One of the sad things about the current US leadership is that much of the world seems to be looking elsewhere for its moral and ethical purpose and why shouldn’t it when most of our citizens are doing the same thing. One of the prime things that the Oval Office occupant wants to do, besides undoing EVERYTHING his predecessor accomplished, is to keep “foreigners” from invading America. Will there come a day when no one will even think about wanting to come to America? These are the questions for today’s post.
Maybe I am being naive but I kind of think that a big majority of Americans don’t like or agree with so much of what the current Oval Office occupant says or does. They are tired and disgusted with all his snipping, ranting, and lying on a daily basis. To them, this is not the way the leader of the USA should act. In fact, it is downright humiliating. If I believe the world famous Irish oddsmakers he has less than a 50% chance of surviving his whole four years in office. With that belief, I have high hopes that America will once again be great, maybe sooner than later.
On a recent episode of Fareed Zakaria, there was mentioned that much of the world no longer takes what we say as being of any value. We are the shrinking voice where the rest of the world is simply tuning us out. At first thought, this is pretty humiliating but maybe on second thought, Mr. Trump is doing us a favor with his simplistic thinking? Here is my reasoning behind that.
I have long said they we should not be the policemen of the world. We should let regional characters solve their own problems. Syria is seldom on the minds of most of us in this part of the world. I’m not even sure I could find it on a world globe? Why do we think we have to solve their problems? North Korea would probably not even exist if we hadn’t become involved seventy years ago. It would be like the reunified Vietnam today if we had lost that war instead of it being a 70-year-old stalemate.
Contrary to Mr. Trump’s genius we need to stay connected to the rest of the world but we do not need to try to dictate what they do. We do not need to build impenetrable walls to keep everyone out. We should not be isolationist but instead good neighbors in the world community and participants in solving world issues like global warming and international trade. Is it even necessary for one or two “world powers” to exist? I think not.
Call me an optimist if you want because I think we can gain back our creditability when we get our country out of the hands of this megalomaniac. I see the light at the end of the tunnel and that is what gets me from day-to-day in our world now. Maybe someday Mr. Trump will even be considered a visionary in showing us that one country doesn’t need to dominate the world as a superpower, even if that isn’t his intent.
RJ's Corner 
Amen. In addition American exceptionalism is in decline as well. We are fast becoming “just another country” in the world. No different from Russia, China, Germany, etc. Nothing special here – “this is not the country you are looking for – just move along”. And certainly can not claim to be “under God” anymore. Time to rewrite the pledge again? Sad
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Oh, I don’t know Bob. As far as “under God” we are all that like it or no. Under God but maybe not under religion, there is a big difference. Exceptionalism is maybe waining but many still do anything they can to attend to our upper-level learning institutions.
The thing that gets me is that we, 5% of the world’s population spend more than the other 95% on our military. That is insanity if you ask me and one of the primary reasons we don’t have universal healthcare like the rest of the world and our infrastructure is decaying away. Maybe if we disentangle ourselves from the rest of the world’s problems we too could have those things too.
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Some clarification – if you were to ask most Americans they would say “under God” means the “God the father of Jesus the Christ. Which is not really correct as constitutionally this country may recognize a “creator” it does not refer to a specific god. Our rights are creator given but that does not mean we are, as a country, beholden to any specific god. It simply means rights are not granted by the state. Rendered correctly in the pledge it should be something like “a God” or even better to be true to the constitution “recognizing that rights come from a Creator”. So when I say we need to change the pledge it is to correct the idea that we are under a specific god. I’m sure you know that the phrase “under God” was added in 1954 to differentiate the US from the godless USSR. and not part of the original [and more correct] pledge.
When I speak of Exceptionalism I refer specifically that we are exceptional in that we welcome all, we are a nation of immigrants and really have no specific “American culture” as it is made up of the many cultures of the immigrants. We are exceptional in that we are the only modern country who was actually created this way. When we continue to see the “immigrant” problem is that we allow immigrants at all or that they are the source of all our problems we both deny our heritage and destroy our exceptional characteristic. We may be exceptional in our ways, such as our government structures, but as a culture I suggest that this is the real exceptionalism of the country. It is the one that really defines what America stands for. Deny this and we become unexceptional.
The industrial-military complex creates thousands of [good paying] jobs — hard to change. but i agree
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There is an interesting book called “The Faith of our Fathers” by Alf J. Mapp details what the founders thought of God. While there were some Christians there most were considered Deists. Jefferson was one of them. He actually believed that the 2nd Amendment was necessary to protect the State from religion, not the other way around. He later in life wrote his own bible where he took out all the miracles and words of Paul. He thought Paul took a simple message of Jesus and twisted in around via rules to his own liking. That’s pretty well where I also sit on the topic.
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