Reddit mentions of The Post-American World: Release 2.0

That only happened like that one time.

Seriously though, Nationalism is like anything else: too much is a bad thing. I get your point, in the States, Nationalism has gone too far and blinded many narrow-minded people and polluted politics... just like Religion. I do not believe Nationalism is innately a destructive force.

edit: For anyone interested, check out this book by Fareed Zakaria. I think his ideas on what the US could accomplish could be pushed for with US nationalism.

There's a lot of different ideas floating around as to how China will develop over the next few decades. Everything from China breaking up to democratic revolution to business as usual with a bit more capitalism.

Honestly the future of Chinas economy is beyond the scope of a reddit comment written from my cell phone. So I'm going to make a book recommendation instead:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Post-American-World-Release-2-0/dp/039308180X

It's an easy read. I recommend it if you're interested in learning more about Geopolitics but don't want to risk getting thrown into the deep end.

The book presents a largely positive outlook on the future for the United States despite the title and does a good job of discussing the situations that many countries will face in the future.

Edit* Don't take anything as the be all end all of Geopolitics, read more stuff of all different kinds opinions. (As long as it's backed up with facts.)

You can start by finding out who your representatives are here.

Learn about what each office does and what they are responsible for.

What issues are you most concerned with? Taxes? Healthcare? Unemployment? etc. How has your represented responded to these issues (i.e. voting record)?

If you're a student in university, it may be helpful to take an intro political science class. If not, hopefully, some redditors can suggest some good reading for you.

Some websites or news programs that I find helpful in getting some info are NPR, BBC Worldnews, Al-Jazeera and Euronews. I'm not a fan of local news programming. I read a lot online for the local stuff.

You may enjoy The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. They're comedy shows but they tend to show the absurdities of it all. You can a learn a lot too. Sometimes, I enjoy the roundtable discussions on Real Time with Bill Maher. I've gone as far as to purchase some books based on the discussions they've had.

I can't recommend books for "getting to know politics" per se, but a few in my collection include that I found informative:

The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria


The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein


Ghost Wars by Steve Coll


The Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse


Politics of the Veil by Joan Wallach Scott


Voices of Freedom vol. 1 & 2 by Eric Foner


Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken




The Parliament of Man by Paul Kennedy

I found them enlightening and some gave me a clearer look at the workings of government and politics in America. Some stuff you have to take with a grain of salt. Checking the references from anything you read is helpful imo. Hope this helps a little.

The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria is always a good place to start for some of this stuff. Also, a unique look at globalization and democratization (or at least, the profusion of knowledge from democratic systems to non-democratic ones) can be found in critiques of the World Bank or of the trade policies of large bodies such as the EU and the US.

Also, I love that a person going by gingerballz asks questions regarding IR. This is why reddit rulz.