Sarongman wrote:[quoting Gillard and Abbott] "Then there is America. No shortage of great people past and present. How could they let two bit freaks lead and destroy them? Clinton, Bush, Cheney, Obama, Romney?
One needs to go back a bit farther than that -- one needs to plumb the depths of the late 1970s to figure out what caused those greatest of all spasms, Reagan and Thatcher. Those two may as well have been joined at the groin for they were the "Perfect Storm" that brought an otherwise prosperous "Western Civilisation" to its economic knees.
During the Reagan administration the United States went from the world's largest creditor nation to the world's largest
debtor nation. Where'd the money go? It's been said that Winston Churchill sacrificed one empire to create two, but Margaret Thatcher obliterated what remained of Great Britain's wealth during the same time that Reagan bankrupted the USA. The Soviet Union "blinked" 15 seconds ahead of the USA, and we're now seeing what
that humiliation is visiting upon the world.
So, the proper read -- from a US-centric point of view -- is, "Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Cheney (regent for Bush II), Obama, and TBD" (To Be Decided). It's worth recalling that Clinton, for all his faults, actually managed to deliver a balanced budget. Carter remains questionable, but all the rest (save Clinton) have been unmitigated disasters, at least in the "old school" sense where one covers one's own debts. (The dateline above for assumption of the Presidency is 1976, 1980, 1988, 1992, 2000, 2008, and 2012.) There are altogether too many reasons to list here, at least without my blood-pressure rising to the danger-level of why I hate, nay, abhor, the 1980s.
To me it's all a two bit freak show. Look around the world: Blair, Cameron, Rajoy, Netenyahu, Merkel, Monti, Berlusconi, Sarkosy, Hollande. Name your country,pick your poison: president, prime minister, chancellor--- all in my eyes two bit freaks [...]
We are currently living that age-old "Chinese Curse" -- "may you live in interesting times". It's
almost enough to make one pine for the "bad old days" of the "Cold War" where at least the players on both sides were somewhat sane and realised that everybody would lose if things get out of hand. The stuff going on in the Middle East scares the pudding out of me precisely because neither side thinks it has anything to lose. The current problems in the Eurozone bother me because that was my last great hope for humanity (having written the US of A off as a neo-feudal "society", if not already there then rapidly becoming so).
Forward-thinkers have much to fear. Very much indeed. I think I'll go sailing again at the earliest opportunity -- whilst I still have time.
