Although, at my heart, I am really a sort of libertarian, I understand that the modern world is far too complex and interconnected to have a place for any kind of simplicity to work.
Democracies are the sloppiest and most inefficient forms of government, even if they are the most fair.
Authoritarian dictatorships are the cleanest and most efficient, and the most unfair (a so-called "benevolent" dictatorship would be wonderful, but in reality it would never last more than a generation or 2 .... ), so the planet is stuck with a China wielding an impossibly great advantage that has been millennia in the making.
I truly believe that the inequalities in wealth and power will eventually bury the West in its own excesses, but I will probably not live to experience it. My children might. How the planet comes to terms with population/wealth/power is certainly the great dilemma of the next few decades/centuries.
Having recently re-read "Brave New World" and "1984" I am astonished at how clearly those authors "saw" the future, in Huxley's case even before the rise of the Nazis, and in Orwell's case very shortly after WW2.
Although I was raised as a "good little" Republican in the 1950s, I am clearly a "bleeding heart" liberal now, at least by the standards of the majority of the population of Georgia, USA, where I currently reside (I was born and raised in Tennessee, much the same).
I find it fascinating that the "debate" in the US in the run-up to an election is so narrow. You could have asked any number of people, several years ago, whether they would vote Republican or Democrat in the 2012 election, and you would have gotten about 49% of each to give a firm commitment.
All this crap today is about to trying to swing the remaining 2%
And they swing on whether they have jobs and health insurance
So, who do you blame, Bush Jr or Obama?
Yes, indeed, the US is clearly ****ed.
If I could change 1 single thing, I suppose that I would select regulating the banking/investment industry.
And if I could change 2, the second would be universal health care as a service-based, not profit-based, enterprise.
