The State Of Things

I don’t write many editorials but looking around at the state of the world today prompted me to write this one. I think we have all seen how the amount of attacks by terrorists have increased on not only western targets, but they have increased on other civilized countries. The recent destruction and killing of innocent people at the Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul, Turkey was even more bizarre in a way since Turkey is a Moslem country. The problem for Turkey is they are westernized and because of this are hated as much by the Moslem terrorists as we and other westerners are. I guess it doesn’t help Turkey either when they bomb ISIS. Turkey hates the Kurds and a Kurdish group attacks Turkey from time to time killing Turks. We employ the Kurds to fight the Moslem terrorists. Talk about complicated relationships between countries. This has caused problems for us with the Turks and even though things look good for our relationship with Turkey on the surface, this could backfire on us.

The Russians don’t like Moslem terrorists any more than anyone else. You would think this would bring us closer but it really hasn’t and it looks to me like nothing will unless we have a president and congress that decides to stop pushing the buttons of the Russians by planting missiles on or near their borders and conducting war games near them. It is hard to find out what is really going on between the U.S. and Russia since much of the media is slanted to always make the Russians seem like the bad guys. This is great for the military industrial complex since this causes the military to buy more expensive weapons to protect ourselves from the Russian threat. By the way it is said the entire Russian air force has about 3,547 military planes and we have 13,444 according to globalfirepower. Com. The same site states China has a total of 2,942 military aircraft. It does seem like overkill even if those countries had some advanced planes, but the funny thing is it seem all three countries are having problems with their next generation fighter planes. Russia has more nukes than us but we still have over 5,000 which is more than enough to wipe out the world several times. The Chinese are said to about 260 nukes and the Russians about 7,300.

The Chinese are saying we are provoking them so they might put their nuclear weapons on high alert which is very dangerous. The problem is the Chinese want to take over the South China Sea where there are many territorial disputes with countries in that area. They have even resorted to building islands there, a technique that we haven’t heard much about previously. When we send ships near these places they react in dangerous ways. Many people don’t think of the United States has a Pacific Ocean Nation, but in truth we certainly are and in this instance the Chinese are looking to expand their grasp on that part of the ocean where shipping lanes are essential. I can understand why we have to keep those lanes open and not have to get permission to pass through them every time one of our ships is in the area. These were open seas and have to remain that way.

The U.S. Navy has been shrinking in size except for our carrier force and one of the reasons for this is the incredible prices we are paying for new ships. The ship building companies have found the golden goose and prices just keep increasing to test the limit of what they can charge and the military just gives them just about whatever they want. Take the case for aircraft carriers. The last one was said to be able to be built at one time for about 8 billion dollars, but with so called cost overruns cost about 13 billion and had all sorts of problems. It seems the builders have also found out it isn’t important to have everything working correctly when they deliver ships and planes because the military will take them anyway. I have to hand it to the military industrial complex, they have managed to get the price for our latest destroyers up to 2.5 billion dollars. We are talking about destroyers which now cost more than aircraft carriers used to. Because of these prices the U.S. Navy is down to 430 ships but even worse it is said only 272 are deployable. A lot of people are questioning whether a navy this size can accomplish its mission in wartime and many have come to the conclusion it can’t.

We look at the current state of economies all over the world and many of them are in trouble. We know companies will go to the place which has the cheapest labor to build their products, but how long can this keep up? I ask that question because automation is taking over everywhere and when it does the world will have a VERY BIG problem. There will be hardly any work for people. Machines will have replaced humans and unless some sort of guaranteed income is given to a country’s citizens they would starve. There is another problem which exists even if we all get a guaranteed income and it’s enough to keep us comfortable and that problem is humans need something to do. Too much time on their hands will cause all sorts of unrest and possibly even revolts. Humans are just not constructed to sit around and do nothing all day. It is true some people will find things to do and a guaranteed income would probably wipe out hunger which is a good thing, but the mental state of some people will surely suffer. Remember the workplace is the only place some people interact with others and if it is taken away they may suffer all sorts of mental problems.

When we think about what the future will be like will we find a world-wide society where there is some sort of agreement and every gets the same amount of money and the standard of living is the same for everyone or we will find a world in chaos? Some people there will have to be involved in projects we will all have to participate in. Maybe they will be projects to colonize other planets and the human race will become a space faring race. Could it be all the UFOs which are being sighted are manned by creatures who have experienced this and come to planets to help other to reach this point? I don’t know and neither does anyone else, but I do know things will be very different in the future and depending on which way we decide to go they could be very good or very bad for us.