In Booman’s recent post Begin By Ending Cooperation in the Yemen War (<http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2018/10/16/16727/289>), poster seabe wrote a dissenting comment to one that I wrote essentially agreeing with Booman.
Seabe wrote:
Oh look the “America First!” sympathizer has logged on.
And in a later comment also wrote:
Noam Chomsky says US should stay in Syria to protect the Kurds.
–snip–
Chomsky understands when it’s the Kurds. Just extend that logic to the rest of Syria.
I started a reply.
It grew..
Read on.
Ok…let’s extend that logic just a little further, seabe.
Extend it to the rest of that immediate area…let’s say Turkey, Iraq and Iran. A handful of potential trouble, right there!!!
Where does it end?
Lebanon, Israel, Jordan?
Azerbijan, Afghanistan, Pakistan?
Egypt, Libya, Algeria?
How about all of the countries that border the Mediterranean?
And all of the countries that share borders with those countries?
What’s next?
All of Europe, Africa and Asia?
All of the Western Hemisphere as well?
The whole solar system?
This galaxy?
The Universe?
Of course, this is a sort of reductio ad absurdum argument. Maybe augmentationem ad absurdum might be more accurate. The U.S. has “augmented” itself right into the ground by applying this sort of thinking. We are…and have been since the end of WWII…the world’s cop. NATO’s cop, anyway. End of story. Now a crooked world cop, so caught up in its own “interests” that it cannot adequately take care of its own population or even its own necessary infrastructure.
Where does this type of thinking end?
In the absurdist rule of our Orange King?
I hope not.
You accuse me above of being an “America Firster.” As if to say that I am somehow allied with all of the villains who have been justly excoriated as anti-semites and Nazis who have historically used that phrase. (Succuri is getting fussy again. Won’t allow linking. Sorry. Go here: https:/www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/trump-america-first/514037)
I am not.
I am a My Own Family Firster.
A My Own Dwelling Firster.
A My Own Neighborhood Firster.
A My Own City Firster.
And so on…
But…this must end somewhere, out of sheer, practically proven necessity.
Break up the U.S.?
If only that were practicable!!!
But I do not think that it is, although it may indeed break up because of its own shortcomings.
But…a U.S. protected by its true economic and military might from any and all possible attacks?
The trillions of dollars and approximately 1.3 million men and women wasted on far-flung PermaWar, tasked instead to defend and rebuild this country? (Go to Wikipedia and look this one up yourself. Succuri won’t even accept the plain URL!)
A new “New Deal?”
I would support that in a heartbeat!!!
You?
Look around you. Look at a country that might now very well be labeled a bunch of America Lasters.
A government owned by multinational interests that are increasingly pursuing their own interests and leaving the U.S. to descend into a gigantic third world state of mind, with an emphasis on cheap labor and universal World Cophood.
A culture that has devolved so far on every level that we have elected an Attention Deficit Disorder-afflicted president whose sole necessary qualification was Fake TV celebrityhood.
An up-and-coming population that is now almost totally dependent on the internet to be able to think even a little bit!!! And believe me…I say that from extensive personal experience as an educator from ghetto kids right on through Ivy Leaguers over the past 40 years or so.
The movie Idiocracy wasn’t so far off, after all. (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy>)
Sigh…
AG