It is Only the Fall

And it need not be so bad. My hours went back to being cut at work again! I should be mad but I am really not. I do need to buy less comics, that is for certain and mayhaps getting into a new miniature game isn't the best idea in the world but other than that I am actually pretty thankful for the four hours of my life that I get back. I think it also keeps me conveniently just under the hour limit I need to be, to be full time. I'll look into that later I guess. I don't know involving myself in work place politics just seems like something that is SO very opposite of what I want to do. So it will never happen.

All that got told to you though because that means it freed up more time for me to hang out in Barns and Noble and read their increadbly well stocked magazine section. I don't know why but they have all sorts of really technical political journals. Some of them are filled with statistical data and terms that are so dense that there is no way to even come close to understanding them without specialized knowledge. It is pretty crazy cool actually. I <3 barns and nobles and it is where I get a wide variety of blog bait from.

Anyway the last time I went and hung out I noticed something. There is this large strange undercurrent of increadble negativity the prevades the political spectrum. No longer is America the country that people look to with hope and awe. Now we are the country that is going to fail and when it does it is going to be spectacular. Foreign Affairs was particularly illuminating on the topic. They had two articles one directly related to the topic at hand and one tangentally related. The tangentally related one was actually more interesting.

It was about what is going to happen when Iran becomes a nuclear power in its own right. See this is a scary proposition for everyone involved. No one really wants Iran to be able to make nuclear weapons and yet they seem well on their way to weaponizing uranium and having their first sucessful nuclear weapon detonation. The world is holding its breath over this. Really while everyone is afraid of Iran, everyone is equally afraid of Isreal. We all dodged a bullet once when Pakastan managed to get a nuclear device but decided to not wipe India off of the face of the planet. But I can't say I am thrilled with the prospects of two destablizing powers being nuclear capable. The really scary thing about Iran though is that the government might give to terroristis or the terrorists might take from the government and then all the sudden a large section of Jerusalem will be oh so much glass. That would suck, the repocussions of such an event would be immense. Mostly though, most people don't think either of those things will happen. What will happen instead is that Iran will use their nuke like a big scary bargining chip that will give them more power and prestige in the region. What will happen is that they will certainly try to use it like a barganing chip and they will fail bacause no one wants to be friends with the crazy guy waving a nuke around pissing off the world.

Still the best course of action would be to stop them from getting the nuke in the first place. Ironically this is a responsibility that falls to us. I think this is rather odd on the part of the world and I would like to do some more research to know if my impresisons are right. Still though it is interesting. We try to help in Haiti and we are painted as monsters in the International Socialist Review (which is an insanely grubby magazine that no one important reads) and the whole kidnapping thing gets told as often as possible because those people are nuts. But at the same time we are expected to come in and boss around Iran to the point where they will no longer try to weaponize uranium. And should we fail, and should we have to deal with a future that involves nuclearized Iran all the sudden it is our fault for not stopping them and we will be the ones that looses massive standing in the world. I could argue with the article at this point, but there is something about it that makes a lot of sense to me. America is held up to this massive double standard. Like I at least know about the ethnic cleansing in Uguanda, and I would love for people to go in and do something about it, but if just America goes in we are imperialist monsters. If the UN and America goes in, that it becomes all America all the time and we go back to being imperialist monsters, and...well I think there are UN peacekeeping forces there now and they aren't really getting the job done.

Post Colinialism isn't to blame but it is really easy to point a finger at. Instead it is the poor application of post colonialist theory that caused us to end up in this sort of situation. I'm going to stop here because I really don't feel like pulling out my post colinialism books again and getting it on with a school of thought that I really really want to be a part of but I can't because they are taking things just a bit to far. I mean damnit when I come off like a flag waver you know something is wrong. I just don't like double standards that's all, and it pisses me off that we are somehow responciple for stopping Iran from becoming a nuclear power. I want to reread that article now and come back to it. It is rooting around in my head more than I thought it was.

Back to the topic at hand. The thing is we are more or less expected to fail in Iran. I am pretty sure that without invading there is nothing we can do that will make they give up on the idea of becoming a nuclear powerhouse. It is just to tempting. So any way we look at it we still loose.

The other article was pretty blunt. It flat out said that when the fall comes thatit will be sudden and without warning. Now while it was over all a depressing piece of writting it did warm my heart when it panned everyone saying that the housing bubble collapsing can be tracked back to the 80's and the deregulation of something or other. He claimed that the world isn't this nice neat pile of cause/effect events and that can be traced back dozens of years. Things happen and the cause is usually much nearer than everyone wants it to be. It was refreshing.

I don't really plan on adressing the article directly but more about the idea of the fall. Let's say for example that it is going to happen. America is going to fall tomarrow, it starts and in 50 years we are no longer the predominate power in the world. That really need not be so bad. When the sun set on the brittish empire the world kept on turning and last time I looked England was doing just fine, even after having the living shit bombed out it. Despite, at current, of being the butt of every ignorant american's joke frace more or less once ran the world and they were fucking terrifying. Despite being leveled in two world wars they are still kicking, and they made Amilie. Both China and India are up and coming and life isn't some sort of soiled hell in those countries. Though I will say that being poor in either of those countries really sucks in comparison to being poor in America but I think you see what I am getting at slowly but surely. So we won't be the people who gets to boss around the world and for awhile we won't be the best at everything. That doesn't mean the sky is going to fall. In fact for most people their lives aren't going to change at all. It just means that someone else is going to have to deal with things like Iran. It will be okay, don't forget to breath, and this is no time to give up and throw in the towel.

This will only happen if we let it.