4 ms·
Because the US cannot imagine anything else. Everything is a War, and the US must always win..
by blahblaher 5mo ago
Because the US cannot imagine anything else. Everything is a War, and the US must always win..
- jgord 5mo agoit would be nice if they declared War against global climate change.
- fakedang 5mo agoThey are participating in the war, on the side of climate change.
- shimman 5mo agoThey did declare war against climate change and decided to continue polluting. This is the only moral calculus the elites of America have always cared about: will it make me more money? From slavery to oil to silicon, exploitation is what America has always been good at.
- dgb23 5mo agoClimate change is too soft of a term. Maybe that's why it doesn't interest people who like to declare war on things. The targeted term must be something that is clearly human made, something that sounds undeniably bad and something that is easily understood by everyone at first glance: _War on Pollution_ Nature is good, pollution is bad. People who pollute are _obviously bad_ and they do bad things. Pollution is wasteful and ugly. Yuck! Also it's more general than climate change. Ocean plastic is also bad. Chemical, electronic and light pollution etc. The people who think of chemtrails and 5g waves. They really hate pollution so much, they see it everywhere. Give them a war that they can join in.
- novanglus 5mo agoNormally I'm inclined to agree regarding the mindless chest-beating in this country, but I don't think that makes sense here. AI genuinely is that big of a deal. If any economic sector deserves this sensationalism, it's this.
- ctkhn 5mo agoThe US needs to start imagining something else. It's hard to think of the last war that the US won.
- hermannj314 5mo agoOn a technicality, America has won every war it has declared to be a war.
- wsve 5mo agoVietnam war?
- zerocrates 5mo agoThe US hasn't formally declared war since World War II.
- phs318u 5mo agoLike the war on drugs.
- hattmall 5mo agoYes, The fear with the war on drugs was that a large majority of the population would become addicted to hard drugs. The fear was the the US population would become like China in the 1800s and the communist aligned countries where drugs were produced would have massive trade and power imbalances over the US population. China had as much as 25% of the population addicted to British opium in the 1800s. The US war on drugs has been very successful in keeping the percentage of Americans abusing highly addictive drugs very low. Imagine the strength of the cartels with 10-20x the customer base and far more frequent usage among them.
- phs318u 5mo agoIf you look at figure 1 on this CDC page (which looks at deaths rather than overall usage), I’d suggest the numbers are trending the exact opposite to what “winning” the war on drugs would look like. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db474.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db474.htm
- tenacious_tuna 5mo agoOne of my coworkers points out to me every sports reference that pops up in our internal company communications (e.g. "WINNING", "Going to put together a winning team," etc). It seems like everything in the US is couched in competitive language.
- chrisco255 5mo agoYeah, its no accident that the U.S. is the number one economy, it comes from that kind of thinking across the populace. Complacency gets you conquered.
- teaearlgraycold 5mo agoWe could do with a little less of it IMO. But I have heard plenty from European expats about the entrenched complacency over there. I'm told people looking to improve some system or product run right into a wall of "Why bother?".
- DiogenesKynikos 5mo agoThe flipside of that is that Europeans generally get way more vacation and free time, and as a consequence, can enjoy life more.
- teaearlgraycold 5mo agoOn average yes they seem to be better off. I have been lucky and have certainly beat the European average quality of life.
- dataflow 5mo agoNumber one economy if you ignore the comical debt. The US is borrowing from the future. Those chickens are going to come home to roost.
- khriss 5mo ago> its no accident that the U.S. is the number one economy Sure, it's the largest by GDP, but how much of that GDP is filtering down to the regular people? Are Americans, on average happier and have better life outcomes than other developed nations?
- HerbManic 5mo agoHairless fire ape must win over other hairless fire ape at all costs!
- iv4122 5mo agoUnfortunately I believe that that is how the world works - even historically has for centuries - you are either "fighting in the war" or you're left behind.