What are America's interests?
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Tuesday, June 2, 2026 17:48
VIEWED: 19030
PAGE 12 of 16
So SIX, I know you're busy but I left some questions that I hope you'll answer. Just a bump so they don't get buried.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
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Ok, so how about a re-start?
Maybe we could have a REAL discussion this time?
It's been pending since 2017.
Edited to add: SECOND, please note that Trump isn't President. Neither is Putin. Biden* is. And this isn't Russia, or Ukraine. Or the poor benighted nations to our south, or the mideast. It's the United States of America.
I don't intend to bag on Biden* (altho I could!) If you can't unfixate your mind from Putin or Trump, please don't bother posting bc that's not the topic of this thread.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
AND NOW ... to America's interests.
Definitionally, I argue that "America's interests" are Americans' interests.
Not the interests of the vanishingly tiny but extremely powerful elite, and not the interest of some nation far-away, or of non-citizens within our borders, but the collective interests of the overwhelming majority of American citizens.
Now, we can look at this from the microscopic scale:
1) By looking at the interests of the various interest-groups that we have been so unfortunately divided into and seeing where they overlap and generalizing outward from there,
2) Or we can look at this from a theoretical viewpoint and narrow down to specifics.
I THINK THE FIRST APPROACH IS UNLIKELY TO BE SUCCESSFUL BY ITSELF. For example, if we start out with the idea that Black Lives Matter, and Women's Pay Matters, and Gay Marriage Matters, what we will wind up is with the truism that ... well, gosh, we should all be treated fairly and equally. Who could argue with that??? But we will STILL be fighting over the scarce resource of "jobs" (albeit more fairly!) and never get to the realization that maybe what we ALL need are better-paying, consequential jobs.
So I'm going to approach this from a theoretical POV, and start with WHAT DO HUMANS NEED? and work my way from there.
I hope you come along for the discussion, I've ended my trolling (which is really boring). Unless YOU start trolling again, in which case this will be a good discussion, spoiled.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Instead of the usual list of problems, lets pick one problem: the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The Democrats in Congress have gone about as far as they can go in solving that problem: $369 billion in Energy Security and Climate Change programs over the next 10 years. When $369 billion is divided by 334 million US citizens and divided by 10 years and divided by 12 months in a year, that is about $10 per month.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Ok, so how about a re-start?
Maybe we could have a REAL discussion this time?
It's been pending since 2017.
Edited to add: SECOND, please note that Trump isn't President. Neither is Putin. Biden* is. And this isn't Russia, or Ukraine. Or the poor benighted nations to our south, or the mideast. It's the United States of America.
I don't intend to bag on Biden* (altho I could!) If you can't unfixate your mind from Putin or Trump, please don't bother posting bc that's not the topic of this thread.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/inflation_reduction_act
_one_page_summary.pdf
Why can't the Democrats in Congress do more? Here are two reasons why they can't:
Reason 1: There was a time – a recent time – when concern about the environment was relatively bipartisan, not a cultural flashpoint.
A Republican, President Richard Nixon, established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. In the 1980s and 1990s, bipartisan majorities voted to strengthen the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, led by a Republican – Rhode Island’s Sen. John Chafee.
Those days are gone, and today a wide range of misleading statements and outright lies about the reality of human-caused climate change circulate widely.
The sheer volume of misinformation can distort perceptions of how many people don't believe the science that shows the Earth's climate is changing because of human activity, said Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist and professor at Texas Tech University.
"I call them 'zombie arguments' because you can explain that they're not true but they still go stumbling around because they're not about facts but excuses," she said.
More at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/12/29/global-warming-m
yths-disinformation-and-lies-circulated-2022/10802959002/
Reason 2: Why would people need excuses (see the above article) for not fixing the climate change problem?
People say they take climate change seriously, but if you put an actual dollar figure on fixing the problem, even $10 per month is too much for 70% of the population. Democrats in Congress passed a law in 2022 to fight climate change and the cost will be about $10 per month. That is totally amazing! $1 per month is the only amount that a majority supports. To solve the actual problem would cost in the area of $200 per month, but that can't become a law against overwhelming opposition by 90% of Americans.
How Much Would It Cost To End Climate Change?
https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/cost-to-end-climate-change/
Annual look at the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere.
It still doesn't look like emissions are slowing down, does it?
https://jabberwocking.com/top-ten-charts-of-2022/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Nope.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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Quote:Fireflyfans.net is place of wildly divergent views. America is a divergent place. Congress is a divergent place. What happens at such places? Today's Dilbert comic covers that:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Nope.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
Boss of Dilbert: I have created an advisory council of people who have wildly divergent views.
Dilbert: Has an advisory council of people who have wildly divergent views every accomplished anything?
Boss: I asked them the same thing. Opinions were mixed.
Dilbert: How do they ever agree on anything?
Boss: They don’t need to agree. I still make all the decisions.
Dilbert: Oh. You mean you are using them as cover for doing whatever you want to do.
Boss: I was hoping it wasn’t obvious.
Dilbert: We can pretend it isn’t.
https://dilbert.com/strip/2023-01-01
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Fireflyfans.net is place of wildly divergent views. America is a divergent place. Congress is a divergent place. What happens at such places? Today's Dilbert comic covers that:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Nope.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
Boss of Dilbert: I have created an advisory council of people who have wildly divergent views.
Dilbert: Has an advisory council of people who have wildly divergent views every accomplished anything?
Boss: I asked them the same thing. Opinions were mixed.
Dilbert: How do they ever agree on anything?
Boss: They don’t need to agree. I still make all the decisions.
Dilbert: Oh. You mean you are using them as cover for doing whatever you want to do.
Boss: I was hoping it wasn’t obvious.
Dilbert: We can pretend it isn’t.
https://dilbert.com/strip/2023-01-01
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Yeah.
Dilbert is talking about your ESG Overlords, stupid.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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SECOND once posted, in a fit of honesty, that he likes the USA being chaotic because in that environment "I can do whatever I please". i.e. pillage his fellow Americans.
That's why he's always trolling. All he's trying to do is pit people against each other.
And he's done a damn fine job, hasn't he, THUGR?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:There's concern about the environment, and concern about climate change. Two different things. You're conflating them on purpose
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Ok, so how about a re-start?
Maybe we could have a REAL discussion this time?
It's been pending since 2017.
Edited to add: SECOND, please note that Trump isn't President. Neither is Putin. Biden* is. And this isn't Russia, or Ukraine. Or the poor benighted nations to our south, or the mideast. It's the United States of America.
I don't intend to bag on Biden* (altho I could!) If you can't unfixate your mind from Putin or Trump, please don't bother posting bc that's not the topic of this thread.
SECOND: Instead of the usual list of problems, lets pick one problem: the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The Democrats in Congress have gone about as far as they can go in solving that problem: $369 billion in Energy Security and Climate Change programs over the next 10 years. When $369 billion is divided by 334 million US citizens and divided by 10 years and divided by 12 months in a year, that is about $10 per month.
https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/inflation_reduction_act
_one_page_summary.pdf
Why can't the Democrats in Congress do more? Here are two reasons why they can't:
Reason 1: There was a time – a recent time – when concern about the environment was relatively bipartisan, not a cultural flashpoint.
Quote:
SECOND: blah blah blah...
More at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/12/29/global-warming-m
yths-disinformation-and-lies-circulated-2022/10802959002/
Quote:Your chart makes no sense. Among other things,it totals up to far more than 100%.
SECOND: Reason 2: Why would people need excuses (see the above article) for not fixing the climate change problem?
People say they take climate change seriously, but if you put an actual dollar figure on fixing the problem, even $10 per month is too much for 70% of the population. Democrats in Congress passed a law in 2022 to fight climate change and the cost will be about $10 per month. That is totally amazing! $1 per month is the only amount that a majority supports. To solve the actual problem would cost in the area of $200 per month, but that can't become a law against overwhelming opposition by 90% of Americans.
How Much Would It Cost To End Climate Change?
https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/cost-to-end-climate-change/
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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So, to get back to what I hope is a sincere discussion! ...
I posted about individual needs... Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
But we can't survive as a species in isolation... most of us couldn't survive as individuals in isolation either. We need society to survive (for, among other things, division of labor) and society (family, community, village, city, nation) have needs, too. So the discussion needs to include what SOCIETY needs to survive.
Most societies don't look like ours. Some of them make my blood boil, they seem so unfair. Some of them make me want to bang my head against a wall, they seem so backward.
But its members mostly agree on their place in society, speak the same language, share the same beliefs about the world and what's right and what's wrong, morals, and pass those on to the next generation. Some of those societies have survived for millenia. So it's not just survival that counts, but what we want it to look like.
There's one more aspect of societal survival, and it's the idea that societies compete and evolve, in a Darwinian sense. And that societies will be perfected over time as they bang against each other and the "fittest" will supersede the less fit. I think that's a misunderstanding of evolution, but that's as far as I want to think about it tonight.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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