The Bull States and the United States

How many states are united states? 31 in Mexico, 50 in the US, 10 in Canada, 28 in Europe. All of them are states with limited sovereignty but with democratic governments. Some of the bull states are Russia, China, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, India,  and Indonesia. They have elections of sorts for public offices but they are essentially dictatorships with armies and modern arms ready like bulls to fight any enemy bull state. So far we can say that united states have democratic governments and bull states do not. Some states in the European Union were once powerful bull states with dictators but since they united they cannot be anything but democratic states because of universal laws and because of pressure from other states in their union. We can also think of states not united politically but linguistically. Spanish-speaking, English-speaking, French-speaking states tend to be democratic and none of them are bull states. The states of the world  are evolving towards more and more union with one another because of the global economy but the tendency we see of bull states trying to unite with one another is a danger for the world’s united states. Bull states are generally not open to free market practices and unlimited foreign investment. Look at the union now being formed between Russia, Turkey, and Syria. It’s purpose is to make three dictators more secure and powerful rather than forming a political union limiting the sovereignty of central governments which would open up the three states to free economic activity and democracy. Of the united states of the world, the union of 50 American states faces a challenge to its identity with the election of Donald Trump. His central government of the union in Washington can either strengthen the democratic powers and freedoms of its own united states and also promote a union of democratic states worldwide or else pull back into itself and stomp its feet like an angry bull increasing the arms race as a reaction to big bull states like Russia, Iran and China.

Daniel McNeill

The website of The United States of the World is: usoftheworld.com

Read Daniel McNeill’s complete book, “The United States of the World”, 12 essays about American history, at: usoftheworld.com/history  

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Trump and Putin Facing Fate

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet soon face to face. Two men can decide the fate of America and Russia. But they don’t have to face fate head on. They can step back and do no more than a few new deals favorable to both. Fate long ago dictated that Russia can be managed only as a bull nation. There has never been any democratic central rule in Russia. The military threat of the United States is not the threat Putin fears the most. He has a tricky problem. He wants Trump to get rid of the economic sanctions that hurt the Russian economy but he does not want American corporations to gain anything near total penetration into his economy and move around Russia freely doing what they want and making a lot of money for themselves and Russians. That was how American corporations penetrated Western Europe 50 years ago and look at the results. They paid their European employees more money than they were earning working for Europeans, bought existing businesses (often using local capital), modernized them with new business practices, began an economic boom that has never stopped, and made Europeans so prosperous using new American technologies that democratic governments alone work. Trump most likely will not demand that Putin weaken his political power by bowing to the needs of multinational corporations for an open entrance into Russia especially when he can be sure that Putin will be ready and willing to satisfy quid pro guo a new American President’s own business needs. So with this scenario only petty deals will be made and the two powerful world leaders will feel secure managing both Russia and the United States as bull nations.

   Is it worth affirming that the United  States, Europe and Russia are great Christian enclaves and that, even if they contain millions of non-believers and non-Christians, they are joined already culturally? Is it worth noting that a real serious free democratic union between the three great powers would make wars between nations totally obsolete on our planet? Nations have no future in our postmodern world. They are dangerous. We don’t need them. We need instead peace and political union among states so we can start working together to prevent the destruction of our natural environment. Bull nations are obscene. Slick deals between their leaders stink.

   In 1962 an American president and a Russian leader made a deal that saved humanity from nuclear destruction. As a result both lost power back home in their bull nations. Khrushchev was isolated to retirement in a dacha and President Kennedy was assassinated. It takes guts to make deals that benefit humanity but they should be made. World leaders should all keep in mind the advice of the Roman historian Tacitus. Inter turbas et discordias pessimo cuique plurima vis, pax et quies bonis artibus indigent. “In times of angry mobs and civil dissention, extreme power finds its way into the hands of the worst men; in times of peace and tranquility men skilled in the art of goodness are necessary.”

Daniel McNeill

Read Daniel McNeill’s complete book, The United States of the World, 12 essays on American history, at: usoftheworld.com/history
The website of The United States of the World with other writings is: usoftheworld.com

Empty and Selfish in Babylon

Andre Malraux of France said famously to General DeGaulle during the riots in Paris in 1968: “We once were developing from within Christianity. Now we’re developing from nothing.” Two other great religions, Judaism and the religion of Islam, along with Christianity, are now also adding nothing to our postmodern development. We are all of us on our own relying only on ourselves with nothing within us. We are like the ancient Jews, captives in Babylon, but we no longer sit beside waters dreaming of a lost Zion. We watch on television empty, and alone because of our emptiness, Aleppo destroyed and its streets empty of its murdered children. No old men will ever again pray at mosques in Aleppo and really believe they will soon pass, because of the emptiness they feel in their soul, to God’s world. Jerusalem is prosperous and safe because of high tech American weapons but it is solidly on the ground and no one there can honestly dream of a heavenly Jerusalem knowing in the heart the emptiness caused by dominating suffering neighbors. Americans are prosperous and optimistic because they long ago abandoned the roots of Christianity and decided that living on the surface of being rooted only in selfishness was the American way. Ralph Waldo Emerson taught them that selfishness was the true path to genuine superiority. He gave up his life as a consecrated minister and taught everyone to be self-reliant.. Saint Augustine believed the opposite. For him, self-reliance was not Christian. He put the whole meaning of Christianity in one sentence: Et hoc erat totum: nolle quod volebam et velle quod volebas. “And this was all: to not will what I wanted and to will what you (meaning God) wanted.” Emerson would have put the nolle where the velle was and put the velle where the nolle had been so it read: Et hoc erat totum: velle quod volebam et nolle quod volebas. “And this was all: to will what I wanted and not to will what you (God) wanted.” Emerson believed that there was no fall of man and no sin and that holiness could be reached by natural experience if it was genuinely individualistic. Self-reliance. We Americans are now totally self-reliant and totally empty. We sold our emptiness to the rest of the world repackaged as a happy fullness and the world bought it. Now the world is living with the emptiness behind the American sales pitch.

Daniel McNeill

Read Daniel McNeill’s new novel, “Whacks, Women and Wanderings in the Soul” at: www.usoftheworld.com/fiction

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The Fight of States Against Economic Globalism

Christine Lagarde. the head of the International Monetary Fund, wrote recently that the global economy is improving and should be stronger in 2017. She notes however that there are losers in the international struggle for wealth because “technological progress and winner-take-all markets are widening income inequality within many countries, even as global incomes are converging. In major advanced economies over the past two decades, the top 10 percent of earners’ incomes increased by 40 percent, while incomes for those at the bottom grew only modestly.” She does not say that the global actions of multinational corporations are beyond the control of any one state government but it is implicit it her reasoning because she does say “that there are several steps countries can take to address inequality”. In other words, the free global money-making operations of multinational corporations are good for the rich but since they are beyond any government’s control, governments must individually do several things to help the situation anyway. States should “increase their direct support for lower-skill workers...affected by automation and outsourcing”. State governments “should increase their public investments in health care services, education and skills training”. States should provide “ lifelong education to prepare current and future generations for fast-changing technologies”. She also cites the need for “affordable child care, parental leave, access to health care,,,, workplace flexibility...tax reforms and legal minimum wages to support lower income earners...etc”. Madame Lagarde, a French national, is absolutely right. The states are the only defense possible against the negative influences of economic globalism. If only the states around the world had plenty of money there would be no problem! The foxes could break into any chicken coop they wished and there would always be someone there fighting to protect the chickens! It doesn’t work like that. She is right that the states should  provide welfare for their citizens bur states as they are now structured have too many obligations and responsibilities for their taxes besides providing welfare. They need to restructure themselves by joining politically with other states to get rid of most of their present governmental responsibilities. States need to help one another if they are to become lean and mean enough to fight successfully the greed and inhumanity of multinational corporations.

Daniel McNeill

Click on the URL to read “Young in the 40s and 50s in Somerville and Boston”: www.usoftheworld.com/autobiography

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President Trump and a Possible New Global Alliance

  

In his inaugural address of January 20, 1961, President Kennedy said, “Now the trumpet summons us again...to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out ,a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself. Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind?”  Will President Trump in his inaugural address on January 20 next month resist language that will tell the world that he intends to be no more than the leader of a big bully nation? Will his words commit him before the world to fight “tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself”? Will he sound like an American President for the world or just for himself? Will he dare to announce that he intends to form “a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind”? No leader of the great empires of the past, empires like the Roman, British and Russian empires, ever had a legal provision in a written constitution giving a readily available solid means to form “a grand and global alliance,North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind”. President Trump can merely announce in calm and measured words in his inaugural address that his Congress has the power in Article lV, Section 3. of the Constitution to admit new states to the American union of states and that he intends to encourage foreign states to apply for admission. That will surely sound the call for “a grand and global alliance” and make President Trump the second president after President Wilson to advocate for a real and lasting new global alliance of states.

Daniel McNeill

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Obama Tells It Like It Was

In one of his last press conferences December 16, President Obama was very candid about his worries international and national. He seemed to tell it like it is but analyzing what he said, it was more like he was telling it like it was and will never be again. He told President-elect Trump: “ Before having a lot of interactions with foreign governments….he should want his team to be fully briefed on what’s gone on in the past and where the potential pitfalls may be.” For 8 years Obama played the worldwide game just as America played it since it took over world leadership from the British in the 1950s. It penetrated states worldwide and strengthened them internally to be as capitalistic and democratic as possible. This is clearly not necessary anymore. Multinational investments in South America and North America are secure. Japan and China and South Korea dominate Asia and secure it all the way to Iran. Russia is ruled by state-controlled capitalism guided by a dictator. Europe and the English-speaking world are secure and developed. The main place for America to act like “what’s gone on in the past” is Africa but its natural resources have been exploited for centuries and its economic prospects for the future are poor.”What’s gone on in the past” cannot go on in the future because there is no longer any objective need for the American foreign policy of the past. Meanwhile in America, President Obama said, “Everything is under suspicion, and everybody is corrupt, and everybody is doing things for partisan reasons, and all our institutions are, you know, full of malevolent actors.” Since the 1950s, America has been putting the world’s house in order. The American economy is booming. It’s time now for America to put its own house in order and let the rest of the world worry only about what Donald Trump has in mind for it.

Daniel McNeill

Click on the URL to read several of Daniel McNeill’s writings: www.usoftheworld.com

Two Scenarios For the US, One Doomsday

The doomsday scenario is that the US do nothing new at all. In 1945, with most of the world devastated by war, the US owned within its borders 50 percent of the world’s wealth. After 71 years of policing the world and interfering in states globally, it owns, combining its 50 states and the holdings worldwide of its multinational corporations, 50 percent of the world’s wealth. The Republican leaders in Congress say about global warming that they don’t understand the science. The doomsday scenario is that the US let’s the world go to hell which it keeps hot by continuing to pollute it with fossil fuels. If 20 years from now 12 million people in Bangladesh must migrate and find new lands and new food supplies because of rising sea levels, that’s their business. In the US in 20 years all the Starbucks cafes will still be warm and cozy and the US will still be safely isolated from the rest of the world. Congressmen will still not understand the science of global warming.

   The other scenario is that the US acts now to save itself and humanity’s planet. Brave and intelligent leaders in Washington say, hey, it may be good for humanity and profitable for our multinational corporations to save the world. We have worldwide superior military, financial, political and diplomatic powers. Let’s use them intelligently. Let’s tell every state in the world that we are open to their becoming new American states and we are willing to help them financially and otherwise to make the transition, What good would that do? Well if we had, say, 50 new states located around the globe, our multinational corporations as well as those of others would no longer need to corrupt local leaders and hurt democratic practices to establish themselves in states since they would now have US financial and legal systems. We here in Washington could become a world government not just de facto but de jure. We could use our large and rich bureaucracies to do the enormous but feasible work of implementing real strategies to save the natural resources of our planet from destruction. Congressmen may still not understand the old science proving that global warming exists or the new science necessary to fight and destroy it. But they at least understand that the American Constitution gives them the right in Article lV. Section 3. to admit new states.

Daniel McNeill
Read the complete book, "The United States of the World", 12 essays on American history, at: usoftheworld.com/history

The website of The United Statesof the World is at: www.usoftheworld.com