I spotted this quote by Tom Friedman on Daily Dish:
China is doing moon shots. Yes, that’s plural. When I say “moon shots” I mean big, multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing investments. China has at least four going now: one is building a network of ultramodern airports; another is building a web of high-speed trains connecting major cities; a third is in bioscience…; and, finally, Beijing just announced that it was providing $15 billion in seed money for the country’s leading auto and battery companies to create an electric car industry… Not to worry. America today also has its own multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing moon shot: fixing Afghanistan.
The story doesn’t end with this helpful and insightful quote. Perhaps, the above quote is an attempt by Friedman to attempt to redeem himself for his pro-war rhetoric from prior years. He has himself to thank for the fact that the U.S. warmongering mentality has caused us to fall so far behind China.
And we continue to fall behind China because we can’t wake up from our nightmare in which relatively few people armed with unsophisticated weapons such as box-cutters are deemed more dangerous than the Soviet Union at its height, armed with thousands of nuclear warheads. Thus, we will continue to spend more than half of our federal tax revenue on military pursuits.
Our exuberant and delusional warmongering is killing our economy and our future.
I just spoke with a fellow with whom I am well acquainted and who I knew to have conservative leanings. He indicated the following:
– Obama hates America, and he had no business forcing "us" to have health care.
– He is not troubled that most of our tax dollars are going to the military, because "there will always be wars and there is no way to stop this.
– It doesn't impress him that China is surging with lots of improvements regarding sustainable energy, because China is a bad country, and the United States is the greatest country in the world.
This man is not a zealot. He would be a nice neighbor in the eyes of any liberal. He takes care of his kids and he believes in law and order on the streets.
I think this man represents the views of many Americans these days.
Erich,
I think he is what most people mean when they say "All politics is local."