Hi
Missing as usual in the discussion is that , World Powers have been making themselves "great" at the expenses of others. The history of this World is too much of some people getting to others people land's and taking it as a right. The US of A themselves are a case in point: Natives were obliterated and those who came did indeed made themselves great... That next bout of " more Greatness" at whose expenses will it be?
Now if we buy into the premises of making the already Wealthiest and most prosperous country on the planet"Great Again", how will it be accomplished?.... By making of anyone that is not "us" ( there is in this, a pun, intentional) an enemy? Should we in such a pursuit crush hard-won and very fragile social gains? So far there is a lot of rhetoric about "greatness" but little about the welfare of the people, especially the poor and weak. Social gains seem to be disregarded in the pursuit of this "greatness"
The sad truth is that in the name of commercial gains and perhaps convenience, purely for-profit, enterprises (by definition greedy) know too much about us. They are watching us and it if weren't for a few in the besieged press we wouldn't even care to have an inkling to how seriously dangerous this can become or already is. At this point in time entities whose main purpose is to make more profit, know close to everything about us, most of us anyway. They know where you've been , where you are, how much you have, where you have what you have, who you frequent, where and what you buy, for how much you buy, what and where and likely know what you are most likely to buy even if they weren't already almost forcing you to already.... The list could go on. If you think for example that Google doesn't know where you have been by simply turning your GPS off, you are mistaken, the next time you (or perhaps "they" whomever "they" might be",) turn that GPS on, your so practical, convenient and so useful smartphone connects to "them" and pushes all your wheeabout and perhaps more to "them" ... How dangerous can that be? Now one can always think that such vast amount of data makes it very difficult to prune out relevant or useful information and one could be right if it weren't for the notion of data mining and the mind-boggling computing power that many entities corporations, some Government agencies other we don't even know about have... That is what Data mining is about.. crushing vast amount of data to retrieve information of pertinence for a purpose; it can be as mundane as sales/profit or as dangerous as who and what you vote for, from there to manipulating what you think ... This points toward a very dystopian future in which a few would (will?) control us in the name of ... what? Profit?
This to me, is disturbing... scary and more than unsettling.
Bowing out for now
Respectfully
Peace