The God that helps survive all this evil is called Oneness (cooperation & empathy).
Capitalism, the relentless pursuit of profits, combined with modern fuel and machinery, is undermining that Oneness at unprecedented rates. If it is allowed to destroy the ecosystem, maybe a handful of human survivors can suffer a long period of healing and restoration through Oneness - but billions will die most unpleasantly in the meantime.
The US as a whole can't really achieve Florida levels of.... Floridaness. You need fewer good paying jobs, higher costs of living, lots more old retired people running things, more drugs - all kinds, sunburn and sweat instead of frostbite and snow to shovel.
Transparency is always the answer. Any changes which increase secrecy or decrease accountability are the opposite of progress.
Rather than figuring out how to stop people from wanting to run away to our countries, we prefer to exile these people, separate them from our society and, if at all possible, just make them not come into our countries at all.
Carrot and stick. Some people only understand hoarding their carrots and beating anyone within reach with their sticks.
The US has been the most powerful country in the world
For roughly 75 years.
France was strongly dominant under Napoleon for 15 years and didn't suffer too badly for 15 more years after that.
The period of the British Empire's global dominance, often referred to as the Pax Britannica, ran roughly 300 years.
The Roman Empire was dominant in the West for roughly 500 years, much longer in the eastern reaches.
The primary difference of the period of US dominance is that it has been almost entirely sustained by MAD - mutually assured destruction vs every other entity on the globe.
While it's true that the US survived all of those challenges of the past and had a pretty good run after WWII... was that just the coin toss coming up heads 10x in a row?
The comment I was responding to was talking about cooking with gasoline, but somehow it got re-arranged.
Cooking with gasoline?
There's no such thing as pure democracy in anything larger than an ancient Greek city-state, possibly today's HOAs - and you see how well they work.
What passes for democracy in todays' nations of millions (and even the HOA we chose to leave 12 years ago) is elected representative government where the voters trust their elected representatives to represent their interests - to varying degrees of success and failure.
What's lacking in, for instance, the US government for some time now is actual representation of the majority of the peoples' interests - unless the majority of the people actually enjoy being on the poor end of a growing wealth gap. Those voters who continue to elect representatives who perpetuate these policies are: getting the government they deserve.
In a democracy, the people get the government that they deserve, at least the near-majority of them do.
No, he's a poly-sci graduate: moldable lump of clay setup by the Heritage Foundation to sink or swim. Seems like he hasn't screwed up badly enough to be coat-hooked offstage just yet.
Absolutely. And, while there's always atrocities and tragedies around the world, back in "those days" the height of civilization was still brutal and cruel. We, globally, seem to have improved the "bright spots" somewhat as time goes by - even if we still leave the bulk of global human population in poverty and oppression.
My point about the 75 years? There have been shorter flashes in the pan, and much longer ones, we're nothing particularly special - what is special about this era is the power that fossil fuels have endowed modern society with. We've done some good things with those, and a lot of bad too.