The Moderate Proposal for Court-Packing

[a completely inoffensive name]

Bit of a shame, yeah. Especially since I know you are more educated about these things than I am, so to see you take a more radical path of reform makes me anxious about the next five years.

I wouldn't call myself a skittish conservative, you hurt me with that rhetoric. When the time comes I would join the 'vanguard' and march in the streets and canvass for bigger blue waves, if only to make sure this country stays democratic (the system, not the party) in form and not oligarchical. If it means a renovated court system and the dissolution of Federalism towards a more direct democracy, then so be it.

Some parts of what you said in the last reply I think are either misunderstanding my poor verbiage (when I said 'the world' I meant their 'worldview' in a general philosophical sense, not about foreign policy specifically) or you are putting up some strawmen (I have not once said 'nothing can be changed' only that the degree to which the bulk of Americans tolerate change is tied to a public perception game that the GOP plays better at, and not tied to raw success as you put it). But maybe we should cool it with the multilayered quotes of each other and agree to disagree.

As for this:

China doesn't really have a demographic timebomb except in the current international framework of expectations; as a totalitarian society they will adapt to it (the two-child policy being one early example). Indeed, the gross age distribution in China is pretty similar to that in the US right now. If you're making a general reference to absolute population size and popular unrest, sure, that will hamper their hegemony. They'll still control the West Pacific though, and have the economic clout to determine international economic relations and dismantle our alliances and partnerships. The 21st century is no one's century, doesn't mean power will cease to exist on the world stage.

China does have a demographic timebomb. The provinces are becoming more stratified as the coastal regions attract young people with shockingly low birth rates, while the rural areas have higher rates but lack the younger people to support the coming aging of the last generation. https://www.economist.com/china/2017...getting-deeper

Their means of adapting through measured (but totalitarian) policies is disappearing under Xi's leadership. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/15...rd-xi-jinping/

China's top down government has so far failed in it's efforts to increase fertility by relaxing the one child policy.
https://www.economist.com/china/2018...ulation-policy

The country is setting itself up for mismanagement in several areas (fertility being just one), and if there is another great recession due for us this century the origin will be with China not the West.