If we manage to do that, we're in a position to quite possibly emerge as the dominant economic and cultural power on the planet - or at least in the Western Hemisphere.

If we don't boot them out, we're screwed. Our starting point is much better than that of the US in the early '80s, but no society can withstand a sustained onslaught of market fundamentalism for more than a couple of decades.

Europe isn't particularly special or exceptional, except inasmuch as we by the grace of good fortune have been endowed with a high-grade industrial infrastructure and strong labour unions. There is nothing inherent in European nature that prevents those things from being dismantled, just as there is nothing inherent in American nature that prevents the US from (re)building them.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.