Given what I've posted about the blame game, I don't think it's surprising that I don't want to go into a tirade against the fill-in-the-blank that have got us here, but I'm also upset enough about it that it's pretty hard not to.... And I definitely want the root causes addressed. Sort of like how confession and reconciliation are supposed to work...
Well, that's far too complicated to get into now. For whatever reason, my little parable makes it easier to talk about.
I did find another interesting piece to it though. Kinda after the fact.
After all, what's the difference between a loose collection of campers and an army?
Obviously there's strengths and weaknesses to both. Nobody is ordering those campers around. Nobody is making someone go around to other campsites teaching people how to light a fire...
And yet, on a cold winter night it's more likely some of those campers will freeze to death. Especially if they chose a site other campers don't know about.
The army (under even halfway decent leadership, presumably) would probably do more to coordinate resources and make sure everyone survives. Self-organization could probably do the same, mostly. It'd be harder to order people to go out into the cold, there may be more campsites missed, etc. The point really is that there's a spectrum, but that there's a level of coordination that a group can do that can make them stronger than the same number of people when they're just a collection of individuals.
And what's the difference between a loose connection of individuals and a nation?
(or maybe the campers are divided into multiple groups. Mayhap even tribes. And what's the difference between a bunch of tribes living in the same vicinity and an alliance?... Sort of like the difference between a bunch of states that share a region, and states that are united.)
Oh, one more aside. While I really, really hope we don't wind up in a war with China, I've been long aware that China has a vastly larger population than we do.
They're what... 1.412 billion people?
And we're 333.9 million?
They've got 4 times as many people. I haven't dug into exact numbers in terms of how many in each country are considered to be fighting age...
I don't know what would happen if we actually got in a war with them (again, I don't really want that to happen)... They're close enough in terms of technology and have the advantage in numbers, so it'd probably come down to hard to evaluate factors such as logistics, training, unity at home (China, I've heard, actually has a lot of different ethnicities - sort of like Russia does - so they might have to use more of their forces for domestic security than we would, but that's me just pulling random facts I've heard together and not any solid analysis. I am by no means an expert on China).
Anyways... Going back to how stupid an army leader would have to be to lose soldiers to the cold (barring logistics problems beyond their control), it would be the height of stupidity for anyone worried about China to support policies that get Americans killed.
Well, never let it be said that humans are very logical.
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