Salvete. I am Trygve Plaustrum, the conservative, Republican, Christian, Californian, blogger.
Give me a superpower other than America and I will tell you whether or not the country is imperialist or isolationist. Russia is imperialist. China is isolationist. India is isolationist. Great Britain is imperialist. There are many other examples of these two categories around the world. America, however, is one of the few countries that is both imperialist and isolationist. America grew up isolationist and attempted to remain neutral and work on internal affairs but found out during the late 1800s and throughout the 1900s that it was hungry (perhaps even desperate) for power and influence. Thus America went to war with Spain and conquered her holdings, solidified bases in the Pacific, and became the main factor in two world wars and the Cold War.
After all this history, we still cannot decide an identity. We have recently gone to several useless wars with the Libyan, Egyptian, and Iraqi governments, two of which turned out to be extremely harmful to the United States. We send only a handful of soldiers to foreign soil, hope they do not get shot, and bring them home without our goals and missions being fulfilled. We are desperate for homemade industries but are addicted to trade with China. We are hesitant to let go of either of these two identities.
As an analogy, I will use one of my favorite video games (Sega's Empire: Total War) as an example. There are two main aspects of the game: an overarching campaign, and a real-time series of battles. The artificial intelligence for the games are notoriously bad, as is shown by my example. In real-time battles, the computer makes constant reactions to the player's every move. The result is a constant shift between positions depending on the deployment of the player's troops. The result is a messes-up jumble of soldiers that are easily hunted down and destroyed by the player's troops.
America cannot invest just a few troops into a war and leave most of the troops at home and assume that everything is going to be fine and that America will come out on top. Choose one identity and stick with it. There is nothing wrong with imperialism, nor is there anything wrong with isolationism. Imperialism allows America to have dominance and influence over the world, spreading prosperity and liberty to every inhabitant of our earth. Isolationism allows us to watch on the sidelines as other nations destroy themselves and prevents us from being corrupted by foreign, socialist-communist political influence from the outside. But we cannot have both. We will die otherwise.
Another analogy: Imagine that your friends have wagered money on a 50-50 bet. All of your friends have invested all of their gambling money onto this bet for one side or the other. You have more money than any of your friends, and you play to win. If you put half of your money on one side and half of your money on the other, you know you will lose. You must risk it all and place all of your money on one side or the other, or surely one of your friends will walk home the winner.
If we are imperialist: metaphorically, shoot to kill. We cannot fight a war, win it, and walk away shouting, "We won the war!" while our enemies come back and nullify everything for which we have fought. When we come into a country, we must come into the country to stay. We must stay until well after the war is over, until not only every scrap of resistance is taken care of in one form or another but also until American culture, business, and values are implanted firmly into the country. Only then can we truly say that our job is done. It would not hurt to seize territories for our own. Territories that are rich in oil, that are of some economic or political use to us, or that are just generally great regions to have should be incorporated (or perhaps even annexed) into the United States.
If we are isolationist: cut off any and all ties. Pay off any foreign debt or declare it nullified. If we look irresponsible, so be it; we were irresponsible for having such a large debt in the first place. If we go to war, so be it. It would be a defensive war, and we are more powerful than our enemies as it is. Raise tariffs and lower income taxes. Tariffs would make us less reliant on foreign trade, but income taxes are simply stumbling blocks for the common man. Build a military. If we are on our own, we better make sure that we can handle being on our own. And please make sure that everyone is well armed (hint for next topic). Use our natural resources. Yes, this does mean oil, lumber, anything that is in our boundaries. Otherwise, we are reliant on foreign countries. Only then will we be free from globalization.
Choose one. Discard the other. Prosper.
Thanks for viewing. Please subscribe. I shall be working on the other shortly. I am thinking about writing a video game blog. Opinions are welcome in the comments.
No comments:
Post a Comment