In the Ancient Greek tragedy “The Persians” by Aeschylus, King Darius’ former ghost appears to his wife, ridiculing his son and current King of Persia, Xerxes’ decision to invade Greece, citing his extreme hubris or arrogance. Darius particularly rebukes impious Xerxes’ decision to build a bridge to expedite the Persian army’s advance, and eventual defeat.
So there you have it, a tale of a powerful government making rash and sophomoric decision to wage war and advance greed unnecessarily, resulting in the demise of a powerful nation. Does any of this sound familiar?
The “war on terror” began with an attack on Afghanistan, and then migrated into Iraq, preempted by the notion that we were fighting for “freedom” and in a speech given years into the war, on Dec. 18, 2005, former-President Bush said, “We do not create terrorism by fighting terrorists. We invite terrorism by ignoring them.” What is so perplexing and mildly amusing about these stated ideals is that in 2001, the World Trade Organization allowed the totalitarian nation of China to infiltrate world trade markets.
So what is the connection? As China began trading on a global market, greater and greater numbers of American and European businesses began offshoring their industry to China often at one-tenth of the price it cost them to operate production in their respective nations. In 2012, China provided over $172.7 million worth of goods and services into the United Nations’ economy, and is ranked among the top 20 in developing nations in the world, all the while contradicting the ideals of democracy and equality which the U.S. professes constantly.
And at what cost to citizens of the respective nations in which they reside?
“Since China began flooding U.S. markets with illegally subsidized products in 2001, over 50,000 American factories have disappeared, more than 25 million Americans can’t find a decent job, and America now owes more than three trillion dollars to the world’s largest totalitarian nation,” said to Peter Navarro, professor of economics and public policy at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine. Those figures are enough to upset any hard-working American.
So American companies were offshoring their business to a nation that most closely subscribes to a Marxist philosophy, while the United States government was spending money on wars founded on rumors of “weapons of mass destruction,” and years later, financially bailing out the same companies who were guilty of outsourcing.
Meanwhile, the average American was panicking over how to afford his or her mortgage, credit card bills, and health insurance to avoid going bankrupt, all the while the nation of China was exploiting cheap labor and pumping massive amounts of pollution into the atmosphere because there is no environmental protection agency to insure that the population stays healthy. In fact, there are hardly any safety measures taken at all within the Chinese nation.
China’s gross national income per capita was reported as $6,091 in 2012, ranking it at position 90 on a global scale, but still experiencing rapid growth in its gross domestic products (GDP). Also, the population of China is estimated somewhere around 1.35 billion, while the population of the United States is estimated around 313.9 million, meaning that the population of China exceeds that of the United States by almost 57 percent, and thus creating an opportunity for tremendous military advantage over the U.S. No matter what technological advantages the U.S. may have, an army double in size is hardly competition for the toughest military might.
Basically, the wealthy elite within the United States decided to offshore their multi-million dollar businesses in order to increase profits, all the while causing massive unemployment to fellow Americans, and then turning around and criticizing him for his lack of work ethic.
So what is the next step? The United States must turn its focus inwardly and decide to stop exploiting the cheap, Chinese markets in order to put Americans back to work. The wealthy must stop looking for every avenue to accumulate massive amounts of income they will never be able to spend in an effort to put the United States back into its position of former glory. They were responsible for getting us into this predicament, and we must vote in such a way to claw our way out. It is our civic duty to find those in the government who see this massive betrayal of democracy, and find a way of promoting self-reliance and self-sufficiency in order to provide a better tomorrow for us and ours.
