I know how you feel. I am also going to most likely be one of those thrown under the bus to satisfy a perverted last-gasp attempt to make the old stories and methods work.

I don’t drive the bus either. But I’m pretty sure when it goes off a cliff I will get some of the blame because I’ll be one of the dirty fucking hippies who didn’t speak up and warn anyone in language they can understand. I try but it is never enough.

But, somehow, we just won’t listen.

Please don’t include me in that “we”. I’m not in the basket of deplorables. I’m one of their victims.

If it was just that, or if that was the worse of it, I think it might not be such a bad thing. We could be the ‘first among equals’ , reap the benefit of not having to have an opinion on everything, and perhaps stay out of some places and IMHO be a much happier nation. One of Obama’s good points was his willingness to let other regional powers handle issues without much more than a few words of advice and encouragement. And staying optimistic even as the results were not always perfect or going in a way we might prefer.

I really think he understood that we have to let other nations try, and sometimes fail, if they are going to mature and become good partners.

On the other hand perhaps this is what the US needs to do to grow up as a people. We, and the rest of the world know what has to be done, and how to do it but our mythology of frontier independence and bootstraps blinds so many in this nation.

Other nations know how to get medical care to the citizenry. They know how to serve the populous economically. How to educate. National healthcare, safety nets and redistribution, and public education are proven systems.

But, somehow, we just won’t listen. So we look to be on the verge of trying to make the 21st century work with the same solutions that stopped working 70 years ago. Evidently we just didn’t try hard enough. This time it will work, for sure.

The pain and suffering coming is entirely unnecessary if we would just look around and see what works in other nations. We are going to pay the cost of thinking we are special.

Which gets back to my first point. Thinking we are special has a price. Internationally and domestically.

And simply having a lot of nukes in the basement isn’t going to change this, because guess what? There’s a lot more around the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons