Remember those old scifi pulp magazines with the garish "World of Tomorrow" covers? Remember 2001:A Space Odyssey with its promise of a technocratic utopia? Well, it's 2008 now and where is that wonderful future we were promised? Well, it's here.In Dubai.
The top photo shows Dubai in 1990, the middle is the same street in 2003 and the bottom photo was taken last year. The media will tell you about a "Clash of Civilizations" between Islam and the West, or "The War on Terror," but just as with post-war Germany it's the "good guys" that seem to be losing. While America runs itself into the ground, we're seeing the Cities of Tomorrow pop up like mushrooms after a rainstorm in Dubai, or Malaysia or Indonesia. Never mind the mind-blowing landscapes taking shape in "Communist" China.
If you're an American who tends to find himself in arguments with rednecks ranting on about Communism or Islam, simply keep photos of Dubai or Kowloon or Malaysia's "Super Corridor" on your IPhone and show them to these benighted souls. Explain to them that the entire apparatus of Western Capitalism is bankrolling these metropolises while they pay four dollars a gallon for gas and feed their families Hamburger Helper every night.
If you're living in a country that finds itself at odds with America, get out into the streets and demand that your leaders declare war and then immediately sue for peace. You will find yourself the recipient of trillions of American tax dollars, just as the Germans did in the late 1940s while the English and the Russians faced food and fuel rationing for almost two decades.
