After the Party is Over
After the party is over, there's a let-down feeling. The kitchen is a MESS! There are spent drinks here and there, leaving rings on the living room furniture. We slump in our chairs, hoping everyone has gone home, and checking the bathtub, just in case some inebriated soul got left behind, we wearily wend our ways up the stairs to a well-deserved rest.
What America is experiencing now is the after-the-party letdown. The party is over, folks. Gone are the days of America, riding high, wide and handsome, as the last remaining superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
From Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia:
"A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests."
Which is a sort of cumbersome way of saying that a superpower county (like the United States used to be) can march around the world carrying a great big carrot in the form of economic incentives, and a great big stick, in the form of the most highly developed military and weaponry in the world, getting other countries to fall in with its agenda.
Well, no more, no more...the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA SUPERPOWER PARTY IS OVER!
The United States is no longer in a position to dominate in world affairs. The sooner we realize that, the better. And the sooner we realize that this IS NOT A BAD THING, the better.
We need to extricate ourselves from getting further overblown globally. We are already globally overextended, sending too many much-needed jobs and resources OUT of our COUNTRY. The push to be a superpower, the race to win the arms race, the male ego chutzpah dictating foreign policy in the last five decades, has seriously wounded our domestic stability and productivity and has not, in the long run, helped our economy one bit.
So what if we aren't a superpower anymore? A good hubber friend of mine, Sweetie Pie, said in a comment, that it might be a GOOD thing, NOT to be a superpower, or words to that effect. She put the idea in my head. (So, if you like this hub, thank her, and if you don't like it--it's all SWEETIE PIE'S fault--just kidding.)
She's right, though. Let's think about it. What happens after the party is over? Well, there's a let-down feeling (we have that) , a sort of hangover (we have that, too, and it's called DEBT); but then we recover, sleep in, get well again, and move on. We clean up the mess in the kitchen. We pick up all the empty glasses. We wipe the rings off the living room furniture. We put the deflated balloons out in the trash.
Let's start cleaning up after the superpower party. Let's get our own, domestic, United States kitchen in order once again. Let's bring the jobs back home; let's preserve and develop our own resources for the benefit of our own people. Let's start working on paying down the debt.
Only spoiled, whining babies keep mourning the party after January 1. Let's just face it: party's over, roll up our sleeves, and take care of our own backyard.
