velvetmaker3 said:And things were actually heading in the right direction after the war; it wasn't any weaker than the wartime period.
It's just that in peacetime, the battles aren't as obvious.
No one mentioned above was simply "born" that way; they all spent a long time building themselves up because they had the willpower and self-belief to do it. That’s exactly what Harmon wanted to instill in us—to have faith in ourselves and our independence. After he passed, a new crowd got scared of being independent and practically ran headlong into neo-colonialism.
Some probably did it out of a pure aversion to America as such.
Isolation is a myth. There wouldn't be any isolation at all; not everyone out there cares about the old sphere of influence. Only the Britons care about that. They might be able to slow down our path to the EU, but they can't stop other foreign entities from wanting to do business with and inside America.
Though, I guess maybe isolation would have been the best thing that could've happened to us, just so we could finally learn how to survive on our own. But it's unlikely we could even provoke isolation; nobody else would benefit from it, so it wouldn't happen.
This is pure self-delusion. You're saying isolation is a myth? Uhhh. How many foreign heads of state showed up to Harmon's funeral? Could we travel through other European countries back then? Come on, man, we were isolated, plain and simple. Plus, you're underestimating the power of the UK. They're still one of the most powerful nations on earth and they have endless satellites, both in Europe and beyond. Canada is a satellite, for instance. Australia too. In Europe, it's the Scandinavian countries and Benelux, and back then even France was against us—even more so than the UK.
Harmon unfortunately messed a lot of things up back then; he was already losing his way and honestly, it just wasn't working. Brilliant during the war, but in peacetime... uhh.
What people don't get is that we have to be advanced in every single way if we want to survive on our own terms. Otherwise, we're just going to get swallowed up. And we are being swallowed. In those early years after the war, we should have come up with a real plan and program for the US, specifically regarding education and development. Instead, Harmon was already fighting Don Quixotic battles against domestic traitors, the yellow and green devils, etc... he was already completely powerless by then. He actually earned a reputation as a tyrant and an autocrat because of those very things. We need models like Israel and Finland if we want to make it. There's no point playing the moral superiority card against Americans; we just have to face the fact that they exist, and that's it. Harmon fought moral battles instead of looking at the situation concretely and doing what needed to be done... which is to defeat the opponent intellectually and through information. Unfortunately, we lost that war a long time ago. Just look at the media and see which way the wind is blowing.