'America's neo-conservative world supremacists will fail '

[ailsagirl]

From The Guardian

Current US megalomania is rooted in the Puritan colonists' certainties

Eric Hobsbawm
Saturday June 25, 2005
The Guardian

Three continuities link the global US of the cold war era with the attempt to assert world supremacy since 2001. The first is its position of international domination, outside the sphere of influence of communist regimes during the cold war, globally since the collapse of the USSR. This hegemony no longer rests on the sheer size of the US economy. Large though this is, it has declined since 1945 and its relative decline continues. It is no longer the giant of global manufacturing. The centre of the industrialised world is rapidly shifting to the eastern half of Asia. Unlike older imperialist countries, and unlike most other developed industrial countries, the US has ceased to be a net exporter of capital, or indeed the largest player in the international game of buying up or establishing firms in other countries, and the financial strength of the state rests on the continued willingness of others, mostly Asians, to maintain an otherwise intolerable fiscal deficit.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1514315,00.html

[ailsagirl]

1. kick

[justinsb]

2. Thanks for posting this

As hard as it is for neo-cons to admit, with every step outside their border the power of the US in the world declines. The superpower days are over, they are simply pretending now, largely with borrowed money.

[Warpy]

3. We're like an old tree

with unseen disease rotting out the core. Nobody notices anything until that one big storm comes along and fells the tree and you notice that it's been rotten for years, the outer pith and bark the only living things left.

We've exported too much of our infrastructure. With the continued exportation of jobs, we're getting weaker and weaker.

We're not going to win the next big war, you know. We don't make the things we need to keep a war going. We don't make cloth or shoes. We don't make enough bullets even for Iraq.

The world is beginning to notice, too, and that is the most dangerous thing of all.

[getmeouttahere]

5. Makes me think of Malcolm X....

and his comment about "chickens coming home to roost"

We've made our bed, and we'll soon be forced to lie in it

[hedda_foil]

4. What an extraordinary piece!

Nominated!

[Demeter]

6. Actually, No

The Puritans as a movement and way of life had died out long before the American Revolution. You can put the blame on Andrew Jackson and the Baptists who flooded Washington with rude, crude, ignorant war veterans and brought an abrupt end to the Enlightenment.

[AuntiBush]

7. Sums it up - We're bascially Screwed w/the Worse Prez Ever in Place!

[Initech]

8. Neocons out for global supremacy? Why what an absurd argument!

:sarcasm:

Actually, a Bill Hicks quote would fit nicely here:

"How does it feel to know WE'RE the evil empire?"

[BrklynLiberal]

9. Superb article. From his keyboard to god's ears. Thanks for posting.

[indepat]

10. Repukes have kept us safe and made us strong by our having to depend on

others, mostly Asians, to cover our otherwise intolerable fiscal deficit, a deficit intentionally created through wholly reckless fiscal and tax policies. Four more years, four more years should solve all our problems.

[bobbieinok]

11. you might find this online biog interesting.....RW HATES him

http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/history/historian/Eric_Hobsbawm.html

[Up2Late]

12. Duplicate

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=134586&mesg_id=134586>