today begins my fifth year here on DU ... my how things have changed since i first began posting here ... DU has changed; the country's changed; the world has changed ...

both in our national dialog and in our DU dialog, there are all sorts of opinions on all sorts of issues ... we lean on our binary measuring stick, the polarized political spectrum, like a crutch ... i'm afraid it serves us very poorly ...

much of our current national focus revolves around the issue of whether our foreign policy has been making us safer or less safe ... we summon up our finest stereotypes and presume that "right wing" means solving things with a stronger military ... we see a right wing that argues we need to allow for pre-emptive war ... for example, if Iran is developing "the bomb", we have to bomb them now and let them know we mean business ... and then, on the "left", we assume lefties are against war and even an adequate defense ... the left opposes defense spending and the left chooses diplomacy over warfare ...

it's a nice, tight little model ...

the problem is, it's all total crap ...

you see, if you ask the wrong question, you're going to get the wrong answer ... so, if you ask whether we need more military spending and more military intervention to make us safer, or less of each, you're stuck on your little polarized spectrum ... because you've asked a polarized, short-sighted question, you're almost certainly going to get the wrong answer regardless of where along the continuum your opinion lies ...

the solution? take one giant step back ... focussing too heavily on more or less militarism buys into the fact that there are not other approaches that can be taken to make the US, and in fact the whole world, much safer ... we should not accept the idea that the world is full of evil forces trying to hurt others for no reason at all ... those who would fight against us do so for a reason ... it would serve us well to explore those reasons ...

bush's "they hate us for our freedoms" has to be among the stupidest forays into examining the motivations of those resisting US efforts around the world ... it makes no sense at all ...

for far too long, the "ugly American" has imposed its will around the world ... these ugly Americans are not the faces of Jane and Joe American but rather are the faces of mega-oil and the American military and American bankers ... in many cases, poorer nations have little choice but to allow us to exploit them ... they often are forced to sell their national soul and their national treasures in order to survive ... and though they enter into such arrangements "willingly", they often really have little or no way out of their desperate situations ... when wealth and power are wielded like weapons, hatred quickly follows ...

for far too long now, Americans have consumed far more than their legitimate shares of the planet's resources ... and that's especially including rapidly dwindling and increasingly in demand supplies of oil ... we are like junkies desperate to get our fix and yet competition for the energy drug we demand is growing more and more fierce ... the response? the national dialog? we need a stronger military and we need more foreign bases to guard oil fields, pipelines and supply routes ... you see, that's the wrong discussion ...

so when someone asks you whether you believe in a strong America, when someone asks you are you for more or for less defense spending, when someone asks you to understand that "we can't just withdraw", tell them their focus is far too narrow ... perhaps in the near-term we must still answer these questions ... but don't let anyone kid you; the only path to a safer world will come through major decreases in our oil dependency ...

what is needed is radical change away from our resource intensive lifestyles ... do you call that left wing? radical change to move us from our extremely unsustainable consumerism to a lifestyle that will enable us to live in peace with the rest of the world rather than competing against it for precious resources is the only path to peace ... the problem we have today, is that radical change will be painful and our institutions are champions of the status quo ... perhaps soon, more will awaken ... until more of us understand that radical change is both necessary and inevitable, we will continue to see nothing but decline ... perhaps in joining this dialog and lifting up these ideas, you might help enable a softer landing ... i hope you do ...