A recent study [very technical, but if you wanna read it it's here] suggests we've underestimated, possibly by a great deal, the damage done to us by mass loss of manufacturing to China. I've read a few experts who sort of agree with the study but still claim the authors over do it and end up affirming status quo, ie more good than bad to be found in excretions of Chimerica monster. But to me raises interesting points regardless: what will it say about us as a culture if we've completely miscalculated the dynamics of our economic relationship with China? If the turn is for the worse, how bad can it get and what happens if it's too late to turn back? What if China knows we've got it wrong and have been quietly exploiting our stupidity all along? One can already make convincing case that when it comes to military questions we've made significant miscalculations regarding how Middle Kingdom's post-Mao rut with capitalism would supposedly beget changes in China that would reduce their threat profile - but jesus, if we got the economics wrong as well, which of course will in turn worsen security concerns, shit... could lead to some major upheaval in not too distant future.
What if the break up of the European Union [which I'm assuming is inevitable in some way ie it will not be the post nation state bureaucratic marvel imagined by its creators] is the first corpse to bob to the surface of this fetid pool? That's to wax a bit excessive - but what I mean is, what if the cultural mindset of the West since the end of WWII has been in some fundamental way wrong, misguided, delusional - but the sheer weight of our economic might just pushed these flaws and vulnerabilities out of sight - but look out, there they are, staring us in the face, like spoiled, insufferable children we've indulged into a kind of madness who have returned home to torture and accuse with pouty scowls and peevish, grunting irony? They've grown up, they're useless and you can't go back now and raise them up right. I tend to think that's exactly how the nouveau mandarins of China see us and they feel no pity whatsoever, which of course is fair - but what if it's actually true? Hard to believe a whole lotta bad wouldn't be the result - turmoil, chaos, possibly a revolutionary chaos - after all, how would one fix such a problem short of demanding epochal change? What if the current partisan dysfunction in Washington is a foreboding wisp of the chaotic winds to come? Sure, the idiot child Obama thinks he's the true agent of change, bright scion of the gods of promise - but in fact he's a throw back, a manifestation of the delusional thinking that brought us here [if here indeed is where we are] - no, the change I'm talking about would be a much more frightening thing - not a gift, not a promise - no sweetness and light - rather a bitter trial on a dark and difficult road.
[well, that has a mushy, end of days feel to it - what I'm thinking of here is I was reading, viz European Union troubles, recollections of when the Union was verging on birth and the minority nay sayers [realists] were being ridiculed by the enlightened majority yeah sayers [progressives] as xenophobic, backwards, intolerant etc etc for having the temerity to suggest the concept was naive, simple-minded, hopelessly idealistic and doomed to fail - and of course the realists have now been proven right - and what struck me was the disdainful, dismissive arrogance of the progressives was very much like the scorn Obamaphiles expressed towards those benighted enough to question the obvious brilliance of Dear Leader - I mean I couldn't get into a conversation about Obama in 2008 without it eventually being implied or explicitly stated that if I couldn't see how magnificent the man was or grasp the pure beauty of his message it must be because I was an abject fool or a racist - and of course now my skepticism has been vindicated - point being, this evinced inability for our culture to effectively differentiate fantasy from reality may be symptomatic of a degenerative or enervating contentment afflicting advanced cultures that renders them incapable of putting hard truths ahead of comforting lies. I mean, the idea of a European Union has been around for awhile but reality always beat it back - why not this time? I would say the comforting illusion of a Pax Americana going on forever and giving 'Europe' the sense that it would remain secure without ever having to actually pay for that security and the general good will and prosperity that followed in the wake of the Berlin Wall going bye bye - suddenly progressives were freed just enough from cold reality to imagine their fanciful post-modern musings to be rationally grounded in actual truths]
