American Dynamism

[JTQ]

Reminds me of DTS (Digital Terrain System) in the F16, which allowed the F16 to fly nap-of-the-earth style flying without a terrain following radar. I think ALCM and Harpoon have a terrain comparison mode on their guidance as well.

You typed "Harpoon", but you probably meant Tomahawk. The Harpoon is an anti-ship missile and probably wouldn't have terrain mapping.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERCOM

[JHC]

I too am broadly optimistic about America's future albeit we're in a tough patch presently. But having listened to gloom and doom over all things cultural and economic and lots else since I was a wee lad in the late 60's . . . all I've actually seen has been gradual progress in areas that matter most to me. No catastophic breakdown of the social order. No economic collapse. Quite the contrary. Energy out the kazoo. More respect for more "kinds" of people, odd ball revanchist efforts notwithstanding.

I'm not persuaded by the gloom over younger generations at all. I've heard it all before from my parents generation in previous decades.
Some of my optimism has been fueled by my exposure to people currently in their 20s and 30s. A big chunk of them are active duty Army and some think that is a distortion however I'm not convinced that is valid to any meaningful degree. I've seen great youngsters in the private sector as well.

This prognosticator sees a lot of trouble ahead for many parts of the world and many nations. He's pretty optimistic about the US's future however. And not only the US. He has observed that the North American team of Mexico/US/Canada is largely isolated/protected from many global threats, has strong demographics, energy, resources, and food. And a broadly bright future.

Here is a neat sample of some encouraging forecasting.



If I had a dime for every prediction I've heard about our pending imminent collapse . . . a $30 Trillion organism with almost limitless intellectual capacity and an instinct to survive and thrive is not just going to collapse over the ankle biting crises of the moment.

[Joe in PNG]

One problem is our social media culture. Not only does it give too much of an outsized megaphone for the small frogs to croak loudly, it gives an incentive to talk about those croaking frogs until we come to believe that the pond must be full of large frogs because of all the noise.

[blues]

I always look forward to hearing @JHC 's perspective...he always finds a way to make things not appear quite so dire.

[JHC]

One problem is our social media culture. Not only does it give too much of an outsized megaphone for the small frogs to croak loudly, it gives an incentive to talk about those croaking frogs until we come to believe that the pond must be full of large frogs because of all the noise.

To your point . . .

This is long but it's a fascinating interview about a project that interviewed something over 20K Americans in a wide variety of communities. They worked up ~15 or so community "types" getting as granular as "rural affluent" vs not and Native American, military communites; very granular.
One of the first findings they discuss pretty early in the show is how a majority in EVERY single one of the community types said "yeah, I'm doing ok and on a good track" and "yeah my local comminity is good, on the right track" . . . but the Nation? Oh the Nation is in TERRIBLE shape. This pattern cut across the community types and party affiliation.

That has a fascinating correlation to scads of polling these past few years that found similar patterns. Inviduals said they're doing well but the Nation is circling the drain. The economy sucks but we're setting Black Friday, Cyber Monday etc records last Fall. Ecconomists are trying to get this sorted out because historically when consumers thought the economy was bad they slowed down buying stuff but that's not been the new pattern.

I gotta believe this is related to the point you made plus other media influences.

Its kinda long but very interesting. Dante Chinni on The American Communities Project.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/115-th...-dante-chinni/

[Trigger]

You typed "Harpoon", but you probably meant Tomahawk. The Harpoon is an anti-ship missile and probably wouldn't have terrain mapping.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERCOM

You are correct!