Thanks for taking the time to elaborate your points Synonym. I have to say, they are pretty good ones! While I'm not sure I am approaching the issues from the same direction as you are, I'm pretty sure we are seeing eye-to-eye on a lot of the troubles that are currently plaguing our country.
I agree that another attack on our country, weather it be internal or external is inevitable. The issue I'm worried about is that how such an attack will change our foreign and domestic policies. One example is with government overreach into monitoring all of us. Personally, I'm not worried on an individual level- I was attached to the NSA for the entirety of my Navy career and it wasn't like I even attempted to hide my lineage and sociopolitical views. Honestly, I believe a
lot of the push from the military and the NSA for better (i.e. more) surveillance is simply an excuse for more funding and money. Honestly, while the war in Afghanistan could be arguably justified, I'd rather had have a clandestine insertion of a spec ops team to off Bin Laden rather then start a long term campaign which is still a money funnel to this day.
About Russian and China you are spot on; there's a reason I never used Kaspersky Security and China doesn't even attempt to hide the fact they are consistently hacking US government and Corporate systems. That said, we've pretty much become codependent with the Oligarchy in Russia and China in maintaining our style of life over here- while both sides of the aisle here are perfectly happy scapegoating and grandstanding against them, nothing will come of it- especially since Russia controls roughly 33% of all Europe's oil usage and has nearly completed new pipelines to China and Japan.
ISIS is, in my opinion, not a big threat to us. Gary Brecher (the war nerd) actually wrote a pretty good article on them. Also like you said, change has to come from within those nations- if we keep bombing everybody that we don't like over there, all we do is create a power vacuum for another organization.
Finally, you are right on about solar and wind. One of my buddies is a engineer and spent bit of time writing out the unsuitability of replacing our energy with solar (I'm willing to post transcripts of his words via pm if anybody is interested but I don't want to clog up the chat here with hard math and junk) it'd take 400 trillion dollars and a power station the size of Texas to even attempt to match current world demand for power via solar- and that's with energy cells at maximum possible physical efficiency that never experience nighttime conditions or cloudy days. Honestly, energy is going to be an issue, and it will continue to grow into the foreseeable future. Especially since most food, plastics, and fuel now relies on fossil products. There's is no feasible way to maintain our population growth without serious denigration of the environment and/or our individual quality of life. I'm perfectly willing to admit I'm either to uneducated or dumb in the subject.
@nighttimer
I wish. Though honestly I'd like for a simple cannon that shot baddie politicians and business men into the sun more. Sadly, I'm not enough of a sociopath to enforce my beliefs through murder.
Also, sorry about my long posts. I hate simply just giving my opinion without some sort of background or logic on why I believe things to be so- hell, even the stuff I posted here feels a little too bare-bones. If I ever become annoying to the community, or an admin doesn't like it, I'll gladly start shutting up and continuing discussions through pm!