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I'm a doomer on the U.S., and I want to know what you guys think, in general, will be the trend for the next decade or further on. Here's my theory for how all this ends:
My friend is more of an optimist. Here's his theory on the first one:
Unfortunately, I didn't quiz him on all the rest of it. But now, somehow, it is making me wonder about the outlook of most of the Mottizens. I certainly see the doomer take on things pretty often.
I see a factoid sometimes that says conservatives are happier with their lives than liberals. Maybe that's a factor of rural living, maybe that's a factor of less thinking about serious issues, and less reading. I am pretty sure that conservatives on this site, on average, do not live in rural areas and, on average, think a lot more about serious issues, and read more. So maybe some bad, anecdotal science testing on The Motte is in order.
Are you a doomer, or a "bloomer"? What are some factors that lead you to your conclusion that the country is trending downwards or upwards? Please explain yourself, and please fight it out with everyone who thinks you're wrong.
I'm not a doomer by nature and I'm optimistic that America will still be a very good place to live in the medium term. The competition is very thin. Europe is busy ramping up footgun production; Israel is, uh, let's move on; the rest of the Anglosphere is content to give up all notions of freedom and liberty; East Asia is dying countries plus China; perhaps a small country like Switzerland is the only thing that can compete.
But at the same time as I get older I feel less confident that all the problems that, as a youth, I thought would be resolved will ever get resolved. The housing market is screwed. The education system is screwed. Unscrewing these is basically impossible because, as they say, "you'd make a lot of sick people very unhappy." There's too many entrenched interests, there's too many comfortable people whose ongoing comfort depend on nothing ever happening. You'd need a true 'orrible cunt who doesn't care about making friends who manages to get power to do something about this.
Fundamentally, I view these things as a conflict between dynamism and stasis. Outside of a few fields, I don't see dynamism returning to America in the medium term. Over the longer term, if we manage to beat back stasis without a true catastrophe, I think that will be enough for me and my children.
They seem to have now declared war on the terrorist menace that is the Catholic Church by yet another "oopsies! did we bomb that? sorry, just a mistake!"
Honestly, the amount of "oopsies, we didn't mean it!" bombings the Israeli armed forces have been doing recently, they're not really a good advertisement for them being a developed First World secular nation, now are they? Though you have to admire their cursed by luck ability to hit the only Catholic church in Gaza by complete accident, didn't mean it, had no idea it was there. Poor guys, they must just have such terrible equipment, clearly they need billions of military aid to get modern range sights so things like this won't happen again!
(Before the mods slap me around: yes, I am being heavily sarcastic in order not to be heavily enraged and start calling no-no names. That being said, let the beatings commence!).
It seems like the obvious way to square this circle is that Israeli forces are being generally indiscriminate in Gaza and the officer who ordered a potshot at Holy Family Parish did not realize this was a location to be treated with kid gloves(which it does). The Israeli government did not want to destroy the church or they would have presumably done it via artillery fire that 'missed'. They also let cardinal Pizzaballa visit and call more attention to the place.
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