Lake Musings

Just because you are not interested in politics, does not mean that politics is not interested in you.

- Pericles

"Why, of course the people don't want war...But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to do the bidding of the leaders.  That is easy.  All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."

-- Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

email to Tom Friedman regarding his column of June 1, 2003:

"when a hegemonic power, such as America, emerges in the global system other countries will naturally gang up against it."

This didn't happen to us, because America was viewed as a benign power.

American actions and, perhaps more importantly, American words have shattered the benign image. America is now seen as a military threat, not just a commerical or cultural threat.

So, we are now at the stage where "counties will naturally gang up against" us. To do so openly, is to invite retribution. To not do so, is to invite irrelevance.

So, it is not unreasonable to expect commerical and military links to be quitely forming in an effort to restore balance to the world.

It is a curious outcome, a bipolar world has room for dozenes of viewpoints, a unipolar world has room for only one.