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Definitely not for the exhaustive quality of the article! My interest is mainly in the resulting discussion that this department of subject matter might genera

Definitely not for the exhaustive quality of the article! My interest is mainly in the resulting discussion that this department of subject matter might generate here. One of the things about HN, sociologically, that gives it a distinctive flavour is that the people here are mostly technocrats, and, as such, very wont to believe that large-scale, systemic problems facing mankind (resource depletion, peak oil, economic decline, war, hunger, cancer, etc.) are genuinely solvable. There's an inexorable kind of optimism coupled with studious attention to detail that one doesn't see from the more sensational and superficial discursive space surrounding these issues in the world at large. As a Russian immigrant, I find that this idealistic tendency of Americans (distilled and concentrated here) is simultaneously their biggest asset and their principal liability. Americans are often given to pronouncements of childlike problem-solving optimism about things for which it is all but certifiable that there is no solution, or at any rate, things for which the notion of an identifiable, apprehensible, and discrete solution is not intelligible. Sometimes, it is as if they have an almost ontological inability to understand that not all problems can just be "solved" like that. It leads to a lot of blind alleys, dark holes, and red herrings--in a word, boondoggles. And yet, to the extent that human progress has triumphed a tremendous amount of obstacles in seemingly improbable ways, this attitude is very necessary to sustain it, psychologically. It underlies much of the American Century s revolutionary contributions to enhance the quality of life and the basis for hope in the world. In other words, if we are going to fix reality and make it better, this general disposition is utterly prerequisite, even if at times the formulations to which it gives rise are naive, simplistic and facile. So, it is with that in mind that I read the comments here on such topics with enthusiasm.

tptacek 16y ago
Then my remark on the article is that it's ironic how ahistorical Greenwald can manage to make an article that's premised on a fundamentally historical comparison (the declines of empires, our "empire" being the most recent). What might Greenwald have thought about the Vietnam war, in which many multiples as many Americans died; a war in which our government overtly deceived the country into entering, in which we conceded southeast Asia to Communism? Not two decades later Communism collapsed, leaving the US as an unchecked dominating world power. What might he have thought about the Great Depression? Just a decade later, the US tooled up a woefully underarmed military and won a two-front world war. Surely Greenwald would have decried the '50s red scare as the end of the Constitution and the rise of ideological mob rule. History is filled with ups and downs, and compared to previous dips in our history, it seems almost comical to suggest that 2010 is the beginning of the end times.
- abalashov 16y ago
  It is truly a case of what the reader brings to the text, in this case, I suppose. My habitual optimism about people's reasonableness led me to assume that Greenwald was being a bit facetious with the apocalyptic tone and/or "decline of empire" talk, in order to draw attention to the fact that the fiscal crisis is more acute than many believe or aggregate government statistics might suggest, in a "death by a thousand cuts" kind of way. He also choose the examples that he did (complete axing of public transit, for example) to touch on things generally regarded as improbable in a country considered a) wealthy b) highly economically and technologically advanced c) generally providing a First World-normative level of infrastructure, public services and quality of life to a majority of its citizens.
- hga 16y ago
  "a war in which our government overtly deceived the country into entering" Well, as I recall reading a bit more than a decade later as I came of age and tried to figure out WTF had happened to my country, LBJ didn't feel he had much choice after his predecessor had 20 days before his own assassination arranged the deposing and assassination of the leader of South Vietnam and his brother/adviser. You break it, you own it, one all too few honorable LBJ's acts. That said, nothing can excuse LBJ's criminally incompetent prosecution of the war.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Seen _Fog of War_ by Errol Morris? Highly recommended! Credit where credit is due on SE Asia: a lot of this is McNamara's doing.
    - hga 16y ago
      No, I'd largely finished my Vietnam War studies by the end of the '70s. I do credit Robert Strange for a whole lot (e.g. the adoption of the atrocity known as the M16), but when you come down to it the buck stops at the Oval Office. JFK installed him as the head of the DoD and LBJ kept him there for far too long. And then made him the head of the World Bank, where he proceeded to destroy a lot of 3rd World agriculture from what I've read in less detail.

tptacek 16y ago

Then my remark on the article is that it's ironic how ahistorical Greenwald can manage to make an article that's premised on a fundamentally historical comparison (the declines of empires, our "empire" being the most recent). What might Greenwald have thought about the Vietnam war, in which many multiples as many Americans died; a war in which our government overtly deceived the country into entering, in which we conceded southeast Asia to Communism? Not two decades later Communism collapsed, leaving the US as an unchecked dominating world power. What might he have thought about the Great Depression? Just a decade later, the US tooled up a woefully underarmed military and won a two-front world war. Surely Greenwald would have decried the '50s red scare as the end of the Constitution and the rise of ideological mob rule. History is filled with ups and downs, and compared to previous dips in our history, it seems almost comical to suggest that 2010 is the beginning of the end times.

abalashov 16y ago
It is truly a case of what the reader brings to the text, in this case, I suppose. My habitual optimism about people's reasonableness led me to assume that Greenwald was being a bit facetious with the apocalyptic tone and/or "decline of empire" talk, in order to draw attention to the fact that the fiscal crisis is more acute than many believe or aggregate government statistics might suggest, in a "death by a thousand cuts" kind of way. He also choose the examples that he did (complete axing of public transit, for example) to touch on things generally regarded as improbable in a country considered a) wealthy b) highly economically and technologically advanced c) generally providing a First World-normative level of infrastructure, public services and quality of life to a majority of its citizens.
hga 16y ago
"a war in which our government overtly deceived the country into entering" Well, as I recall reading a bit more than a decade later as I came of age and tried to figure out WTF had happened to my country, LBJ didn't feel he had much choice after his predecessor had 20 days before his own assassination arranged the deposing and assassination of the leader of South Vietnam and his brother/adviser. You break it, you own it, one all too few honorable LBJ's acts. That said, nothing can excuse LBJ's criminally incompetent prosecution of the war.
- tptacek 16y ago
  Seen _Fog of War_ by Errol Morris? Highly recommended! Credit where credit is due on SE Asia: a lot of this is McNamara's doing.
  - hga 16y ago
    No, I'd largely finished my Vietnam War studies by the end of the '70s. I do credit Robert Strange for a whole lot (e.g. the adoption of the atrocity known as the M16), but when you come down to it the buck stops at the Oval Office. JFK installed him as the head of the DoD and LBJ kept him there for far too long. And then made him the head of the World Bank, where he proceeded to destroy a lot of 3rd World agriculture from what I've read in less detail.