We’re constantly told that diversity is strength while being told we are too polarized. Seriously, does the Lamestream Media even listen to themselves anymore? Obviously, no one sane is listening to them but do they not notice how irrational and contradictory their rhetoric is?

Diversity, like unity, can be a great tool and can also be destructive as all get out. What is so hard about moderation? Use the good parts of diversity – different points of view, new ideas – and skip the stupid stuff. Use the good parts of unity – aligned purpose, shared goals – and skip the mindlessness. There is a happy medium and that’s what we should seek as a society.

The limit is that this isn’t true of all things. Finding a balance between good and evil just ends up with evil winning. Evil seeks domination, not balance. It is not going to cooperate with your utopian vision of equity. It didn’t work in Star Wars and it won’t work in real life, either.

All cultures are not equal. Your poor deluded teachers meant well but that bit of relativism is a lie from the pit of hell. Some are better than others. The people are just as valuable as all other people but carrying out the belief that kidnapping and sacrificing your neighbors to appease the gods so the sun keeps coming up is just and right is totally and completely wrong, morally and ethically. The Aztec culture stunk.

Sure, similar cultures are harder to compare but with a little common sense we can tell that some parts are definitely not good. Using minorities as a resource for organs so rich people can come and get the organ transplants they need quickly is pure evil. Still think we should have strong ties to China?

Culture is not people. You have to have people to have a culture but newborn babies don’t have to have a culture to live. Still, we are so steeped in culture that it can be hard to keep it straight. I suspect this is why relativism is so attractive. Why sort out all the complicated stuff when you can just pretend there is no real difference?

Welcome to Grown Up World. We have to get jobs and try to be good people. We have to know right from wrong and be willing to make the tough calls. Adulthood isn’t nearly as much fun as we thought it’d be but it’s also not to be missed.

So we get to the meat of the issue. Russia and China hate us. They are not our friends. They are not alone.

Being the biggest kid on the block comes with some great perks. Jerks rarely go too far with us because we’re big and we hit hard. But it also comes with a boatload of responsibility. We can act before the kiddies destroy the playground or we can clean up after them. It sounds easy enough but it’s not. We have the responsibility simply because we are the ones that want a decent sandbox and we have the power to corral the little monsters. At least most of the time.

Being powerful means we can use that power for good or evil. That is a never ending struggle. If we want to be a force for good then we can’t just beat up every little nation-state that ticks us off. Those of you who think that we do that have no idea how many nation-states make a hobby of ticking off the US. There are plenty of the little snots that we’ve never even flown an F-16 over. Yes, we’ll use our power when we think we should and we will get that wrong sometimes but we’d be running the whole planet by now if we abused that power the way so many seem to think we do.

We’re far from perfect. We’re just a couple miles better than the alternatives.

No nation-state can be summed up in a sound bite. There is a LOT going on behind the scenes that causes Russia to chose hostility over cooperation. Some is legit; a lot is not. Boiling it down oversimplifies it but we have to have a starting point. The main problems that Russia has with the US is that they want to be the sole superpower, they’re still mad about losing the Cold Wat, and NATO gets in the way of retaking ‘their’ territory. Throw in a ton of jealousy and you’ve got the gist.

Just the gist – we pay analysts to study Russia for a reason. Nation-states only come in size complicated.

Russia and the US share little in terms of history, culture and governance. It makes understanding each other more of a challenge. Oh, we get the basics easily enough – Russians aren’t aliens after all – but why the heck they traded one dictatorship for another makes no sense to Americans. Why we chose to live with constant turmoil and uncertainty – AKA democracy – is beyond most Russians.

The US and Russia are practically best buds compared to the US and China. We share almost nothing foundational in common. Our diplomats struggle to make sense of each other at times. The cultural differences are huge. But the basics are not. Again, this is over simplified but China wants to dominate South East Asia and the US hinders that in the extreme. China wants to be the sole superpower – you saw this one coming, didn’t you? The CCP wants to maintain its power no matter what.

China is no one’s friend. At times it’s debatable whether China is even its own friend. And China is building up its military and nuclear arsenal. No nation-state builds expensive things like militaries and nukes just for bragging rights. There’s only one nation-state they can be really gunning for and that is the US.

We have plenty of other contenders for Enemy of the Week but no others are in position to challenge US might. Technically, Russia and China aren’t really there yet, either, but they’ve made it abundantly clear where they are aiming to end up.

Isn’t international relation fun? We have two competitors vying for the right to take down the US and while we’re dealing with them, a few dozen more small fry that just want to be as big of a pain for the US as they can. This is why we can’t have a nice planet.

I’ve barely scratched the surface. There’s no end to countries that are mad at the US for reasons both real and imagined. Anything authoritarian hates us because we keep showing them up. Half of Europe hates us because it’s fashionable.

We’re kind of the Rodney Dangerfield of nation-states. No respect.

No need to feel sorry for the US or to worry about all the enemies we have. The US has a lot more friends than it has enemies. The real power of the US is in her soft power. We make friends and alliances. We help those that can’t necessarily help us. We ensure the freedom of the seas. We may not be perfect but we do a lot of good.

But we can’t be complacent. The world is a big, complex place and the days when we could take our ball and go home are long gone. Isolationism won’t work for any nation-state any longer, not even the US. It’s as much our neighborhood as everyone else’s. However, not all the neighbors like us. Even the ones that do get annoyed with us sometimes. This is the weird world we live in and it requires that we stay on our toes.

American’s want what they can never have: a government that can safely be set on autopilot. We’re learning that hard lesson now and it’s just the beginning. George Washington gave good advice to a backwater that was already getting to o big for its britches. We’ve grown a lot since then and though that advice still contains a kernel of wisdom we should use, it no longer fits the grown up country we have become.

Even if we wanted to just retire to our own shores, it’s much too late. This nutcase of a planet depends on us and way too many are jealous of us. We were bitten by the radioactive superpower bug and there’s no going back.

We have enemies and friends. None of them are exactly like us or want to be. They are their own nations. We have to accept that.

And keep the knives out of our collective back. There’s always at least one in every crowd.

No respect at all, I tell ya.