viva zapata
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So doomsteaddiner, you believe it would have been better for those that benefit from the green revolution to starve? Will you volunteer to be one of the lucky ones that gets their ration cut to 500 calories a day? What nations will we allow to starve first? You decide, oh wise one.
And while we’re at it, fill us in, we’d love to know why the Monsanto seeds, apart from not being able to gather seed for a new crop, are monster seeds. You are crazy with conspiracy.
The world population has been growing exponentially for more than fifty years. Those bad medicines that disserve humanity by saving lives are partly to blame.
I know, I know, you’re one of those that thinks the world should have five hundred, no one hundred million people- and you’re one of’em. HAHAHAHA. Such compassion.
You are part of a sick inhuman conspiracy-addled bunch that hates authority because you were raised by mommy and daddy to think that you’re above the rest. Well it ain’t so. The Bengladeshi has as much right to feed his family and multiply as you. If you want to practice birth control and abortion that’s your downfall.
You and Malthus can go take a flying leap into nothingness.
Dear Ashvin:
Ha-ha. I exult in the discomfiture of those that react with rage when their biases are exposed. Thanks for playing.
While I recognize that synthetic fertilizers have resulted in the marginalization of many subsistence farmers, I would also note that the genetic techniques in improvement of plant types, particularly rice (most of which have originated in the US) far outweigh that drawback and, in fact, have served mankind well, feeding hundreds of millions today.
Why hate the good things the US does? As you can see, I seek a balanced narrative, I don’t attempt to deprecate the bad things it does. Allow me to demonstrate again: the US can’t always be the policeman of the world and doesn’t do a perfect job. Try it sometime.
Here’s an opportunity: why don’t you have anything to say about the AIDS drugs the US supplies to Africa gratis? Doesn’t fit into your box, does it?
Anyhow, here is a snippet (the last for today) on the ‘green revolution’, from Google, which is just one small part of the magnificent story of post-war American agricultural innovation, and how it has come to feed much of the world:
“The beginnings of the Green Revolution are often attributed to Norman Borlaug, an American scientist interested in agriculture. In the 1940s, he began conducting research in Mexico and developed new disease resistance high-yield varieties of wheat. By combining Borlaug’s wheat varieties with new mechanized agricultural technologies, Mexico was able to produce more wheat than was needed by its own citizens, leading to its becoming an exporter of wheat by the 1960s. Prior to the use of these varieties, the country was importing almost half of its wheat supply.”
Ashvin, I, a troll? I want us to be friends. Before it is over I will subscribe to your theory of the big bad imperialistic US- not! And you of course will be unconsciously whistling the ‘Star Spangled Banner’- maybe.
Have a safe and happy weekend! Be seeing you.
Ashvin
Ever heard of the green revolution? Know where it came from? Know how many hundreds of millions it feeds today? Of course you do. Yet you continue to focus on your pet alternate reality, no doubt dismissing these facts as ‘outliers’.
Do you recall President George Bush’s AIDS initiative to Africa? Do you know how many lives it has saved and improved? Do you know what the cost has been to the American taxpayer for this gift? Of course you do, but you dismiss this as well because it conflicts with your polemic of a ruthless self-serving America.
When you attempt to thrust the US into the mold of empire that holds Rome and Great Britain, you do a disservice to your reader and a violence to reality.
You know perfectly well that the US has been the single force in the world since 1945 responsible for the growth of the prosperity and numbers of humans around the planet.The flood of Nobel prizes and life-sustaining technologies from the universities of the US, funded by American taxpayers are now commonplace in even the poorest nations. And we aren’t half finished.
You only wish there was nothing left to say.
Ashvin
It might surprise you to know that I find many of your premises valid. But the fact is that the course of nations cannot be predicted with the ease of the flip of a coin, particularly when their course is so exceptional, as has been that of the US. The variables are just too many and too complex.
Anyone that thinks the Constitution is outdated is simply not living in the real world. You (and I mean this in a collective sense) couldn’t do any better on the best day you ever had. BTW it’s not finished being written yet.
And you can sneer all you like at the idea that the US military is the sole guarantor of the peace and liberty of many of the world’s nations. You can overlook the great successes we have enjoyed. You can wave off the freedom and PEACE and growing prosperity of the world. You can point and exclaim that Iraq/Afghanistan/ Iran (your choice here) are misadventures, but what can possibly replace the US and its interventionism that is better? No Martians, no non-existent entities, no impossible conjunctions, please.
Remember, things can get marginally better over the long term, but they can go straight to hell very quickly.
Be careful which devil you choose and which you reject.
It is curious that the author takes so much trouble to hammer the role of the US in the world, but seems to ignore the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room.
China is suffocating its cities with pollution, allowing desertification to consume its northwest, creating in Africa a series of colonies to support its rampant unsustainable grow rate, and all the while thumbing its nose at hard-won Western standards of treatment of citizens, all the while intimidating its neighbors.
No, the author of this piece prefers to talk about the US imperfections, though the US is a net carbon sink, is drastically reducing its consumption of gasoline, and has given assistance to the world, through the green revolution, the advent of miracle drugs and ongoing foreign aid.
This is not even to speak of the avoidance of WW III through outlasting the USSR in an arms race, maintaining general peace throughout the world with its military might, which keeps the big dogs from killing the little dogs, and the promotion a network of world trade, one in which the US accepts trade deficits to be essentially the buyer of last resort for many nations, making nations immemorially poor aspire to something better.
It may not be the vogue for progressives to tell these truths. But will they even listen?
ashvin
Did part of your response to me get cut off? All I see is your ‘bs’ verdict and a quote from my post. I’d like to see your reasons for trashing my opinion.
The flaccid intellectuality that feels the need to preceed its tentative gestures with a demonstration of pre-Jungian blather, wrapped in Hegelianism, signifying nothing, betrays its utter lack of genuine depth or insight.
European imperialism established the relationship of the early colonists with the Indian, the negro and the Mexican.
Collective human nature, as noted by one of the other posters, doesn’t turn on a dime. But it does turn. Witness the surge in concern for civil rights and the tacit permission for Mexicans to immigrate illegally. The American ideal has advanced the human condition.
As for the role of the US in the larger world, Japan attacked us and Germany was raping Europe, so yes, we got involved. Should we have allowed the USSR to seize Europe and the rest of the world unopposed? The results of our rejection of that scenario can be found in a quiescent Russia, a merchantilistic China, a prosperous SK and Japan, a friendly Vietnam, a free Eastern Europe, relative peace throughout the world and HOPE of prosperity in places like Africa and India.
Our current situation isn’t pretty, but it doesn’t improve with the exultant malice of those that crave the destruction of America.
Those pounding the relentless drum beat of defeatism heard in the scampering feet and vicious lies that advance the progressivist rot penetrating the foundations of America, would do well to consider a more honest assessment of the sources and products of the exceptionalism of the US.
To continue in their current vein is to damn the world and the hopeful beginnings of true human freedom.
