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What America thinks of the world | 13 comments

[new] optimism, pessimism, hysteria, paranoia (Avg. Score: none / Raters: 0) (#9)
by amy on Mon Jun 23rd, 2003 at 08:33:10 AM EURODISCORDIA TIME
(User Info) http://plagiarist.org

i can't say that i personally feel more optimistic than you do aileen. more on this in a moment. however, i should point out that i'm not very typical of most americans in this case, even those who oppose the administration's actions. i imagine this is due to the fact that a) i have a fair amount of discussion about these issues with people living in europe and b) i have almost no contact with american television. anyway, this sense of foreboding, that world could be about to get reallllly f'ed up - just doesn't seem to exist here at all on any serious level. if i bring up such possibilities even in the form of "what if?" - people just sneer and consider me a hysterical paranoid. yet i have also experienced what you tell me about attitudes in europe. it's like night and day, and if nothing else, its a disturbing example of the effectiveness of media propaganda.

so, am i personally more optimistic? not exactly, but i find myself trying to gauge the situation in terms of previous historical situations. so far the world has been through some pretty terrible stuff - how does it compare to those situations? how did the world somehow "correct" itself afterwords? are we on the verge of something on the scale of WWII in Europe? there certainly have been comparisons made. (Although the linked article comes off like one of those "Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln" amazing coincidence rapsheets, the general point of "where could this go?" is still worth considering.) But, WWII Germany didn't have the elephantine capacity for creating global disaster that the US does. Decline of the Roman empire?

or, will the infamous pendulum effect cause things to self-correct soon? the economy is of course s*** now and getting worse - and the administration can't keep responding by starting wars forever - people catch on pretty quick when they're still broke and jobless... when people in the US are broke, *that's* when they stop approving of their govt (hey, that's capitalism :-) ).. and the US regime of the near future may face a populace more like that of the vietnam era than the feel-good Reagan++ nitrous oxide stupor of the past 20 years... (not to mention that bankrupt corporations may have a harder time bankrolling candidates...) if that happens.. will it make a difference?

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-- Discordia is nice.
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What America thinks of the world | 13 comments

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