chance back then, to become a arbiter, a nation that other nations would turn to to resolve disputes. We could have perhaps, with people like Stephen Cohen, caused a different outcome there.
We went on to the failed polices of GW Bush, after the semi-coherent policies of his fathers. We started wars in the wrong places, and for the wrong reasons. We are left with the aftermath now.
I think we are now wandering, without a policy that makes sense. We are declining economically, and we are going to become less and less a factor in the world when it comes to being a force for peace. Actual peace.
If we could step back in time, to 1992 in the west wing, and have somebody say: "Here's the deal, sparky."
I removed my last comment because it was rude and inappropriate.
ReplyDeleteAh, well it went unread, then. Sometimes those are the more interesting ones though. Hope you're well.
ReplyDeleteMike
We haven't had a viable opportunity to play elder statesman since FDR and Potsdam, not that we did then, either. To make it work we'd have to have a plan that would survive partisan wrangling and changes of elected officials. Long before the Clintons arrived on the scene, we (the voters) had stopped caring, had stopped getting involved in political debate and decision-making. To complicate things even more, the 1990s ushered in the culture of greed and myopic self-interest that infected private citizens as well as government and corporate entities. We were too busy building up or trying to obtain wealth to get too involved.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't want to see the US return to the isolationism of the Gilded Age, but I think we can't afford to continue to spread ourselves so thin, stomping out fires by ourselves, or almost by ourselves. That said, the world is full of heavily-armed, technologically savvy nut cases, so we cannot be sideliners, either.
Have we adapted our political policies (foreign and domestic) to keep up with changes, with threats to peace, in the rest of the world and here in the States? Do we have the will anymore to go the distance that being the peacemaker requires?
I was reading about Nikola Tesla recently and a couple of observations he made fit in with this discussion, I think. He wrote (in reference to a prediction he had made about the advances in wireless technology) that he would have predicted his idea would come about in five years (instead of ten) if it weren't for "...such a thing as 'inertia of human opinion' resisting revolutionary ideas.” I think that inertia he wrote about might be the biggest stumbling block to the US being successful in helping to bring about – and keep – peace.
The other comment he made compares the spread of civilization to a fire: "First, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.” What he didn't mention was what happens after the fire is spent; the dying embers, the sputtering coals. Perhaps that describes the role of the US in today's world, a dying fire.
(When I made the connection between his quote and the discussion here, the chorus of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" started playing through my brain.)
How do you think we can get back on track and how big a role should we have?
Mainkan permainan DominoQQ apabila ingin mendapatkan keuntungan banyak, dimana terdapat Aplikasi Hack Judi DominoQQ.
ReplyDeleteInfo Jitu
Cheat Pasti
Situs Judi Sakong Online Agen itu99
Live Chat Agen Sportsbook Online ituGol
Hack Domino ituGol
Tips Bermain Casino IndoWinBola
Situs Togel 4D Agen IndoWinBola
Aplikasi Hack Judi DominoQQ
IndoWinBola Agent Bola Bandar Judi Togel Kasino Online
Situs Bola Mix Parlay Terpercaya
Agen Judi Win Rate Tertinggi
Deposit Modal Kecil Menang Besar