In part 1, I provided context for America's rise towards superpower status. In a nutshell, it came down to war. All across the planet countries were bombing the crap out of one another and while the United States participated in these wars, very few, if any bombs were dropped on the continental United States.
While all other countries impacted by WWI and WWII lost major cities and infrastructure, America did not, with the exception of Pearl Harbor. And all other conflicts in which America took part occurred "over there". It's one thing to drop bombs all over the world, it's another thing altogether to have bombs dropped on you. Whether this last statement is obvious or not, being spared the destruction of buildings, homes, airports, roads and the many other structures necessary for modern life, America was poised to become Earth's main supplier of goods and services needed to bring towns, cities, states and countries back from the ashes. And given the fact that those countries that were bombed into oblivion had to use most of not all of their resources just to survive, meant America kind of had a monopoly. What else could the rest of the world do, but give America whatever it wanted? And what America wanted was power... Maybe even superpower.
Providing everything to everyone allowed the United States to not only set the price of everything, it allowed it to set the value of everything, which included the value of money. The US dollar became the medium of exchange for most resources worldwide, including one of the most important ... Oil. The birth of the petrodollar meant that the primary source of energy on the planet had to be traded in dollars and which country controlled the creation and value of each and every dollar... You guessed it. The United States of America. A simple question will answer any questions about how this turn of events benefitted America. How rich would you be if everyone had to use money you created on your home printer: You need a loaf of bread, you printer up four dollars. You need a car; you print up eighty thousand dollars. Buying a house simply means running to LaserJet for an hour or two. Or, you could simply change the value of your currency to be worth a lot more than any other country's currency and buy a house overseas for pennies on the dollar. First, however, you'd have to debase your currency, which is what America did when it went OFF the gold standard.
The Gold standard is simply a way of verifying the value of your currency by backing it's worth with something everyone can agree is valuable. Though it’s best to back a currency with something that's rare and hard to attain, it doesn't matter what everyone considers valuable, as long as everyone agrees on its value. Even if that value is placed on something as irrational as sand or seashells. Luckily, in the case of the dollar, it was backed by gold, a substance that has intrinsic value and is rare-ish.
So, the dollar's value was pegged to the amount of gold that America had in its possession, thusly insuring that the rest of the world was getting a KNOWN value whenever it used dollars for a medium of exchange. If only we had stayed on the gold standard. Today, a dollar is worth whatever those who create it say it's worth and the reason the world believes those people is because they have the biggest guns. America's military budget is so large that it would take the budgets of the next ten countries with the largest military budgets combined to even come close to what American tax payers forfeit to the Military-Industrial Complex. A more appropriate nomenclature for the Military-Industrial Complex these days might be the National Security State-Industrial Complex, because though it is all done under the umbrella of the military it now encompasses surveillance while incorporating all manner of "private" businesses, like GOOGLE, Facebook, Twitter and more. Americans no longer have privacy and no one seems to mind, except those who profit from the wholesale or said privacy.
While concerning, the loss of privacy and the debasement of the US dollar does not explain how America is losing or has lost its standing as a superpower. For that, there are plenty of metrics by which one could claim America's downward spiral, but let's stick to a BIG one... WAR!!!!!
When was the last time America won a war in which it was involved or even came out victorious after committing to an act of aggression? Regardless of whether one prescribes to the idea that America's leadership starts wars they never intend to win or not, a loss is a loss. Both America's allies and enemies are making note of the "Wins" and "Losses" columns that comprised America's history of war. Whether you believe that the United States continues to inflate its military budget as a means to transfer wealth from the Populace to weapons manufacturers or you believe that America is right in bombing sovereign countries and causing regime change (is my bias too apparent?), you must admit that its record would get the Head Coaches fired over and over again, if it were an NFL team. There World War II, then maybe the Panama canal, which do not make up for Viet Nam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan. The latter feeding bolstering the Opioid epidemic (that kills more Americans every year than the Viet Nam war killed in ten (10) years) even while America controlled Afghanistan's poppy fields.
Does losing every war or act of aggression in which your involved sound like a superpower? Does it sound like a country that should be imposing its form of justice on the rest of the planet. When America bombs a country because that country has a "bad" leader (oftentimes touted as the reincarnation of Hitler), is it doing that country's people a service by killing more people than said evil leader? Mull this over with your greater angels, consciousness or inner voice, as you ponder why America has sided with Al-Qaeda in places like Syria. Wrestle with your morality when considering the that fact that American intervention in Lybia led to open air slave markets instead of freedom for those people. Marvel in the breathtakingly smug response from Madeleine Albright when asked if the price of war in Iraq was worth the price of killing 500,000 Iraqi children. Hint: She didn't say "no". Here was Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, justifying killing 500,000 children because of the actions of one man. And, obviously, every Christian American president in the past seventy (70) years has agreed with her policy of death and destruction the name of American interests.
Enough, however, with this bleeding heart analysis of the heartless way in which America treats the rest of the World. Let's simply consider how the rest of the world must view American losses. Though America's military budget is inching towards one (1) trillion dollars... that's 1,000,000,000,000 (oh, wait, I need to add three more zeroes) 1,000,000,000,000,000, which is more than the military budgets of the next ten (10) countries combined, we can't seem to catch a break and win one. you would think that after decades of war, America would stumble into at least one victory. Hell, I never ever practice playing basketball, but I can make at least one shot. then again, as I stated earlier, maybe the goal is not to win, but to keep a cash cow going. Regardless of the motivation, losing endless wars makes a country look weak and it's showing in this proxy war with Ukraine. Hear me now and credit me later "Ukraine will not beat Russia.". This is becoming ever more apparent as America has now sent Ukraine almost twice as much funding as Russia's entire yearly military budget. With the latest round of American funding, we will have sent Ukraine close to $113 billion dollars, while Russia's yearly military budget is expected to only be $84 billion dollars. Ukraine's ultimate failure is also becoming more apparent in the ways in which American top military leader(s) discuss the need for diplomacy. America's callous but honest view of Ukraine and its people should have been apparent in the ways in which they discuss Ukraine's plight. America's failure in Ukraine should be apparent by the fact that America's president had to go to Venezuela (hat in hand) to try to beg its president who the U.S. would not recognize as it leader for oil.
These are not the actions of a strong country, let alone a superpower. A strong country would take care of its own citizens before sending billions of dollars to one of the most corrupt countries on the planet where actual neo-Nazis reside within its army. Just drive around and try not to see people living on the streets in American cities, small, medium and large. Not only is homelessness increasing, but I personally have had to coin a new term, Homelessnesslessness, as authorities across this nation have outlawed those living on the streets and destroyed impromptu camp sites and street communities that have formed after leaders like Obama allowed 5.2 million homes to go into foreclosure while allowing all cases of fraud against the banks that caused America's Great Recession sunset.
Consider this, a nation or country is a manmade construct. It is a group of people coming together to agree that this boundary or these borders comprise a nation in which a collective of people share common goals, beliefs, dreams, While I understand that there will be variances in those goals, beliefs and dreams, for the most part, those things will be shared amongst a major portion of the population in question. The inhabitants of any particular city, state, country will most likely share the beliefs that motivated America's founding fathers to revolution "...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". When citizens stop believing in their country, or their country stops providing for its citizens, the country grows weaker. When too fee people believe in their country, it falls apart or is torn apart by internal and external forces. America's leadership doesn't seem to be able to stop itself from letting more and more Americans fall through the cracks. There is a reason why Obama's presidency led to Trumps presidency and it wasn't because of Russia. It's more likely due to that fact that Obama only inherited two (2) wars but ended up with seven (7) wars by the end of his second term. Maybe it was the fact that Obama dropped so many bombs around the Globe that America could NOT keep up with the production of cluster bombs Maybe more black people would have voted for Hillary Clinton had blacks wealth not been decimated under Obama. Instead of trying to determine what went wrong, the media, Hillary Clint and all of the Russia-gaters blamed Trump for everything. The irony is that, due to all of the excessive scrutiny under which Trump found himself, he could deport more people, he could add more wars to America's ledger, he tore up a nuclear non-proliferation treating (to not look weak against Russia) and more. Trump's presidency was toothless but two (2) years after he's out of office, he is still America's boogeyman. While videos of Hunter Biden weighing his crack are released and Joe Biden experiencing an obvious diminishment of his mental faculties, America is supposed to keep up appearances as a superpower? Besides the fact that there is no way anyone could ever convince that either Trump or Biden were the absolute best people for the job of President (given that so many say it's the most important job in the world)... NO effing way! Neither of them should have even been on the ballot... EVER. There is simply no way that a con-artists or someone who couldn't come up with their on speeches (you decide which is which) could ever be the leader of a superpower.
The Regaining American Democracy (RAD) dictionary word or phrase of the day is;
Homelessnesslessness adjective \ˈhōm-ləs-nəs-ləs-nəs\ (also called, Homeless Squared or Doubly Homeless)
1. When a homeless person or family gets kicked out of the tent city or outdoor community they moved into after being evicted.
2. Have been made homeless twice, usually in the following order: Once by corrupt business practices of immoral banks and then by the government (federal, state, local, etc.)
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