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  hardie karges 6:51 am on July 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, Europe ( 19 )   

  America itself has seen better days. 

  It’s lonely at the top, pretending to know what’s best for everybody else when you can’t even solve your own problems, pretending you’re on the side of history when you haven’t even read the book. It’s lonely at the top, bullying the rest of the world into submission for their own good, whether they like it or not. I want my revolution back. I want the moral upper hand. I want to carry the flag of peace, love, and understanding through the streets demanding justice. I want to solve the world’s problems and still maintain the standard of living to which I’ve become accustomed. Europeans have got the best of all possible worlds right now- high standard of living, cheap Slavic labor, and potentially the world’s most powerful single government, if and when they decide to commit. Let the US fuck up first; there’s no hurry. I guess they deserve it, after all they’ve been through. It’s hard being the world leader. Nobody appreciates it; everybody resents it. But it seems like somebody’s got to take the lead, and I can’t say who I’d rather have, except maybe Europe. I fear the US is falling behind Europe intellectually. Country people may be the nicest people in the world, but that doesn’t mean they’re the smartest. Now that Europe has finally and unequivocally thrown off the yoke of the Church and the Party, they’re the standard bearer for liberal democracy, while the US increasingly looks like a frumpy old housewife and her grumpy old redneck husband. Processing kids through school, pass or fail, does not set new standards of excellence. Society pays for it in the long run. Urbanity does not guarantee intellectual achievement any more than rural life prevents it. It’s a matter of intent and discipline. There’s no shortcut to intellect; you gotta’ do the work.

   

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  hardie karges 10:10 am on July 6, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America   

  America is a rural nation, corn-fed and sex-starved, 

  finding satisfaction in a Bud and a Bible, leaving the heavy thinking and the hard drinking to those who gravitated to the bright lights and the long nights. America is a cow grazing on fields of time, clock ticking. The Northeast is the brains; the Pacific Coast is the business end of recycling and reproduction, fucking and farting. The Midwest contains the internal organs and heavy machinery; the South is the seamy underbelly, tits to the task; the West is a vast side of beef, awaiting the day of reckoning and rendering. America wants common sense back in the world without realizing that there was never common sense in the world. Our ancestors crowded onto boats with little thought as to what lay on the other side except that it couldn’t be any worse than what lay at home. The days of amber waves of grain and purple mountains majestic are numbered and available for hire. Automated tractors turn circles in circular fields while conveyor belts carry eggs to market. Tourists flock to the mountains to see if there’s anything they forgot. Things have never been better for the average individual.
   
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  hardie karges 9:03 am on July 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, protest ( 2 ), WAR ( 10 )   

  America is still a largely rural nation, 

  about 70%, in sharp contrast to much of Europe, where the figure is not only 90%, but it’s been that way for a hundred years. Only Portugal remains predominantly rural. As much as I like country life, cities tend to be more liberal and tolerant. I suppose a good compromise is small cities, with countryside nearby for commuting when necessary. That’s what I’ve always preferred, actually. Who wants to live out in the middle of nowhere with no access to the amenities of culture? The states that rejected George W. in 2004 rim the East and West coasts where the cities are. The Pacific Northwest is as politically progressive as any place in the world, environmentalist and independent. It has been called the “last bastion of the terminally hip”. There’s worse insults, I suppose, worse than being accused of having ideals and caring about preserving them. Maybe some of the affectations are a bit dated, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it, except for the drugs, that is. There’s plenty wrong with that. The ideals may not solve anything, just as it didn’t in Vietnam, but they help us re-define ourselves and our direction as a society. If Congress re-instates the draft, then the shit will really hit the fan. The 60’s protests weren’t really about the war, after all; they were about the draft. Selfish interest can always accomplish far more than abstract ideals. George W. may just re-kindle the whole movement with his fascist attitude. Many of us wouldn’t mind “one more time” and the kids might love it. We just need a Nixon to unite against.

   
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  hardie karges 12:06 pm on July 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, communism ( 21 ), Europe ( 19 )   

  € vs $ 

  The world takes perverse pleasure poking through America’s underwear, digging through the trash, looking for anything incriminating- blood, shit, pee stains, bank statements, whatever it takes to prove what they’ve always known, i.e. ‘it’ll never work’, or maybe ‘they’re stupid’. Forget the fact that America invents the world, regardless of who ends up being the monkey on the production line screwing things up and bolting them down. Forget the fact that, by virtue of her leadership role, America has to take responsibility for nearly everything that happens in the world, whether she had any role in it or not. Forget the fact that things have probably never been better, materially at least, in the world, and that the life we live is virtually identical with what used to be called ‘the American Dream’. Now that Western Europe no longer needs the protection of America against the big bad Russians and the gray spectral cloud of world Communism, they feel free to insult us ad nauseum ad infinitum, disregarding the fact that we ARE them, genetically and culturally, though presumably the black sheep, in their opinion, I guess. Perhaps it’s a feature of human nature to disparage what is close in character but distant in geography. I hope they DO unite and assume world leadership. Let them fuck up again, as they used to do so well.

   
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  hardie karges 8:32 am on July 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, DARK AGES ( 2 )   

  AMERICA BASHING 

  America-bashing is reaching new heights in the Iraq War aftermath. I know why people hate America. That’s obvious, because she’s arrogant. What I’d like to know is: why is everybody, particularly Europeans, so interested in poking around in America’s closet? The national debt, the savings rate, obesity levels, whatever, it’s like foreigners are keeping score or placing bets or something, mostly betting that America will lose, I assume. Americans are in the game also, though they tend to be conspiracy theorists rather than outright anti-American. Conspiracy theorists look for sinister plots and causal connections to explain the evil running rampant in the world. These they will definitely find, though more likely originating in their own imagination, than in some deep dark archives. Get lives, people! Admittedly America has lost her leadership position in the world, but this doesn’t mean everybody gets to take cheap shots whenever they want. Who cares what America’s debt is? If America had no debt, then the rest of the world would have no dollars! It’s not a perfect system, capitalism. Most systems aren’t. The European attitude is obviously disingenuous if not outright jealous. They had their chance to fuck up the world, of course, and did quite a grand job of it, before almost self-destructing in the World Wars. The United States sacrificed her radical roots to police the world and save Europe from the bear grip of Communism from which it might never have emerged, thereafter to be known as the Dark Ages, whose causes would never be known. The world is looking increasingly multi-polar with America, China, and Europe jockeying for first rights. Islam is making a play, but I doubt that the world is really ready for a new Dark Age. Life’s just too good for most people, giving the lie to conspiracy, and many can still remember the last Dark Age. Of course, it may happen whether we like it or not, literally, if the lights go out when the oil is all gone.

   
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  hardie karges 11:49 am on June 6, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, language ( 151 )   

  HAVE PEN WILL TRAVEL 

  I’m a language junkie, a lingo jockey. I need language the way others need dollars or drugs, but mostly I need meaning, my life sentence w/o parole nor punctuation, just the same letters over and over forming the same words over and over, but with ever-changing meaning. The gift of words came upon me like a thunderbolt from heaven, and got stuck in my throat, lost in self-reflection. Pen in hand, I’m ready to slay demons and fellow travelers, heal the sick, change the world, and other assorted odd jobs. Heroes are hard to find in a world gone to heroin, short cuts and cheap thrills. No one wants to take a risk, tempt fate, stick it out just to get it whacked off. America is the last bastion of the belated hero, simultaneously reviled and celebrated. America creates the world for those too busy to do it for them selves. Space is money; Europe is just too expensive for its own good. They can’t afford to waste time in idle speculation. We can do your dreaming for you, design that prototype, and then contract out the final production.

   
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  hardie karges 10:57 am on April 1, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, communism ( 21 ), Europe ( 19 ), history ( 42 ), jihad ( 8 )   

  The Death of America, the Re-Birth of Europe 

  It’s Europe’s turn to lead the world again, not as English or French or Greeks or Romans, but at the head of a united Europe that returns something to Russia that it took away from the Soviets, and respects its status as a major player in the community of nations.  America is not fit to rule the world any more.  They’ve made too many deals with too many devils, mostly previously under the guise of Soviet containment and anti-Communism, now mostly under the guise of increased oil flow.  When American tanks rolled over the Arabian Desert and into Iraq for the second time, they crossed the line.  The Afghan War was justified, slimly, to remove a Taliban regime that sustained al-Qaeda.  The Iraq War was not.  At that point al-Qaeda won in its quest to remove America as world leader.  If I were a Conspiracy Nut, I might think they planned it that way, themselves having no great love for Saddam Hussein.  Not that it’ll make any difference with respect to Israel; it won’t.  Israel is a fait accompli, and no more than a pretext for the current jihad worldwide.  But if Europe can unite, they’ll have accomplished something that’s never been done in history, which means they’ll have the moral upper hand to lead the world and set an example.  America did that once, until wars of independence became a rite of passage for a developing country.  Europe is now fighting a war of inter-dependence.  If they succeed, then look for a united South America, United Turkistan, etc.  FTA’s are a major step in that direction already.  America has gone too far in its excesses and its negligence.  European corporate executives don’t make a billion dollars a year.  Europe doesn’t leave half of its population without health insurance.  When Americans voted for George W. Bush in 2004, they voted for ignorance, greed, and selfishness.  Now the bill is due.

  Stiv is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Stiv 7:28 pm on April 19, 2008 Permalink | Reply

    Yes, but you’ll be “leading the world” as Eurabia not really Europe any longer. The weakness of Europe has allowed that to happen. Have fun with that.

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  hardie karges 7:55 am on March 19, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, Europe ( 19 ), language ( 151 ), mathematics ( 3 )   

  Cultural Relativity 

  Europeans are internalized, Americans external.  Multi-lingualism leads to useless complexity and introversion.  Uni-lingualism allows mental space to be devoted to other things, like science and technology, without devoting so much effort to translation and bad grammar.  There are two broad fields of knowledge in the world from which all others derive: mathematics and linguistics, on the surface at polar extremes from each other, mathematics revealing knowledge of the other, linguistics revealing knowledge of each other.  In reality the two are not so different from each other, linguistics with a strong logico-mathematical basis, math also capable of a distinct relativity of perspective.  They both thrive on the little stick-men of culture that live in the pages of books, on the pages of experiment.  Numbers and letters are not so different, really.  Everything else is derivative knowledge, recipes for fulfillment and short histories of nearly everything.  The thing is in the name, a convenient substitute for the thing itself, virtual reality in graphic symbols.  It’s like my movie scripts.  Nobody wants them; they just want the titles: “Good Day to Die”, “Virus”, “Reality Check”, and “Lost in Time”, my names just hung on any old shit piece of work. 

   
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  hardie karges 8:08 am on January 11, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America, baby boom, Buddhism ( 437 ), life ( 33 )   

  Old-fashioned values 

  As a rule of thumb, I myself prefer to travel as light as possible, collecting little along the way, but still loathe to throw things away.  This is essentially a Buddhist-like non-possession, for fear of being ultimately possessed, but it works out economically also.  Poverty is a state of mind, not pocketbook.  Buddhist monks take vows to embrace such renunciation, easy for many of them that had nothing anyway, and now get state support and the adoration of society, in Thailand, at least.  We American baby boomers are all pampered and spoiled, bemoaning our fate, when things have never been better.  The old fashioned virtues of thrift and savings have been long forgotten.  I’ve never made much money by modern standards, but managed to save much of it, so can feel like a wealthy man in my fifties.  Others weren’t so lucky, nor so frugal, and so are bitter and feel victimized.  Certainly it’s nice to enjoy the present tense without stress and have nice adornments surrounding, but I don’t feel deprived, having visited almost fifty countries and loved many beautiful women, having had good friends and done good work along the way.  And I still have family; this is the true wealth of the world.  Many people in America’s rump nuclear-family mobile society can’t claim the same.