Comments by "" (@craigkdillon) on "Whatifalthist" channel.

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  4. Nice analysis. Totally wrong and misguided. But, very nice and well done. OK, why do I say it is "wrong and misguided"? 1. Analyses like these have an unstated assumption that the world today is like the world of yesterday. If you were a paleolithic analyst, circa 10000 BC, you could not have forecast the future, because agriculture was a game changer. 2. There are so many game changers, that today's world CANNOT go through troubles the same way. Even defining what is trouble, is likely to be very different. For instance, nuclear weapons change the whole dynamic of how nations use war. A direct war between nuclear powers will never be total war (we hope). Since WW2, the US has been in proxy wars. The creation of the nation state put Europe on the road to world domination -- which it did until WW2. Imperial governments became outclassed, and fell. India, Ottoman Empire, China, Russia, and Iran -- all fell or were transformed. More importantly though, technology has restructured our societies, and even impact our culture. Telephone, transportation, video (in all its forms), internet, international [corporations, banks, finance, NGO's, trade, etc] have all profoundly changed humanity and how we relate to each other. 3. Extrapolations of China's development of economy and military power are ALL wrong. China is at the apex of its power, and it was built on cooperation from the West, and China's real estate & debt bubbles. China's real estate & debt bubbles are both popping now. China's economy is crashing. Soon, China will be dealing with huge unemployment, and the crash of personal wealth that many Chinese families had. The jobs that fed the internal migrants of China are ending. What will the 300,000,000 internal migrants do?? Will they stay loyal to the CCP? 4. Africa has been a real surprise. The borders imposed by the legacy of colonialization has not resulted in African wars (which is what I expected in the 70's). Instead, African countries have worked together, and there is even talk of unification. Unification would be a great way to get better borders, and to deal with the tribal divisions within the countries. At least in some cases. 5. Climate Change - your understanding of climate change is very wrong. There is NO direct connection between current behavior and current climate. Climate change of today is the result of things we did for last decades. If we change our behavior now, it won't have effect now --- it will have effect in the future. For instance, CO2 is now at about 415ppm, which is higher than it was in the Pliocene, 3.5mya, when it was 390ppm, and oceans were 75 ft deeper. So, we could end ALL CO2 emissions right now, and oceans would still rise at least 75 ft, eventually. Humans and nature operate on very different time scales.
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  49. Again, another case of some making "observations" and comments from the standpoint of ignorance or American History. The speaker is obviously a child, with no recollection of the Vietnam War. The events of the past few years do not show a nation any more "broken" than the United States was during that era. Then there were the eras before that when the US showed it was a divided "Broken" country. 1919 race riots. The putting down of the Bonus Army in Washington DC by Douglas MacArthur. The Civil War - we certainly were broken in that time. Even when we were victorious in war and expanded our country - Mexican War & Spanish American War -- there was huge opposition to our imperialist actions. The Haymarket Riots in Chicago - protesting working conditions, and caused the US to build armories in Chicago Parks, so that the US could put down future labor riots. The focus at the time was that immigrant foreigners (sound familiar) were the cause of unrest and insurrection. The Irish, Poles, and Italians were considered inferior and seditious. The Know-Nothing Party was like today's Tea Party - it was anti-immigration. The more you learn of American History, the more you will see common threads that keep re-appearing. What we are seeing today, are those same threads of intolerance, racism, and corporatism that were part of this country when it was founded. That is both reassuring and despairing. Despairing in that we have not been able to rid ourselves of these flaws after all these years. Reassuring in that we have survived, thrived, and advanced DESPITE having these flaws. We will cope. We will make some progress, as we have in the past. And, our nation will survive, thrive, and advance.
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