ShiningIce
3rd Level Green Feather
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2002
- Messages
- 4,702
- Points
- 36
The height of uninformed folly is displayed in this simplistic statement. Does he think we are self-sufficient and alone can maintain the standard of living extant? Is he aware of the motivation that inspired Japan to attack Pearl Harbor? Countries will not suffer deprivation imposed by another nation. Japan perhaps felt entitled of our iron ore and scrap metal, petroleum. He sounds dangerous.
If America went into isolation, America would crash first, then would follow Japan, England, Germany and finally France, in that order. The nation most dependent upon technology and comfort will always go first. Is MacDonalds the standard for U.S. exports and achievement? Frenchmen would not stop their children from eating McDonalds? Let us assume that this notion's scribe understands isolation as meaning withdrawal from international exchanges of all types.
We are the nation with 10% of the world's population that uses over 25% of the world's resources. Without imported oil will not our industrial, civic and political machinery come to a slowing down. Our spoiled, undisciplined and whiny citizenry would be outraged that we should experience electrical brownouts, long lines at the $4.50 per gallon fuel pumps, heating gas prices so high thermostats would have to be set at 64 degrees in winter, etc. Need we go further than petroleum imports?
We could no longer get our BMWs, Jaguars, Volvos, heaven forbid- even Mercedes Benzes. No Michelins, Bridgestones; no more DVDs, televisions, other electronic gadgets, and toys. Surely people don't think we make anything anymore, do they? Without light bulbs we would have to make our own candles. Dell would not be able to make computers; nor would HP, Compaq, even MacIntosh. St. Louis shoe factories would have to be reopened and workers trained to make shoes. Beer would be a luxury item at $15 per bottle (hops are imported, you know). Without imports all we would have would be those mindless TV shows that show the rest of the world how shallow we are. We would have to all sit in one room and watch them together because our source for the 2nd and third TVs would be gone. We might be forced to read books and even talk with one another.
Indeed, the rest of the industrialized world would be nearly as devastated as the U.S. economy. Foreigners are better equipped to handle shortages than are denizens of the U.S. Foreigners have more experience of deprivation. They know how to make do. The people who live on the Kalahari would be unaffected, as would be those living on the Pampas of the Southern Cone of South America. Villagers in Sri Lanka would care less. Lives there woiuld not change an iota. Foreigners' expectations are not as great as this nation's. Besides those in Europe, the Islamic world and many Asians and South Americans will be willing to tolerate more misery just with the knowledge that Americans are suffering as well.
Americans will crack first. Our politicians are less willing than their European and Japanese counterparts to tell citizens the truth about almost any situation. Japanese leaders will apologize to the nation in public, resign, and quietly commit sepukku. European politicians will resign and go off to the countryside and grow olives and onions. U.S. politicians will deny, obfuscate, blame Bill Clinton, lie and watch U.S. citizens follow their distortions lemming-like happily down to the sea and drown themselves. Anyone who dares speak the truth aloud will be condemned (possibly permanently silenced) as being unpatriotic and divisive.
When U.S. citizens finally wake up and realize where we are, they will take to the streets in confused rage. Some heroic leader will demand that the foreigners who caused our misery be taught a lesson. Our noble president and Congress will insist upon bombing someone. As there will be little political contact among nations, other nations will retaliate, not in kind, but with small bombs in our midsts being ferried about in wagons, baby carriages, autos, trucks, on bicycles, foot and ferry boats. They will respond with nail-laden explosives made by following recipes in the Anarchist's Cookbook....More of them will die because our bombs are larger, but they will be more willing to endure. The fighting would have to end before someone thinks nuclear bombs could ensure victory.
I suggest very strongly that the author of the ludicrous statement at the beginning of this exercise knows very little about the U.S. The U.S. power structure will never allow isolation of this country. It simply is not economically profitable
