The World to Come

For me the issue is the elites

who bribe, threaten, corrupt and invade other countries to enrich themselves, greed... the average American is also a victim however they do benefit from higher living standards... while the people in these corrupted and destroyed countries suffer.

The irony of course is that the same environment of corruption that they

have created in South America, have helped Iran infiltrate most ALBA countries. Therefore their greed have resulted in placing America at risk.

 

The penny hasn't dropped yet for 'the average American', but yes, the rug will be pulled out from under them and they won't have the slightest clue how to pick themselves up from the floor.

Which brings us round to what Striped Horse said earlier:

 

I absolutely share your viewpoint here. I also don't give much of a toss about US domestic politics either and my principal raison d'etre for posting on this forum is American overreach and their appalling gangster-like foreign policy and military aggressiveness around the world.

 

What have we stolen from Venezuela?

 

Take your own advice.

 

Do you prefer I let the mods decide? I'm quite sure that you're flamebaiting and that's against the rule.
So I invite you politely to move on. If you can't help yourself I recommend you use the ignore function.

 

Great idea.

 

Their Democracy.

 

When did we do that?

 

At this very moment.

 

You are correct. When I see the abject denial of reality, void of any thought or ability to reason, in the above post my hope for humanity definitely takes a hit.

 

The religious right is a huge problem. They do not vote on the basis of logic, reason or respect for the founding principles or the principle of Republicanism.

Barry Goldwater - aka "Godfather of Conservatism" put it this way.

Goldwater predicted that the religious right gaining control of the party would end up in the demise of the party and he was correct. Not only has this led to the demise of the right but the demise of the Nation.

With such mindlessness on the right - there is nothing to check the mindlessness on the left. This has gotten us to a very bad place.

 

Both Red and Blue Establishment hate the founding principles and the constitution - and the rule of law for that matter.

Principles are not much good if people do not follow them.

 

Anyone who would put Progressives and Enlightenment in the same sentence must be a Heraclitan

 

You’re insane, as in: exiled from reality.

I’ll bet my life in 200 years America will be stronger and better. Of course, easy to say, I’ll be dead.

So the question becomes: Why do I think this? Two words; ATLAS SHRUGGED. I mean, who would walk into hell after being show what hell is and how it comes into existence? Especially when the alternative is heaven on earth.

 

??? They still have their same form of government. They just have two guys at the same time claiming to be the legitimate leader. Yeah, we verbally gave our support to the new guy, but notice the old guy is still in place. No, we didn't steal democracy from Venezuela. They've done that on their own. They made a fortune doing business with the US. We were their #1 customer. We stole nothing from them. They stole (nationalized) billions from us.

 

Nicolás Maduro is the democratically-elected President of the country and his term of office is still running. The U.S. wants him to step down and put an unelected man in the office of President instead. Collusion? Manipulation? Political coup? Whatever you want to call it ... it is non-Democratic, i.e. the U.S. is stealing Venezuela's Democracy. But this is nothing new. The U.S. has been destroying Democratic governments since at least the 1950's.

 

Democracy: The prattle of little minds envious of their betters.

 

AND he is still in office so we have not stolen anything.

 

That's because he told the U.S. to stick their demands up their plumbing. So now the Amerian military is going to go down there and force him out and thus steal Venezuela's Democracy from them.

 

Ah, so "at this very moment" refers to some unknown date in the future you have imagined. Like I said, we haven't stolen anything from Venezuela.

 

Nobody takes Ayn Rand Seriously after high school.

 

You remind me of a child who doesn't want to go to bed, making up all kinds of excuses to engage his parents into an argument that he can't possibly win just so he can stay up one more minute.

 

Well, at least not you. Yes? I can name at least two...at least three...at least four...well at least hundred's of thousands:

Atlas Shrugged debuted on The New York Times Bestseller List at No. 13 three days after its publication. It peaked at No. 3 on December 8, 1957, and was on the list for 22 consecutive weeks.[5] By 1984, its sales had exceeded five million copies.[41]

Sales of Atlas Shrugged increased following the 2007 financial crisis. The Economist reported that the 52-year-old novel ranked No. 33 among Amazon.com's top-selling books on January 13, 2009, and that its 30-day sales average showed the novel selling three times faster than during the same period of the previous year. With an attached sales chart, The Economist reported that sales "spikes" of the book seemed to coincide with the release of economic data. Subsequently, on April 2, 2009, Atlas Shrugged ranked No. 1 in the "Fiction and Literature" category at Amazon and No. 15 in overall sales.[42][43] Total sales of the novel in 2009 exceeded 500,000 copies.[44] The book sold 445,000 copies in 2011, the second-strongest sales year in the novel's history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged

And then there's this:



And this: Books that shaped America.
http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/books-that-shaped-america


And, of course, there's me. Go figure.

Apparently, you have been out of the loop since high school and missed the memo.

Tough luck.