Does being broke make cowards of us all?

Less Fox News and a econ class will mend your mind.

“Faux nooze” is not a good basis for making Economic decisions.

Nah, I had a client that explained it to me when I was a banker. He said when I owed you ten grand I couldn’t sleep. When I owed you a hundred grand I figured you couldn’t sleep.

Cowardice? I think Mark Leibovich’s new book “This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral – Plus plenty of valet parking – In America’s Gilded Capital” comes closer to revealing the real brokenness as being a result of a vacuous group of egomaniacs.

Cowardice? I know when I was young and very broke, I just figured everyone else had to try to solve their own problems. Truth be told. We won’t get involved in a war that brings us little profit. It’s not cowardice. It’s greed.

It’s never stopped you guys before. Reagan racked up huge deficits, but no one calls him cowardly or timid. Maybe Obama realizes that invading the Ukraine is ultimately a losing proposition for Putin, so he doesn’t really need to use force against force here. The people in Crimea have already rejected the annexation scenario and are holding a secession vote, so they’ve already chosen representative democracy over unilateral authoritarianism.

crap question

IMO

We as a country are far from broke and cowardice is not even at question…we just have a bit o’ debt to pay back is all. We have the strongest economy in the world and we can and will pay back this debt….not in my life time but we will.

Superpower or not, no one wants to fuck with Russia.

@josie

And I suppose you’d be the first to sign on to “take on evil as it manifests”?

”At the same time, the US government, under the current administration, is reluctant to take on evil as it manifests itself in our geo political times.”
The last time the colonies “took on evil” was during WW2, and that was only because it let itself be attacked first.
Every war since then was empire building and furthering their own geopolitcal and economic agendas.
There is and was never any talk about invading North Korea, Uganda, or let us say Saudi Arabia, all centres of oppression of women, gays and people in general. Not now under Obama and not under Bushitler either. Why? Because there is nothing to gain.
Remember when the Colonies supported the Apartheid Regime in South Africa? Remember when they staged a coup together with their British lapdogs to topple the left leaning, democratically elected government of Iran, installing a repressive dictator?
Talk about “taking on evil”. A bloody unfunny joke. I am always baffled and amused by your 180° distorted self image as “saviour of the world”.

Not me, considering the “all” you refer to is you Americanos…counts me out.

“take on evil”?

And what, pray tell, is “evil” and who defines it?

Methinks that a little more introspection and a little less glibness is in order.

Lack of money. Heck, he can’t even spell respect, let’s keep it simple.

There’s more to it than the fact that we’re broke. There is also the disturbing truth that the big boy on the block, has had his fingers burnt every time he messes with things that he fundamentally does not understand. The 3 trillion dollar object lessons of the past decade or so have been so thankless and grim that even our big dummy of a country must appreciate that the days are gone when flexing big muscles might remedy problems with their roots in the 10th century. Despite the ravings from the right, where undisguised stupidity is always in fashion, there are no big muscle solutions available to “toughy” when it comes to Syria, Ukraine or wherever. As if grim reality weren’t enough, there’s also the suspicion that “acting tough” is no longer politically feasible domestically in front of a disillusioned, down sized, unemployed, broke electorate

I think partisan politics and/or political labels tends to blind many to authoritarianism when their side does it, and the left/right paradigm is no different. This is why I don’t consider political issues to be more important than the foundation of the very way people think, and the reasons for this. After all it’s this very foundation that determines one’s politics, so maybe this is why philosophy and psychology interests me more than politics.

Maybe I’m wrong here though, and our definitions of freedom or constitutionality are simply different from one another. I think your issues are valid josie, and a national deficit can be a threat to our freedom and security (in my opinion), but, consider the above. Voting a rightie in will not change anything for the better either. I feel we need more Constitutionalists.

Our government was originally set up to specifically combat authoritarianism with the concepts of an executive, legislative and judicial branches in accordance with the U.S Constitution. As an extra some of these amendments, such as the Second, were formed in accordance with armed militias in keep the government in check. It appears that both many on the left and the right do not respect these principles anymore. This is why I can’t get into the partisan politics game, since it absolutely amazes me how blind both many liberals and conservatives are to their own hatred of the U.S Constitution.

The idea that the 2nd Amendment is there for citizens to keep the government in check is, I feel, nothing more than revisionists history considering how the men who wrote the document responded to armed rebellion against them.

Perhaps a little timidity is in order, or at least a little introspective thought. As Eugene Robinson said in his article of 3 March ”...even as we condemn Moscow for its outrageous aggression, we reserve the right to fire deadly missiles into Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and who knows where else”.

We are involved in two ongoing wars, uncounted smaller battles and “drug wars”, have troops scattered over the entire globe and have maintained them for over 50 years in some cases. Our military (excuse me “defense”) budget that is greater than, what is it now, more than that of the COMBINED budgets of the next 26 worlds largest and that includes both Russia and China! And we want to increase it to even greater magnitude regardless of the detriment to our own social and infrastructure programs. As if getting involved in another pointless local conflict would make a difference particularly since there is some question about how the new Ukraine government came to power, who actually is in power and whether or not supporting the overthrow of a democratically elected government, no matter how much you do not like it, is the morally right thing to do.

It is irritating when I hear the right bemoan the fact that America has lost the respect of the world. They seem to have difficulty discerning the difference between fear and respect; and perhaps that is the real problem. The world no longer fears “respects” us the way the right thinks it should.

We should be a little less hypocritical and admit that, since it is certainly a lot easier to achieve than the respect thing, we are ok with the fear thing. Either that or perhaps cut back on the fear factor and try earning the worlds respect for a change.