Are you fucking kidding me? The vast majority of willfully ignorant sheep in this country actually think we are either intervening just enough or too little in the affairs of sovereign countries around the world? I guess the multitude of success stories in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iran, and the Ukraine just isn’t enough for the mindless sheep. We surely must spread our democracy at the point of a missile to even more countries. We must spread the seeds of our tremendously successful consumer debt driven economic system to the savages in other countries. Our warfare-welfare state is a model all countries need to replicate. You ain’t somebody until you owe somebody. And boy do we owe a lot.
The results of this poll give new meaning to George Carlin’s observation:
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” ― George Carlin
Most Americans ………. I just don’t like them.
Is it really shocking?
We continue to perpetuate, fund, and demand funding, for some of the world’s greatests wastes of both resources and human lives.
The drug war immediately comes to mind. 40 years, trillions of dollars, millions of destroyed lives, millions of destroyed abilities/opportunities and the results are? Oh yeah, the SAME percentage of ‘murkins (and others) using drugs. The SAME price that it was 40 years ago. How’s that for the average sheeple ‘murkin and their thinking abilities.
Or how about public education and more higher ed? How’s them results looking in the IQs, jobs, inventions, ass sizes?
I’m sure we could come with 100 ways that the “average” ‘murkin believes in myth and will kill you, or at least help to imprison you, if you don’t believe the bullshit with them.
Carlin was right. Now we need to realize that was 20+ years ago and the Bell curve has only slid further down.
America: the big spender tossing cash around like a drunk, tipping the brown valet with a fifty… Until the bank refuses to roll over the loans he has due, and the next day everything he owns is confiscated to satisfy the creditors.
One day he’s Big Man, the next he’s living in a box under a bridge.
Derp….
Henry Kissinger had this Op-Ed in the WSJ today… although I don’t admire him and count him among the contributors to the mess we’re in, it’s a worthwhile read:
The Assembly of a New World Order
The concept that has underpinned the modern geopolitical era is in crisis
The search for world order has long been defined almost exclusively by the concepts of Western societies. In the decades following World War II, the U.S.—strengthened in its economy and national confidence—began to take up the torch of international leadership and added a new dimension. A nation founded explicitly on an idea of free and representative governance, the U.S. identified its own rise with the spread of liberty and democracy and credited these forces with an ability to achieve just and lasting peace. The traditional European approach to order had viewed peoples and states as inherently competitive; to constrain the effects of their clashing ambitions, it relied on a balance of power and a concert of enlightened statesmen. The prevalent American view considered people inherently reasonable and inclined toward peaceful compromise and common sense; the spread of democracy was therefore the overarching goal for international order. Free markets would uplift individuals, enrich societies and substitute economic interdependence for traditional international rivalries.
Unfortunately, Kissinger seems to believe that a “world order” of any kind is preferable to nations minding their own business. I can’t imagine anyone who knows world history would agree with that; it’s when we attempt collaboration that strife emerges. Would be interested in what everyone thinks after reading his full piece.
Huh. Milners Kindergarten is still at it…
Idiots.
“The vast majority of willfully ignorant sheep in this country actually think we are either intervening just enough or too little in the affairs of sovereign countries around the world?”
I think this is exactly the kind of balanced “thought” our owners are actively trying to cultivate. From our POV, things are fucked up and bullshit. From the owners POV, things are progressing nicely.
It is incredible that polling a bunch of Americans about interventionism is so tepid. I think that the recent beheading of Foley has fired up the support. Actually they should ask Americans how would you grade American Foreign Policy. I give them a F-.
American foreign policy is basically to invade or assist in the overthrow of political strongmen so called “dictators” and unleash the crazy factions they had historically repressed to create CHAOS.
I’ve given up discussing politics with my neighbors. One fella in his 70’s told me he just LOVED that “Shock & awe” when we bombed the shit out of Iraq. Of course I had to remind him that was an attack on a country that (1) wasn’t responsible for 9/11, (2) Didn’t attack us, and (3) Didn’t have any WMD. He called me an idiot.
Another neighbor lady in her 60’s was spouting to a group about how the Iraqi’s just loved us and in fact she saw an Iraqi on the teevee (probably Fox) expressing his sincere appreciation for the U.S. occupation of his country. I had to remind her he probably had no relatives left because we killed somewhere near 1 million Iraqi civilians in the invasion. She didn’t believe me.
I think a lot of this comes from the disinformation being served up by the media. And we’re truly fucked when the Supreme court rules that “news” doesn’t have to be the truth, as they did in the Fox news case.
I guess some Americans just can’t question anything they see on the teevee. Dumbasses!
As long as only 5 companies control what the majority of Americans see & hear we’ll see poll results like this. I’ve totally given up trying to discuss politics with my neighbors. They love us invading other countries that didn’t attack us first and blowing shit up. The stupidity is simply amazing.
the beautiful blonde remarked, i don’t understand why you say some of the things you say. she never explained that remark but westcoaster gives me a clue:
she grew exasperated when no one could find the missing aircraft under the sea. she said, we have a navy, they could just go over there…i thought of the logistics and cost of such an operation and said, i dunno. then my ego got involved and i said, it’s probably a great excuse to survey the coast off China. she looked bewildered and i shut up.
I mean it’s unbelievable but it shouldn’t shock me in the slightest for how stupid people are. Pretty much 99% of the population has the information right at your figure tips on the internet and over all they are still too fucking stupid to read and figure it out.
If only would would have listened not just recently either for far too long this has been going on…
“Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes and the opportunities of fraud growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could reserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
James Madison
Political Observations
April 20, 1795
Marc Faber Slams US Intervention In Middle East, Warns “Whole Region Will Blow Up”
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/29/2014 20:51 -0400
Excerpted from Global Gold interview with Marc Faber,
Let’s talk about the ongoing power shift from the West to the East.
Well, basically, everything is connected and interrelated. We had a colonial system until the end of the Second World War, followed by the rise of individual countries. And over the last twenty-five to thirty years what we had was the rise of China with 1.3 billion people. Because of China’s rapid growth and resource dependence (iron ore, copper from Australia, Brazil and Africa, and oil principally from the Middle East), the Chinese have obviously become a very important economic force.
Take Africa twelve years ago: trade between Africa and the US was twice the size of trade between Africa and China. But today, the situation is reversed.
As a result, China has gained large geopolitical influence due to its growing economic relations. This helped shift alliances from the US to the East, which has led to tensions. China has many provinces that are larger than a European country and as an economic block, China is huge! It dwarfs everything else in Asia. But now China is surrounded by military bases in Asia, by American aircraft carriers and by the signed defense treaties between the US and Japan.
Moreover, the Chinese never forgot that Japan had attacked them numerous times over the past 200 years. Additional disputes between China and its surrounding countries, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, and especially Japan about maritime rights will cause further tension in the region.
Despite these tensions, the power shift is still underway. You have a superpower like the one Britain was until the First World War and you have a rising power like Germany whose economy in 1910 overtook that of the British. Here you have the superpower that believes in the old order and the new power that believes it should have more influence on global affairs. The resulting tensions create an environment that is favorable for confrontation.
But it doesn’t have to come to war. In my view, China’s long-term objective is to kick out the US from their military bases, particularly after Hillary Clinton and Mr. Obama announced the American Pivot to Asia two years ago; it was a kind of direct attack or confrontational behavior towards China.
Can you tell us your opinion on the recent developments and events in the world like the Middle East? Will these events in that region further escalate? Will they have a long-term impact?
Today, we find ourselves with the same anti-free market interventionists who set up the Federal Reserve, the US Treasury and the US government. These same incompetent professors and academics also run foreign policy in America and then go and intervene in the affairs of Libya, Syria, Egypt, Iraq or Afghanistan. And as can be expected, they mess up just about everything.
We have this Wolfowitz Doctrine that says they don’t want to tolerate any other major power such as the Soviet Union or China. So they want to contain these countries. When these countries become economically more and more important, the tensions, in my view, are only going to increase.
I think it’s unlikely that the West will take any action.
First of all, they don’t have the money.
Second, a survey done by the US military stated that over 71% of their youth are unqualified to join the military for a number of reasons, including educational, behavioral and health conditions. So, if 71% of American youth are not qualified, it means the US doesn’t have the labor force to actually implement its foreign policies. And so they resort to private contracting companies that create more problems than solutions.
I’m very negative about the Middle East. I think the whole region will blow up.
Eventually Iraq will be divided into three different countries: the Kurds, the Sunni in the North and the Shiites in the South. All I can say is that, in general, financial markets are not paying sufficient attention to this.
What are your thoughts on the Chinese-Russian gas deal? Is this a further step towards the decline of the Dollar or the next step towards replacing the USD as the world reserve currency?
I think it’s a symptom of the new world order I was referring to where the balance of economic power has shifted to Asia and emerging economies. This becomes very clear if you look at European companies. Where do they grow? Not in Europe.
Asia has become and will remain the growth market. The gas deal is a big deal in the sense that, it proves how incompetent US foreign policy is.
The US supported the opposition in Ukraine thinking that Russia will do nothing. But Crimea is strategically important to Russia since it gives their fleet access to the Mediterranean and the Middle East. And so, by supporting the opposition in Ukraine, the Americans essentially removed a democratically elected president. He may have been incompetent, but he was democratically elected nevertheless.
That’s democracy! In democracy you have incompetent people at the top.
The Americans also thought they can push the Russians a bit further by trying to lure Ukraine into NATO. That was a step too far and so the Russians reacted by signing a gas deal with China! The significance of this deal lies in that the payment will no longer be made in Dollars but in local currency, the Ruble or Yuan.
I think this is symptomatic of an empire, the US, in decline and a global currency in decline as well. Don’t forget, until WWI, the world currency was the British Pound and its importance diminished afterwards. And now we have a gradual lessening importance of the US Dollar.
* * *
Hold gold…
Now when will Soros, Buffet, Adelson, those of that ilk, Neo-kooks, lobbyists exceptionalists and basically all of DC, District of Corruption, move to China?
Soon I hope.