In a democracy, you basically elect a candidate who has enough of a stakeholder vote to implement a policy. If, by cheating or some other means, a candidate is elected who cannot sway stakeholders sufficiently to implement a policy, you end up with a lame duck president who can’t get anything done. Obama is a good example of that. He is a demagogue and an ideologue who isn’t skilled in the politics of making a deal and getting things done.
So, basically, if you elect a candidate who will stay the course, the general trends in politics and economy dictate the course. If you elect a disruptive candidate, the general trends in politics and economy dictate the course, in the sense that a disruptive president doesn’t have enough power do change anything significant.
That’s why I’m skeptical of all those who believe that Trump winning the American elections can change anything significant. He might have the best of intentions, and is in fact the better of two candidates, but he can’t change anything because the reason behind the current global situation are systemic trends of the kind that cannot be influenced by a president, for better or for worse.
Yes, Hillary is a pro-war candidate, and Trump is a pro-America candidate. Hillary is a crazy person who will yell and threaten at Putin and anyone else, would implement a hardline policy and would cause a nuclear war after a few moves. Trump would want to re-assert American supremacy, and the Russians and the Chinese will say “no thank you, we have this now”. He will then slam his metaphorical fist on the table and play chicken with them, because he would expect them to back down. They will not, and there will be a nuclear war in a few moves. The thing is, Hillary is so pissed at Putin because she already tried to bribe him, to intimidate him and to make him back down, and it didn’t work. Trump is yet to get there, but the result would be the same. The Russians don’t want to be slaves who are ordered around, and the Chinese don’t want to be the manufacturing colony of the West.
Trump also naively thinks he can bring back the jobs that were outsourced abroad. Those jobs were outsourced because in America labor is too expensive, and it’s systemically expensive, because the inherent costs are greater in the USA than anywhere else in the world. This means housing, food, basic expenses, education and health. This in turn dictates the behavior of the labor unions, who press for higher wages. If you reduce the wages below a certain point, you reduce the purchasing power of your population and essentially lose them as a market for your expensive products, essentially pricing your population out of the market. Considering how the American population has the greatest purchasing power in the world, that’s not good. Also, considering how the second greatest purchasing power in the world, the Chinese middle class, is basically uninterested in American overpriced and often underperforming products, it’s not something that can easily be changed by some political maneuvering.
The main reason why America was great is that Europe was torn down by two world wars, and they had an influx of the most competent immigration in the world. They also got industrialized by the war effort, and after that they implemented a lever in the world’s financial system, where US Dollar was the world reserve currency, controlled most of the world’s gold, and was the OPEC trading currency, where anyone who wanted to buy oil first had to buy dollars on the currency market, making it possible for America to print enormous amounts of unbacked money, and everyone had to purchase that Mickey Mouse currency with actual hard assets, or the American aircraft carriers would get parked close to their shores and reduce their country to rubble. Also, they abused other supposedly international systems in such a way as to strongly motivate their own economy while imposing various hindrances and pressures to non-American economies. An example of that is cheap FED money for the venture capital investors, who could pump enormous sums in all kinds of American technology startups, both boosting the American GDP and their technological competitive advantages. So, those are the reasons why America was “great”. It’s not the constitution, it’s not democracy and it certainly isn’t freedom. It’s the combination of military force, control of the world’s financial system and some very lucky historical and geographic circumstances, such as being essentially on an island separated from potential adversaries by oceans on both sides.
The trend is that the time of America’s dominance is over. Also, the trend is that America will not yield its dominant position peacefully. Also, the other forces aren’t willing to put up with American pressures, manipulations and abuses much longer, if at all. Since America still has a military advantage over them, it is likely to try to use that advantage while it is still there. So, America thinks it will win in war and lose in peace. You tell me what is going to be the end result.
And also one cannot contemplate Trump as a saviour, he simply does not have that feel. Michael Moore said it best: “he is like a wrench thrown at the system by the angry working class”, and there is a civil war brewing in America, let’s see what it’s worth. Considering China owns half of America in some cases, maybe he will have more reason. We will see if he was lying that he respects the Chinese, they seem to make fun of him and that’s not a good combination. But when I see this, how mad is Hillary… she is really spitting fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9nt9xMNniY She will bring fire to 320 million living there.
As I said, the root cause of the problem with America isn’t Hillary Clinton. If anything, she is a symptom of the disease, but the problem is caused by the sociological, economic and geopolitical trends that function independently from what their executive branch of government can influence. If anything, the global conflict can be accelerated by a bad US president, but I don’t think how it could be averted by a “good” one, simply because one who would be capable of averting it, such as Rand Paul, has no realistic chance of being elected in their current political climate. Why would Rand Paul avert the crisis, because he advocates America minding its own business and withdrawing from the role of global dominance. But this political course would be opposed by the vast majority of stakeholders and the populace. So, essentially, whichever candidate manages to win, this policy will continue and it will result in a military conflict with (either or both) Russia and China.
Few years ago I’ve made a conclusion on one political forum that nations are much like humans, and the only real chance America is having to become a “normal”, down to earth nation, is that firstly someone beats the shit out of them, and I mean really breaks their spine over the knee. I was ridiculed by all the other members because America was seen as the prime example of progress, democracy and whatnot, and if anyone else would be in that kind of position of power, it could only be worse for the rest of us.
However, even if we accept my thesis as valid, there are still two serious problems with it.
Frist, you can’t really beat any nation with that magnitude of military power without breaking all hell loose.
Second, even if you somehow manage to do it causing minimal collateral damage, it’s still not a one way to peace and success. We can see examples of this all around us. Russia is, perhaps, to some extent, a good example of wiping off the blood of their mouth and getting back in the ring, but what about countries like, let’s say, Croatia and Serbia? Both of those countries were raped, butchered, divided and degraded for a long time, and that certainly didn’t produce any good consequences. Serbia lives in its posttraumatic fantasy world, making all kinds of erratic and hysterical moves, trying to aggressively assert itself and somehow regain a sense of self worth, while on the other hand Croatia went the opposite way, despising itself so much it would rather not exist at all, behaving like some kind of suicidal personalty, all the time desperately trying to be someone else and get comforted by approval of one authority or the other.
I was thinking about what you said, and the trick is, historic events don’t happen because they serve some useful purpose. Sometimes you get invaded and fucked over by someone stronger. Sometimes the civilization collapses and doesn’t recover for a thousand years. This doesn’t need to end well. If the Gods don’t intervene, I’m very certain it *won’t* end well. We’ll have the destruction of civilization akin to what happened in Afghanistan, and psychotic religious fanatics will shoot each other over the ruins for centuries, breeding illiterate IQ 60 children, possibly with two heads due to radiation.
What do you mean by Gods intervention?
Subtly changing the course of worldly affairs in a sense that everything stays more or less stable for a while, or something much more theatrical like preemptive apocalypse?
Hell, maybe it was part of SK’s plans to make a perfect crime all from the beginning – not leaving enough time to untangle things after his possible removal, some kind of a dead man switch.
Also, what are your thoughts on a limited scale nuclear war where Russians launch precise and controlled strike to remove the American’s ability to counterstrike? Would it be enough to end the war before it even started?
He means Game over. Exit
This.