We're slipping, we've fallen, and we need to get up
Tim Curtiss
Issue date: 11/20/09 Section: Opinion
Due in part to President Obama's recent trip to Asia some issues were illuminated to me that struck me as interesting, if not odd.
Plastered all over cables news networks like CNN and FOX news network was the repeating flash of news discussing an allegedly "big" event. You may ask, what was this big event? President Obama followed a customary greeting while visiting Japan. He bowed to the emperor of Japan, and it wasn't a Wayne's World bow, decreeing a lack of worthiness. It was a greeting that is very common in that part of the world, meant to show respect.
I suppose the main fear is that President Obama was showing weakness by doing so, and weakness could jeopardize us as the greatest country. Based off of what I see and hear on the news some of us here in America are dreadful at the mere thought of no longer being the world's largest super power.
Based on history, all great empires fall eventually; there is no disputing that. The fact a great empire fell is what allowed the United States to pick up the illustrious torch, which we are so proud to carry around, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. I mean it's great that we've become a successful country in a relatively short amount of time, however honorable of dishonorable the actions we took in order to get here, but that is besides the point. The issue at hand is we, the United States, today.
We are slowly but steadily falling out of power, and it may be an odd period, a puberty for America if you will, which we will grow out of in a few years time. Or it may be something lasting. And that right there is something I believe is something very hard for a lot of us to swallow down, even with a media coated glass of water.
One of America's largest shortcomings is our massive debt. Now I am by no means an economics expert, but I do know that owing around one trillion, yes, with a "T" to communist China isn't the greatest thing for our country.
And I'm sure someone somewhere will make a wild leap and read into that statement as a claim of excellence for China, and it is not at all. I say this with confidence because just as the United States, in the past, had committed some let's say, not to great acts in order to achieve it's status, China has seized it's citizens rights to attain such grand economic stature.
In addition to the massive debt hanging over America's increasingly cloudy head, is a horde of domestic problems and falling behind in the technological race. While America has a range of problems, so do other countries, and if we so happen to fall out of our glorious first place, the next empire may be even shorter lived.
This isn't an objection or admiration to any country here or abroad. If I want to get anything across is that we should be ready to not be the greatest, because for all of my life, and I'm pretty sure most of yours, that's what America has always been.
Plastered all over cables news networks like CNN and FOX news network was the repeating flash of news discussing an allegedly "big" event. You may ask, what was this big event? President Obama followed a customary greeting while visiting Japan. He bowed to the emperor of Japan, and it wasn't a Wayne's World bow, decreeing a lack of worthiness. It was a greeting that is very common in that part of the world, meant to show respect.
I suppose the main fear is that President Obama was showing weakness by doing so, and weakness could jeopardize us as the greatest country. Based off of what I see and hear on the news some of us here in America are dreadful at the mere thought of no longer being the world's largest super power.
Based on history, all great empires fall eventually; there is no disputing that. The fact a great empire fell is what allowed the United States to pick up the illustrious torch, which we are so proud to carry around, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. I mean it's great that we've become a successful country in a relatively short amount of time, however honorable of dishonorable the actions we took in order to get here, but that is besides the point. The issue at hand is we, the United States, today.
We are slowly but steadily falling out of power, and it may be an odd period, a puberty for America if you will, which we will grow out of in a few years time. Or it may be something lasting. And that right there is something I believe is something very hard for a lot of us to swallow down, even with a media coated glass of water.
One of America's largest shortcomings is our massive debt. Now I am by no means an economics expert, but I do know that owing around one trillion, yes, with a "T" to communist China isn't the greatest thing for our country.
And I'm sure someone somewhere will make a wild leap and read into that statement as a claim of excellence for China, and it is not at all. I say this with confidence because just as the United States, in the past, had committed some let's say, not to great acts in order to achieve it's status, China has seized it's citizens rights to attain such grand economic stature.
In addition to the massive debt hanging over America's increasingly cloudy head, is a horde of domestic problems and falling behind in the technological race. While America has a range of problems, so do other countries, and if we so happen to fall out of our glorious first place, the next empire may be even shorter lived.
This isn't an objection or admiration to any country here or abroad. If I want to get anything across is that we should be ready to not be the greatest, because for all of my life, and I'm pretty sure most of yours, that's what America has always been.
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