Yakublue: Churchill wrote that history is written by the
victors. A truism if ever there was one. Therefore written history is
subjective at best, propagandist at worst. The teaching of history is
therefore a profession I would never choose. If a history professor of
mine lectured to me that 'Lennon' was a leader of the Bolsheviks I would
take the view that he, my professor, is an impostor.
The Yak
Hadn't
kept track of who said what very well. Yes, an MA in History calling
himself a "Lennonist," unless he meant a "Beatles fan," is quite odd
indeed.
At any rate, as far as the original post in this thread
goes, who is worse? The USA or NK? The US government has suffered so
much damage to its credibility in the past 5-8 years that the whole
thing has become
surreal, and it is not just the US, but the entire "West," which
long ago abandoned Western ideology in favor of something quite
sinister. I would always cringe a little when
reading transcripts of Ahmadinejad when he would often cite the
upcoming collapse of "The West," "Western ideology," etc. in his
criticism of US foreign policy, George W. Bush, the UK, etc., but the
simple fact is that the US and the UK elite do not follow Western
ideology in
the least; they only pretending to, often not even convincingly at
all. The notion that the US government, in the
past 50-150 years, has followed the ideologies of Thomas Paine or
Voltaire is frankly absurd. Much ado was made about how people in
modern times were supposed to be living in a world where "reason"
reigned supreme, but we are more backwards than ever, and literally
everything we hear is a lie.
The upcoming collapse, of which Ahmadinejad speaks, however, is
taken far more seriously than his belief that the US is somehow based
upon the works of Paine, Voltaire, etc. The collapse of the West is, at
this point,
completely unavoidable insofar as I can tell. The exact nature of the
US' demise is uncertain -- will it die relatively quietly, will it start
WW III, etc.? -- but the fact that is in free fall is not.
At least NK has the benefit of the excuse that it has a super
power breathing down its neck, spying on it, etc. all the time. At
least some of NK's poor behavior can be blamed on this; it is not
altogether surprising that a leader will act erratic when constantly
threatened by a country with superior military might and a track record
of putting it to use. The US government, however, made the bed that it
is now lying in completely by itself.
All of this should not, in any way, be interpreted as meaning the US' problems lie entirely within the government
or the top 2%, or that problems exist only in the US. Pretty much
everyone in this world is *** absurd -- rich, poor, whites, browns,
blacks, Americans, Brits, Canadians, Australians, Israelis, etc. We
like to heap a lot of praise upon ourselves, but realistically, I
wouldn't trust 90% of humans to mow my lawn or clean my pool, much less enter my house.