Tell me if this sounds nuts: China will do a "Russia" on US.

Back in 1981 when I was a Hospital Corpsman Second Class, working the clinic and the airstrip at NAVAL AIR STATION NORFOLK VIRGINIA, I got into an argument with a fellow sailor.

His premise: the Soviets were evil, ready to destroy us, and we needed to do everything we could to bring them down.

My premise: if we keep making them try to out spend us, AND we keep letting them watch MTV so that they want more toys, by the year 2000 the Soviet Union will no longer exist, and by 2007 there will be auto plants in St. Petersburg.

TA-DA!!!!

On to the Chinese.

The Chinese have always been inventive, hard-working, and very smart. They weren't sitting around with a thumb up their ass in the 80's and 90's. They were watching what we did to Russia, and what we were doing to ourselves. They were learning how to FUCK US. They learned good, mainly because we are pretty good at FUCKING EACH OTHER in this country.

So now, we are spending most of our cash enriching the arms industry and the oil industry (just like Russia did), and having a grand old time in foreign adventurism (just like Russia did), and going so far in debt that the only thing that is starting to make sense is fracturing the "Empire" (just like Russia did). The only difference in the two scenarios is that WE are doing it to OURSELVES; sort of like a type of self-destruction masturbation. We'd LIKE to stop before we "go blind" but it FEELS SO GOOD!

I believe beyond anyone's ability to dissuade that CHINA is uniquely positioned to take full advantage of our own self-immolation on the altar of consuming. We are contracting with them to BUILD the altar, they are selling us the wood for the pyre, we are asking them to bind us, and they we are saying "Got a match?"

I have no idea how we are going to stop this. I see the distinct possibility that we as a nation will commit the suicide feared by Lincoln, by BUYING everything in sight on credit, and treating the rest of the world as our private war video game.

And China will do anything they can do to help us, because they are the next new thing.

Hey, I know I can be pretty depressing, but everyone can use some cheering up.

Anyone..?

when things get really bad (assuming they do). I'd like to think it's in our bones to survive against all odds.

Does that make you feel better?

the Game of Civilization.

Keep in mind that the Chinese had an organized society when the 'Europeans' were still chasing wild boar through the brush with sharpened sticks.

We westerners are relative new-comers to the Game. China is not. Also, China is not Russia. To compare the two is to compare quartz to bananas, IMO.

China is going to do to US what we did to the SOVIET UNION: Bankruptcy and Military depletion, followed by the minimalization of our populace.

Think of US in the 80's when you think of China: they are letting the big bad wolf have a stroke trying to blow down the rest of the world's house of bricks.

thanks.

In the case of the Soviet Union, their natural paranoia would not permit them to stop their race to keep up with the Jones, in this case, US. We helped in this little scenario ACTIVELY by outspending them.

In our case, WE are outspending OURSELVES. CHINA is only lending us the money and giving us shit to spend it on. In other words:

The decline and fall of the Soviet Union was aided by US.

Our decline and fail is aided by US. China only stands to benefit, and much more than we did from the collapse of the Soviets.

This isn't their fault. It isn't even their PLAN. They don't have to do anything but be enablers. This is National Suicide; China is not killing us, WE ARE. The are only making certain there are plenty of straight razors lying around for us to slit our wrists with.

simply that China is a much older player in the Game than We are. That is an historical fact, and I don't see how it can be construed as 'backwards'. :hi:

Years and years ago, my grandmother said Communist would take over our country without firing a shot. Of course , she meant Russia. It ends up looking like she is right - but it's not Russian communist but Chinese communist.

I guess that maybe the question should be: is this a "BAD THING?" Marx was an asshole in many ways, but politics and world systems evolve like everything else; maybe it's time for a political "Extinction Event."

and keep yelling "USA!USA!USA!" ad nauseum. Since there is no longer any concrete basis for believing we are #1, it must be drilled into the populace by the sheer force of repetition.

I agree with most of your post. The Soviet Union collapsed primarily because of excessive military spending, as well as irrational production policies that brought down the economy. You are also correct that we exascerbated that through competitive military spending. And you are correct that we are going down the same road seemingly without an enemy to compete with. Hence the neo cons are trying to create a series of bogeymen to promote a war without end.

But I hope you can also see there is a lot of neocon propoganda trying position China as an alternative enemy to the guy in the cave in Afghanistan.

But China is essentially an inward looking country. I worked in China off and on for several years on environmental issues, often with government officials in the environmental branches of government, and my deepest impression of China is its fundamental inwardness. A lot of what we think of as foreign policy -- such as its kibuki theater pronouncements about Taiwan -- are basically entirely about domestic politics.

China may be growing fast, but it has something like 900 million extremely poor people. The obsession of Chinese government official I met, expressed over and over again was, "how are we going to feed 1.2 billion people"?

If that involves making and selling cheap junk to Walmart shoppers, well that's one strategy. It's not their fault that we have such a demand for that crap and have such a ludicrous economy that we seem unable to produce it ourselves. But the idea that it is some deliberate Chinese strategy related to undermining the US is absurd.

Please don't buy into neocon China bashing.

I said, we are doing it to ourselves.

Do you blame Pfizer and Merck for Limbaugh being a pill head? China is only there loading the gun. WE DO NOT HAVE TO PICK IT UP AND PLAY "RUSSIAN ROULETTE." That's a CHOICE. A BAD ONE, and WE are the ones making it.

the Neocons and Corporate State, over which we seem to have no control. As bleak as the picture you paint, it's probably even bleaker, because I don't see how you turn it around. It's not as if Democrats ever vote against a bloated "Defense" budget.

Benevolent Dictatorship.

There. I've said it. I don't see how we get out of this cesspool unless a strongarm of some kind nature pulls us out.

As to the decline of the USA: think of it as "Evolution in Action."

...being sarcastic or snarky.

Leave it to say that I don't believe that is possible any longer. The intercine divisions in the nation are too wide and too plentiful.

I will say that I used to believe the South would drown without the North: with the death of Manufacturing in Michigan and the Rust Belt, I think they could probably do just fine without us; that is, the corporate masters and minions of the Pig Bush would do fine with a South unhampered by the North.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1516439

The asshole index of the country is starting outpace the voter roles.

"They were watching what we did to Russia, and what we were doing to ourselves. They were learning how to FUCK US. They learned good, mainly because we are pretty good at FUCKING EACH OTHER in this country."

You also wrote that they are going to take over the world.

China is not learning how to "fuck us." They are selling us products and amassing vast currency reserves of dollars. If it weren't China, we would be buying from some other cheap labor country. It has nothing to do with any Chinese desire to screw us or dominate any part of the world other than what has historically been China.

You are buying into neo con paranoid propoganda about a country whose entire strategy is defensive and self sufficient.

The next paragraphs distinctly state that WE are doing this to ourselves.

"So now, we are spending most of our cash enriching the arms industry and the oil industry (just like Russia did), and having a grand old time in foreign adventurism (just like Russia did), and going so far in debt that the only thing that is starting to make sense is fracturing the "Empire" (just like Russia did). The only difference in the two scenarios is that WE are doing it to OURSELVES; sort of like a type of self-destruction masturbation. We'd LIKE to stop before we "go blind" but it FEELS SO GOOD!

"I believe beyond anyone's ability to dissuade that CHINA is uniquely positioned to take full advantage of our own self-immolation on the altar of consuming. We are contracting with them to BUILD the altar, they are selling us the wood for the pyre, we are asking them to bind us, and they we are saying "Got a match?"

"I have no idea how we are going to stop this. I see the distinct possibility that we as a nation will commit the suicide feared by Lincoln, by BUYING everything in sight on credit, and treating the rest of the world as our private war video game."

CHINA is just offering to stand the alcoholic a drink. It isn't CHINA'S fault that the US is fast becoming the world's biggest falling down drunk, but they aren't going to call AA for us.

That is OUR problem, not theirs, and THAT IS MY POINT.

it's not really possible to conclude what you believe. You have also compared China's strategy to the US strategy against the Soviets, and suggest in your own self quote that China would "take advanatage" of US decline. How? Would they take our place in NATO? Enforce the Monroe Doctrine? Take over our bases around the world?

You have hopelessly confused the issue. But the overall answer is no, China is not doing to the US anything like what the US did to the Soviets.

CHINA is doing NOTHING to us. WE are doing it to OURSELVES. CHINA is merely supplying Heroin to the Addict.

As to taking advantage of our decline, they would be idiots NOT TO. Did we not take every advatage WE could of the decline and fall of the Soviet Union? Of course WE were there shoving them toward the brink (not that they were slowing down themselves: Russian Paranoia would never have allowed it).

CHINA is not doing to US what WE did to the Soviet Union. WE are doing that to OURSELVES. CHINA is merely lending a "helping hand" by making available an unending supply of toys and cheap credit to buy those toys.

At least for the moment. Every Butcher's Bill comes due eventually.

soviet union.

We did not defeat the soviets. Reagan didn't defeat them. The pope didn't defeat them.

They defeated themselves.

All we did was stand by and give a nudge now and then. Their paranoia (largely justified -- they lost more people in WWII than any other nation in the world) forced them to take postures that they could not sustain because their system was not flexible enough to sustain them.

There is little that China has to do to undermine our being the foremost economic power in the world. Just buy up all the debt that we are begging them to buy up. They don't need to take over NATO -- NATO is an anachronism, and will go away within a couple decades, to be supplanted with something else with a more current mission. The Monroe Doctrine? Another anachronism, meant to keep European imperial powers out of the western hemisphere -- imperial protectionism. Well, the rest of the hemisphere is no longer ripe for exploitation by Europe, or by us.

Our empire is in decline, just as did England, France and Spain before us. We will be lucky to get out of this without the breakup of the nation.

Even us NeoSocialists don't like Leninism/Maoism. But the USSR was still on pretty solid ground until the Reagan years. When military spending went into overdrive, it was like we were racing the USSR to the edge of building roof (without telling them WE had a Parachute under our coat).

I agree that we are fast becoming obsolete. I only suggest that the next new thing (China) is doing everything they can to enable the Alcoholic's last final blackout drunk.

"The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." - Lenin

Revision:

"The capitalists are buying the rope we are selling them to hang themselves."

The irony is delicious.

I applaud you.

Applause accepted.