undertheice
Well-Known Member
the saddest part of it is, the world hasn't changed in the least. perhaps you've forgotten the duck and cover drills in school or the emergence of mutually assured destruction as a viable means of maintaining the peace. the stakes are the same as they were fifty years ago, we've just added a few more players to the game. the world is still in a constant state of war, those who are not actively engaged in hostilities are maintaining a state of readiness or building arsenals in preparation for some as yet unseen offensive. we're just as screwed as we always were.
the difference between now and then is that we used to have the illusion of black and white, all the little grey areas were overshadowed by a dominating struggle. it was easy to despise a regime that murdered millions of its own people and consigned many more to forced labor. the soviet union's stalinist tactics and perpetual revolution gave the west the appearance of solidarity, but all that ended when russia collapsed in on itself and its satellites emerged as separate entities. without that enemy, all of the old animosities and festering grievances came back to haunt us. all the minor injustices perpetrated in the name of that great struggle took center stage and became rallying points for anyone seeking victimhood status. the 20/20 vision of hindsight, clouded slightly by agenda, gave the world a new set of enemies to vent its frustrations on. any single dominating nation has now become the great evil and the regimes it supports must be seen as evil as well.
the world has readjusted itself and fixed its sights on a new target. any hard won freedoms now take a back seat to the concept of economic equality. minor nations, has-been empires and flagging states now band together for their slice of the pie and whine pitifully at any obstacles in their way. they see liberty as assured and their goal is now erasing the advantages that it has secured. but these self-appointed arbiters of this new world's morality think a bit too much of themselves and their abilities. they discount the lessons learned through decades of neighboring tyranny and see themselves as above making those same mistakes. even some of those who learned the hard way, through years of the oppression brought on by the doctrine of forced equality, find themselves lapsing back into the dogma of perverted marxism. those with resources now chafe under the tutelage of their erstwhile benefactors and loudly complain that their motives were not of the purest altruism, berating those powers for expecting some profit for their efforts. they scream of imperialism louder now than ever, having forgotten the price that is paid to true colonial rulers.
the only resource we are truly running out of is patience. every need is immediate and every grievance must be answered just as immediately. the hungry must be fed, the homeless must be housed, the disadvantaged must be given every opportunity and it must all be done now. that each of these problems has always existed is beside the point, we are now given someone to blame for it all and, luckily, that someone has the means to alleviate all this suffering. we are all now entitled to what fate once handed to only the few and they must be made to pay. their riches must be undeserved, obtained through treachery and deceit, and such power belongs only in the hands of the duly appointed representatives of the people.
there has always been someone with the answer. caeser's answer was domination through force and things haven't changed all that much. whether force is a tool used by the few to dominate the many or the many to dominate the few, it is still a violence that any right thinking person should be opposed to. that so many supposedly civilized people throughout the world should believe that that fact has changed is all that is different and i'm not so sure that this wasn't really the case all along.
