When I listen to world news, I see many bright futures. India is a nice example. Economy growing like wildfire, entrepreneurial spirit thriving, government bureaucracy slowly loosening it's grip. If you are a parent in India, you have legitimate reason to be excited about the prospects awaiting your children. They are likely to live a better life with more opportunities than you are.China is much the same, though different. Their economy is growing even faster than Indias. The communists are still in power, but it is an evolving communism.The future looks bright in Europe too. These children of the European Union are growing up as a new species of global citizen - multi-lingual, moving easily between nations and cultures. With Turkey probably joining the EU, that multination is growing even more diverse. Those nations are entering a phase of postnationalism that will free their children to be citizens of the world.And then there's America. What's new and exciting in America's future? Er...nothing. Whatever economic growth is happening here is much slower and not likely to lead to any social transformation. America doesn't seem to feel like it needs to go anywhere new. Mainly it is feeling defensive - things are already pretty good here and we want to hold on to it. Our society seems to be responding to the evolution of the world by determinedly seizing on stagnation.The things growing in this country are nationalism and calls for traditional values.What I see developing on the world stage is an America that has no vision for the future, and exists only to hold on to the huge chunk of global resources that it already has. I see a growing opposition between America and the rest of the world, as America tries to lock everything in place and the rest of the world tries to grow. I fear America developing into the new Soviet Union - a major global power that thinks it should be ruling the world but which has nothing to offer that the world wants and so exercises it's influence only by raw application of military might. A nation simultaneously strong and irrelevant, whose children will stand on the sideline as the real road to the future is built.//en.yabiladi.com/topics/soviet-union-44-492677-492677.html#msg-492677 Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:48:23 +0200 Phorum 5.2.15