Breaking News: "Sole Superpower" means We have an obligation to NO ONE.

Don't you love insincere bromides like the one I just read in the San Francisco Chronicle: "We share an obligation to each other"?, or "We're all in this together"? Lol. It's as though the entire thrust of Western Civilization since the Reagan era can be put into reverse by stating exactly the opposite of everything that has been drummed into our heads since it became Mourning in America. Oh wait, that's the 2020 vision of Trumpashenko's Amerika, a nation of squirming MAGAts feeding off the  pawed-over leftovers scraped into the garbage bins of the Keptocracy. They (still) call it Trickle Down economics, to give the Reagan/Bush Morning in America euphemism its dew. It was the cynical name given to the program used to start the USA off on its world Victory tour de Force of destroying every non-capitalist country in existence by preaching that, "We share an obligation to no one".

Least of all to a communist country that we watched being bled dry by Nazi aggression while we spent the country's savings on developing a technology that had nothing to do with stopping that aggression (atomic bombs made zero contribution to the defeat of the Nazi's ... contrarily, had the USA spent even a fraction of the money that went into nuclear fission on additional conventional air power and conventional ordnance, or other conventional weapons' systems, we can see today what the results would have been. It was the carpet bombing B-52's and the resultant firestorms they ignited that brought the Third Reich (as it would have Japan) its crushing defeat; VE Day, that celebrated the defeat of the most technologically, scientifically advanced nation in the world, needed not a single atom to be split to bring it about. The specious Truman argument that he had to use the bomb to save American lives was a complete fabrication; the truth is that we used the bomb because he had to justify all the American lives that had already been sacrificed by the Federal government's obsession with nuclear Power; all those men killed while we twiddled our thumbs spending billions of dollars separating protons from their atoms' core while GI goes to his death. What's another coupla hundred thousand dead soldiers when we can have the ultimate weapon? As you watch the virus numbers go up, and see all over the country the unrepentant heartless nonchalance with which the hundreds of thousands of deaths of their fellow citizens are simply shrugged off, it's far easier to imagine the monstrous calculations that were made out of the glare public scrutiny then: TOP SECRET. The blame for All of those soldiers' deaths could be laid at the Fuehrer's feet, so we might as well play mad scientist in the shadow of that mountain of corpses. Listen to the scientists? Sure. But trust the scientists? They used a War to advance their own agenda, insisting the War would be lost otherwise. That was a Lie. History has proved as much. They weren't the ones dying in the front lines, they were instead using the lives of the Nation's combatants as a shield. So you can see why there's so much hesitancy to trust them now; maybe that's why conspiracy theorists are having such a heyday. Why wouldn't scientists do so now when the citizenry itself gives them Carte Blanche? They don't care, they've become Bolsonaro'd).

The core concept behind Trickle Down economics is that the well-heeled, the opulent, the people who have used this country to carve a fortune out for themselves owe the rest of the country, never mind the world, absolutely nothing. If you can manage to scrape a crumb or two from my discarded scraps, or manage to eke out a drop from the trickle of fluid running down my leg to slake your parched throat with, well, whatever. As long as you don't get in the way of the servants, I guess you can be tolerated. And as long as you don't start to think I'm therefore obliged to you in any way, I guess I'll refrain from kicking you in the face for licking my well-heeled boots.  

But if economics can trickle down, so can values and attitudes, and if the richest families in the history of the world would rather give you the finger than raise one to help anyone outside their immediate family, then the peasants, with nothing but their paltry Warmart paystubs, can hardly be expected to feel that they have any obligation to help anyone outside of their immediate families. 

Family values means exactly that. It is only you and your family that matters. You can break any law, fabricate any scam, perpetrate any villainy, so long as you do it for your "family". That's how we can have the most popular TV show be "The Soprano's", about a murderous thug America idolized for a decade because he was only running a family. 

The United States, or any other country, I suppose, apparently has no obligation to any other country. It's the hinge Climate Change denial swings from, even as we castigate China for not living up to their obligation to keep what the US President has claimed is a 99% harmless virus from spreading to the rest of the world. Huh? No American citizen, as preached from the pulpits of the rabid religionists making up the staunchest of Trumpashenko's supporters, more than from any secular source, have any obligation to help anyone, empathize with anyone, nor feel obliged to even inconvenience themselves for anyone. It is just not the Great America's Way. We did not attain Sole Superpower Status by feeling OBligated. And as the healthcare workers of America continue to be demeaned, ignored, mocked, derided and killed by a virus they are working to save US from, it is only a matter of time before they realize that no, they DON'T need to feel obliged to give their lives and work their asses off to help save the lives of your grandparents and parents when not only won't you even wear a strip of cloth across your obnoxious face to help save theirs, you mock and ridicule, and physically attack those that do.  We share an obligation, but "share", in this "America will never be a Socialist" country,  is just not in our vocabulary; it is anathema to our Ruling Class's worldview (Musk, Gates, Ellison, Zuckerburg, Kushner, Rockefeller, Bezos, Murdock, the Koch bros, the Waltons, etc, etc ... these MAGAts didn't get obscenely rich by "sharing", they don't even feel obligated to pay their own workers, contractors, or vendors a living wage).

To paraphrase my favorite Wizard,

 " ... and remember my sentimental friend, Greatness is not judged by how well you think of yourself; but by how well you are thought of by others." 

And not since the days of slavery has America's Democracy been thought so little of as now.