Thread: Let us get down to the nitty gritty.

Originally Posted by GReYVee

Yeah the arch duke was a straw as it were. shot in the neck and all.. But shit.. Do i have to give you guys some specific topic to start it out? You know what I am talking about and if you do not yer either blind, dumb, or young.


What happened to political philosphy?

I edited my post a bit since you quoted that, but it remains fairly similar. But "You know what I'm talking about"... your first post is pretty vague and I don't think anyone's going to post a huge essay on a topic so loosely defined when you've only taken the time to write a few sentences on it yourself. Are you looking for "The history of American Imperialism from pre-1492 to the present day" or "the methods via which nation-states vie for power and influence in the 20th century and beyond" or "What forces define the character of a nation-state in the first place?" or "Historical influences on Western thinking, from Ancient Greece to today" or "Human nature and the struggle for limited resources" or what? Considering that all of those topics are ridiculous broad and may not even fully encompass what you're talking about (political philosophy isn't exactly a narrowly defined topic), and also considering that people commonly have a particular viewpoint that they're trying to peddle when they start topics on these forums (if you like history and political science you would have had a field day in the "Christian Nation" thread) it's tough to get people interested in putting time into a thread like this unless you are willing to take the time to properly kick things off.

I don't even understand the point of this topic.

I would argue that we're using globalism/economic neoliberalism to further our influence in the world in such a way that gets money for those who are looking to make cash grabs without the necessities of convincing a public that has at least some shred of conscience to get beyond (or drafted into) a war. We've "improved" on the model of imperialistic Britain and now our corporations can broker favorable deals with ensconced political forces in a given area that allow us to exploit its lands and populace for monetary gain without landing a single troop. Just because we aren't nuking people (and getting nuked in return) doesn't mean we're playing "nice and good."

Expansion into North America by the west was the biggest land grab/cash cow in the history of human civilization. Humanity's total material wealth was vastly increased, and the money taps just kept flowing for hundreds of years. World population increased dramatically. Exploitation of natural resources for profit continues and America will not be shut out of markets that it wants to access if it has anything to say about it. We've got incredible leverage, and we use it. Why get into a huge war when it's next to impossible for another nation to directly threaten us (except via something like nuclear weapons)? Without vastly superior naval and air power, no one is going to hurt us in a conventional war. Small wars are far more effective at both spreading influence, opening up new regions for exploitation, defining new, US-favorable markets, and keeping the profiteering taps on. IMO.

So if we're trying to define "What forces define the character of a nation-state in the first place?" I'd argue that the balance between the classes (loosely defined as lower, middle, and upper), and the struggle within each class are the major defining forces. In the USA's case, each class likes policies that directly benefit them. The already-rich in a position to exploit a dominant (or government-subsidized, similar to Japan) position in the global economy prefer globalization and neoliberalism. The already-rich in a position to dominate the US market push to restrict their particular markets such that the USA remains economically isolationist in those markets (e.g. steel). This dichotomy is the kind of thing that causes other nations (who are trying the same kind of thing... again, Japan loves this, Russia is trying to get as good at it as we are and China is *gulp*) to spar back and forth with competing economic policies (e.g. attempting to gain access to favorable US markets while restricting access to their own markets that US corporations would have advantages in).

The lower class has economic influence en masse but not individually, and must generally deal with the policies enacted by the rich as they have less power to go out and sieze power on their own. They will, however, unionize (although this ability is suffering greatly lately) or vote to share the wealth that the rich are generating through their exploitation of the American political system, the American economy (including its resources/populace), and the global economy (including other nation-states and their resources/populace). I believe that one of the questions that defines whether you are a middle class Democrat or Republican is "Is this valid or not?" to which I say "the rich are raking it in hand over fist with their very favorable position at the top of the heap here and don't deserve to keep wealth gained by a minor part hard work and a major part of a ridiculously favorable market position." In the past, the poor would alter their market position by violent revolution, and revolution/succession wars destroy empires (see: all of world history). Democracy, IMO, has a big benefit in allowing the poor to change policies to favor them more than they are being favored (they'll always be exploited and have somewhat shitty lives as a majority) without massive (very unprofitable) upheaval.

The growth of the USA, with such huge amounts of wealth to go around, has created one of the most solid middle classes in world history, IMO. It's an unparalleled chance for those of us who are capable and hard-working but not born with a silver spoon in our mouths to make our presence known on the world stage. It's no longer the sole province of successful merchants/high-ranking clergy/etc. I believe that a key facet of the American Dream is the attainment of individual economic freedom in the (upper) middle class through hard work (rather than attainment of the upper class, although this is another aspect of it). We are currently in a big test for the middle class, as globalization (offshoring, creation of wealth in foreign lands rather than the USA resulting in a net loss of middle class jobs), and creating segments of the national economy through which they do not have much access except as a wage slave (i.e. lower class profession such as Walmart personnel as compared to 'mom and pop' stores) are hurting that aspect of the American dream. Does the middle class support greater economic isolationism (e.g. prohibitive tariffs on foreign goods in certain markets like automotive/steel/etc), fairer markets back home (e.g. slam stores like Walmart, etc that are prohibitive to middle class entry into large segments of the market) or try to find a way to get in on the globalization cash cow (which requires ever-expanding globalization)? There are only so many middle class service-related jobs to go around. It's getting tougher and tougher to make blue collar middle class work, and entrance criteria into the white collar middle class can be more restrictive.

These struggles within each class, and the struggles between classes, in their attempt to get resources for themselves, create many of the internal tensions that make a nation behave the way it does.

Other actors on this, which I will summarize since I've typed too much already, are:

- Principle - The high standards of living in the USA compared to historic standards of living allow the upper, middle, and lower classes (to different extents) more freedom from the basic human problems of food/shelter. This gives us the luxury of adhering to principles not directly related to our own survival. At that point we may ask ourselves "What is the right thing to do?" although we are still humans and groups subject to rationalizing the world such that "the right thing" gets ourselves a greater share of the resources.

- Other nations - They've got the same classes we do, to different extents, and we're all competing for the same worldwide pool of resources, which may create power dynamics and alliances within our own classes that make us as a nation go in a different direction than we would absent the other nations. Occasionally, a nation that we exploit rocks the boat by trying to stop us from doing that, which also generates responses from us based on what class/principles/economic/political forces are prevalent at that time.

Getting tired, might type more later.

Damn, I forgot that as post length approaches 1 page, chance of reply approaches 0. I broke it!