Julian Assange arrested (merged)

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by DarkFish

a real danger we'd be much better off without.

I would not describe it that strictly. The US is constantly balancing between

- "freedom" and "security",
- and between what it claims and was meant to be by its founding myths,
and what it actually is in reality.

The difference between the latter often gets refused by America, and the balance regarding the first got lost after 9-11.

There is also a huge difference between the "altruistic global model" that America claims to be when serving the global needs, and the reality of often brutal egoism that it actually is driven by. After all, states are the coldest of all monsters (Nietzsche). And I never believed in the idea of "friendship" between nations. There never was one, and there never will be something like that - just interests that are shared for a temporary time.

I think that more and more often we will see in the future the former superpower hitting blindly at all directions while it realises that its former economic, financial and military dominance is waning. After all, it is an empire in decline. That decline will not take just some months or years, but another 10, 20 years or maybe more. But the culmination point definitely lays long behind.