Completely Wrong
"McCain tried to position himself as ...best able to face what he called "the transcendent challenge of the 21st Century, and that is radical Islamic extremists."
While 92 years is a long way to look into the future with any degree of clarity, there is no basis that to think that the well-being of Americans over the next four years, much less the next nine decades, is threatened primarily by "radical Islamic extremists."
My top list of "transcendent" challenges to the American standard of living and culture over the next two decades (nine is too hard to guess):
1. steadily rising income (and wealth) inequality due to rising competition from India and China for American domestic labor and, in many markets, against American-based firms.
2. multi-dimensional effects of climate change, including especially impacts on agriculture, weather, disease,and geopolitical instability.
3. the deterioration of the multilateral and Western-led system of global security in the face of rising economic and eventually military power from China, Russia, and eventually India, and the need for an alternative world order that is equally beneficial for Americans.
4. the imperative for high quality health care, education, transportation, and economic opportunity for all Americans -- these being elements of a high standard of living that are under pressure when the dollar is weak, public and private investment is too low, productivity gains in relevant sectors is too low, and markets are inadequately entrepreneurial.
5. the decline in the reputation and influence of American culture world-wide.
6. intolerance
7. xenophobia
8. monopoly
9. high risk, low probability events such as new diseases.
10. terrorism with powerful weapons, which is in no way limited to "radical Islamic extremists" as the last 50 years demonstrate.
McCain is trying to sell Osama as Darius and himself as Alexander the Great. He believes if he's successful he gets the Oval Office.
January 6, 2008 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Which makes you wonder: If Osama is an existential threat, why have the Republicans gotten away with claiming that capturing him is no longer relevant? And unlike the over-hyped threat of Saddam, OBL did actually murder 3000 Americans.
January 7, 2008 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Forgive me for saying so, but #5 is a good thing.
My own assessment of the top ten problems facing America.
1) End of the Cheap Energy/Petroleum Era. This single factor has been the underpinning for much, if not all, of the American economy, affecting and shaping such things as transportation infrastructure, city and urban development and agriculture. We're now entering an era where America's choices in a cheap energy world are going to become increasingly expensive and problematic, and which will end up becoming an economic handicap, reducing efficiency and productivity. The costs and disruptions will be massive.
2) Climate change. Big time. The American southwest and midwest already operate under unsustainable water use policies. That's going to collapse completely, and the scramble between urban and rural populations for whats left is not going to be pretty. Also, expect drought through Dixie, and hurricanes extreme along the gulf coast.
3) The KREDIT KRUNCH. Financially, America has been living beyond its means for decades in every conceivable sense - ranging from government deficits, trade deficits, zero savings, failure to invest or re-invest, a piratical but ineffective business culture, deindustrialization, job export, debt and credit card financing, etc. All factors which may result in a period of catastrophic economic paroxysms. It's likely to be short term, lasting only a few months or years. But the effects will last for decades.
4) Inequality, not due to competition from India/China, etc., but rather from government policies which ceaselessly worked to redistribute wealth upwards to the richest 1% of the population, and power into a corporatized oligarchy. On some level, America has been engaging in an experiment to recast its society after the mold of a latin American banana republic. Those are neither the sanest, nor the most stable of societies. Reed might be referencing this as 'monopoly' as well.
5) Infrastructure decay - roads, bridges, railroads, schools, hospitals, education, health care, urban cores, electricity grids, you name it, its suffering from neglect. Seems it was more important to Invade Iraq and give Paris Hilton Tax Breaks. This neglect makes America a lot less competitive, its going to be very costly to play catch up, and its likely that neither the will nor the ability will be there.
That's only five, but frankly, any one of those five would be enough.
Oh, and Terrorism... maybe it would be in there if I extended the list to a hundred. Or maybe not.
January 6, 2008 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Enough for what?
January 6, 2008 4:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Enough for what?
January 6, 2008 4:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm never one to try to minimize the problems facing the US and the planet, but I think too much forecasting as based upon extending current trends. Suppose we consider the opposite:
1. Wealth inequality in the US has reached its peak, it will now decline. Why? Because the super wealthy behind the effort have been unmasked (Scaife, Koch, Walton, Coors, Mars, etc.). Because the trickle down theory has been shown for what it is. Nothing trickles. Because the financial trickery that has been the basis for much of the "wealth" is actually play money and is rapidly evaporating.
2. China's expansion will soon stall and the country will fall into another round of internal civil war (see The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, etc. for prior civil wars). Why? Because the level of discord in the working and peasant classes has reached a critical mass: over 80,000 protests per year. Because the environmental degradation has reach a point where it is causing actual harm to people and hampering new production. Because environmental degradation has made China an importer of food and other vital raw materials for the first time. Because the ruling class is too corrupt to institute real reform.
3. The US will enter another 20-30 year period of neo-isolationism as it did after the loss in Vietnam. Apparently each new generation of gung ho armchair warriors needs to see their plans go awry for the public to turn inward again. Notice that the public is ahead of the pols on this which means that the next president is going to make things worse until they become better.
4. The US will become a former global empire just as have Spain, Holland, England and Russia before. As things stand right now we are not willing to accept this which means the transition will be messier than it need be. As usual the losers will be the working classes. A weak dollar will cause inflation, wages will fall due to competition for the declining number of jobs and there may be civil unrest. A former world power cannot maintain its consumption pattern when it can no longer control its client states.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
January 6, 2008 12:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
So you figure they're just going to go "Oh well, it was a nice try." and give it back? Good luck with that.
I'm not terribly concerned about China one way or the other. It's geopolitical concerns for the last few centuries have been strictly local. So if I'm not Taiwan or Indonesia, I wouldn't worry too much. On the other hand, there's a consistent world history of empires experiencing internal conflicts and avoiding those issues through foreign adventures. The notion being that foreign success will somehow resolve or divert domestic problems. So we'll see how it breaks.
Well, that period of neo-isolationism includes meddling in Afghanistan by supporting the mujahedeen to the tune of billions, Carter's brokering of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, the conflicts with Libya, playing both sides in the Iran/Iraq war, a secret war against Nicaragua and dirty wars in Central and Latin America, Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War, intervention in Lebanon... have I missed much?
When has it ever been done gracefully?
January 6, 2008 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
The wealthy are not going to "give it back", their assets are becoming devalued since many of them are based upon financial products of no inherent value. Who do you think is sustaining all those multi-billion dollar losses being taken by Citigroup, etc? I also think there will be a change in the tax code so that more will be collected from the wealthy. Not a lot more, but more.
If you think what happens in China won't have an effect on you then you haven't been paying attention. 30% of the particulate matter in the air in California blows over from China. LA is at risk of not being able to meet its air quality goals because of "imported" pollution. China has also been locking up big contracts for raw materials in Africa and elsewhere while the US has been distracted by Iraq. What happens when both dogs grab the same bone?
So, you don't think that the reaction to the Vietnam war caused a change in foreign policy. Everything you mentioned was a clandestine (or at least an attempt to keep it quite), small-scale effort. No one would propose something on the order of Iraq. Even Rwanda was too much for us to be willing to intervene in.
Yes, transitions don't go smoothly, but some go better than others. The one in the UK happened without either a civil war or the rise of a dictatorship.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
January 6, 2008 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Useful list, and we'll dispute the details, of course.
I submit the probability of a new disease is 100%, even without climate change.
January 6, 2008 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Top challenges for Americans:
1.Generating decent income at a rewarding job when the costs of fuel, housing, education and food are steeply increasing.
2.Obtaining adequate health care from the predatory insuror-based health care system.
3. Influencing government to focus on domestic needs rather than diverting excessive funds to the huge corporate welfare military budget.
4. Becoming a force for good in the world, cooperating with other countries on human rights, peacekeeping and other common issues.
5. Converting congressional representatives' allegiance from corporations to citizens, and reducing the harm that corporations do to citizens.
6. Recognizing that cattle-raising is a significant detriment to water supply and air quality, and that meat consumption harms personal health.
7. Finding a suitable replacement for the internal combustion engine.
8. Emphasizing peace not war as a solution to problems.
9. Overcoming the trend to a national security state.
10. Ending the war on drugs.
January 6, 2008 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
RDF's point number 4 should be near the top of any top 10 list. The US will retrench its empire and the 700 military bases and installations in other countries. The question is how that comes about. I do not believe that it is possible for normal politics to come up with a solution. The military-industrial complex is just too deeply entrenched in our economy and government for that to occur. Rather, it will occur after a major crisis, possibly a military defeat but more likely a major financial crises. Our foreign entanglements are quite simply just too expensive and will likely lead to national bankruptcy. This will possibly occur with the dollar losing in reserve currency status. Such an event will directly lead to Reed's points 3 and 4,and delay for a generation so his #5.
This will not be the end for the US. After all England, Holland and Spain are pleasant places to live today, though the transitions from super powers to normal nations was without pain.
January 6, 2008 3:22 PM | Reply | Permalink