“”Think global, act local.” Write a post connecting a global issue to a personal one.”
This platitude is something you hear bandied about by people trying to pose as activists in the first world. They use this phrase too much to try to sway people who are really not interested in changing what they are doing. Life is comfortable in the way we are living it, imposing our comforts on the entire world is actually what is working to damage it. We hop in our cars which is damaging the climate. We pay taxes to a government that is besotted with war, so in that way, we are washing our hands in a fountain of blood. We are against cruelty to animals but eat agricorp chicken, beef, and pork. The fact that we are cruel to the ugly animals and kind to the cute ones is a hilarious batch of double-think.
We think that by imposing our will on the world, a world that doesn’t share our cultural background or our religion or customs is somehow not going to end in a blaze of destruction and ill-will returned to us in spades? It would be far better to let the world develop all by itself without the mighty hand of the American Empire. We can handily defend our borders, Canada is affectionately inert and Mexico has been providing us with slave labor for so very long that we should actually be sending them little thank you cards. Illegal immigration is the pot calling the kettle black. All we need to do is defend our waters and leave the rest of the world to fend for itself.
This isolationist policy spits in the face of globalism and it doesn’t matter if you are for it or against it, it’s going to be the only option left to us very soon. How much money does it take to fund American interventionism across the planet? How much money do we spend on our bullshit wars? We defend places that no longer hold interest for us. We defend Japan, the Philippines, Germany, the DMZ in Korea. We perpetrate a hopeless war of irrelevant stupidity in Iraq and Afghanistan against foes that may or may not be there. It doesn’t matter what your politics are, what you think is right or wrong to do in a time of war. Eventually we will just RUN OUT OF MONEY and then what? What happens when there is nothing left, no more money to be had. When our debts overwhelm us? Will we die by the sword or by trillions of tiny little paper cuts? It’s folly to think that we can buck the trend that has been established for thousands upon thousands of years. Empires come and go and they last for about 250 years before they start to erode away. America is 237 years old. We’ve got 13 good years left to us, and we’ll be slated to die of natural causes in 2026. We can of course kick the can down the road, but to do so we will need to stop being foolish with money. For as long as America has existed, we’ve been at war almost constantly. What has it gotten us? A broken world that resents us. We will eventually run out of money which will mean we will have to abandon our designs on “The New American Century” and give up aspirations on an eternal American Empire. It’s just not going to happen. It would be better to admit this sooner rather than later. Dispose of war, leave these regions for good and let the people there sort out their own affairs. Leave Korea for the Chinese and Japanese to puzzle out. Germany and the Philippines no longer require our presence, they are doing just as well without us as with us. Call back all our overseas troops and concentrate our budgets on matters of home and hearth.
Either we can do this sooner, when it’s comfortable for us to do so, or we could wait and then run out of money. I’m sure our military will continue to serve as proud Americans after their paychecks stop coming. It’ll be really quite nasty when we can’t send food to them and they have to start fending for themselves. Alas, that’s the choice we have before us. Either we can retract or we can let what we’ve sent abroad starve. It’s just a matter of time.
