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What exactly do you think the US has done for more than a century?
In fact, the US did the exact same thing to China, when the US had colonies in China from 1846 to 1902, and again from 1918 to 1938.
What is it you think China should do?
Should China and other countries just lay down and let the US (and UK) do whatever they want? Because that's just not going to happen.
Yeah, I watched the entirety of these videos. Although, it’s from the Australian perspective, they’re painting the Chinese as having all of these motives to advance their own gain. My only thought the entire time is, what the hell do they think the Anglo-American empire has done?
Granting unplayable loans to step in and take control of the countries resources? Using local government corruption to sell out a nations people? Expanding military and dotting bases in the pacific? You could replace China, with “America” and the video would still ring true.
What do they think all imperial powers do? The United States has a navy that dwarfs all others. We have more than 1000 foreign military bases, including all over Chinas doorstep.
As Big Tom Callahan said in "Tommy Boy", "you're either growing or you're dying. There ain't no third direction".
Well, he's wrong. A clever-sounding play on words is not necessarily an eternal truth, even with a hillbilly accent.
There are many nations that, for centuries, have alternated between advancing and declining, and remain viable to this day, whatever the direction of their present economic indicators.
As Big Tom Callahan said in "Tommy Boy", "you're either growing or you're dying. There ain't no third direction".
Quote:
Originally Posted by cebuan
Well, he's wrong. A clever-sounding play on words is not necessarily an eternal truth, even with a hillbilly accent.
There are many nations that, for centuries, have alternated between advancing and declining, and remain viable to this day, whatever the direction of their present economic indicators.
Your assertion, and Big Tom’s, are not inapposite; it’s merely a question of monotonicity and time-scales. A given entity may not be able to monotonically sustain growth. Growth may pause, to be replaced by decline. Decline in turn may later pause, perhaps because a desperate people decides to reform itself, or from mere historical luck. The time-scale for this could be generations, or even centuries. For old countries, with thousands of years of history, the broad-view may look like stability. But the more detailed view shows cycles of growth and decay.
A good example is China. I won’t pretend to be any scholar (even at amateur level) of Chinese history. But even a brief Google search reveals that China has undergone numerous such cycles. The latest downturn concluded, perhaps, with Mao’s death. Now they’re in a growth-period, which may last for the next 20 years, or the next 200.
The point of Big Tom’s epigram, and less succinctly of mine, is that we can have a sawtooth-history of ups and downs, perhaps of fine gradation; but we can’t have a truly smooth and even going. This is because smoothness is predicated on a fine balance, and systems as complex as nations are too complex to really be balanced. Even for smaller systems, like say a private business, there are too may external forces – demand, inflation, trade barriers, competition, the underlying infrastructure, fickle tastes and fashions, etc. – to find such exquisite balance.
A simple personal example may do. I’m reasonably physically fit – not outstandingly so, but enough. To do this, I combine strength-exercises (weight lifting and the like) with cardio (running). I find that doing lots of running ruins my capacity to lift weights, but because my own weight declines, I can do more pull-ups. To improve my benchpress, I cut back on the running. This does indeed increase the capacity to wield weights, but because I’m also heavier (from more caloric intake and less outlay), I’m able to do fewer pull-ups. Eventually this irritates me. I cut back on the weight-lifting and do more running. And so forth. This is never static, never entirely steady, but the oscillations are small; maybe at most in 10 pounds of body-weight.
Similarly, the US is currently in a phase of populism and insularity, of skepticism of institutions (especially international institutions). A peeved and disoriented people is hungry for simple, immediate solutions. But eventually these “solutions” will be unmasked as trite and duplicitous slogans. The venality of the sloganeers will be exposed, and nuance will at least to some extent return to acceptability. May we have sufficient patience to endure until that time, so that the negative side of Big Tom’s pronouncement won’t turn out to be permanent.
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