First of all, you can keep your bitter speculations on my feelings toward America to yourself.
Oh, boo hoo hoo. I've seen enough of your posts to know it's not "speculation," and if you think it's "bitter" rather than bemused, well, that says something, too.
The fact that I debate issues with people who often barely seem to acknowledge the difference between true and false is pretty strong evidence that I care what happens to this country.
Yeah, that made no sense at all.
Secondly, a functioning city is not a "dog and pony show,"
It is when the government builds such a city specifically to "show" the West that it's on par with them. It's rather cargo-cultish. It's not
my fault you refuse to look behind the veil.
and you are not going to make any valid points by pretending that because something didn't come about in ways prescribed by your ideology that it's somehow not real. That's laughable Pravda-esque thinking.
See, now you're making assumptions about me. I never said it was because they don't follow my political views.
China is making investments and reaping major returns. We, on the other hand, have not made those investments because for thirty years Republicans and their ideological cadres have held our government hostage to market fundamentalism. For thirty years we have flushed unfathomable amounts of wealth down the toilet in worthless private stock market speculation rather than taxing that money at a reasonable rate and putting it into public infrastructure.
They're replacing their shacks with stuff we've had for a century. And yeah, it's all "Republicans" behind it. Of course you'd see it that way.
Learning from the experiences of other countries would seem wiser than ignoring them.
And you're ignoring my point. It wasn't about "learning from the experiences of other countries." It was about swooning over authoritarian systems which appeared, for a little while, to be making strides past our own "lethargic" and "backwards" way of doing things. Sound familiar?
Fascism was the movement of the wealthy, industrial right. Stop trying to rewrite history like the people you're criticizing.
What history am I "rewriting"? The Progressive left
loved the fascist movements, particularly when they were making strides during the Depression. (Again, sound familiar?) If you don't think so, then you need to learn the history you think I'm "rewriting."
That we can legitimately take responsibility for, at least in the early decades before it became a vehicle for Russian nationalism.
Didn't stop smug lefty treatises on the subject all the way up to and throughout the '80s, and the moaning after that house of cards collapsed. And hey, even
now among members of this board.
But history unfolds as it will, "best laid plans" and whatnot. At very least it spurred America toward its greatest achievements in order to compete with the Soviet Union. Tragic, don't you think, that we feel no similar impulse to compete with China instead of being passive consumers of its exports?
I don't think that's true at all. But I also think the major impetus NOT to compete with them comes from YOUR side of things.
Do you even know what you're talking about, or is this all just one long ideological reaction?
Do you have any better response?
And I wouldn't have had the right in the 1960s Soviet Union either, but that doesn't mean I would fail to recognize the need to compete with them. Now just answer the question this thread asks: How does America restore its global competitiveness?
In ways you would almost
certainly oppose.
Why aren't we building anything we've never had before?
Well, THAT is a legitimately good question. No doubt you blame it all on "right-wingers," but perhaps you might also take a look at the staggering entitlement spending and wonder where else that money could go.
You mistake a fact for a judgment. Believe it or not, a country is not a woman asking you if a dress makes her look fat - honestly assessing its present situation in historical context is helpful.
Yeaaaaaaah. I'll just bet you'd rather go to Slovenia for your health care. Yeaaaaaah. "Fact" indeed.
Rather than trashing other countries whose performance embarrasses us, couldn't you be spending your time coming up with ideas for how to make America more competitive?
If you're "embarrassed," you make my point
for me.
I'll never understand the need of people with a strong ideological bent to deny that something is real because their beliefs say it shouldn't exist.
