The ass of the Saudi tyranny is a eczema on the philtrum under Uncle Sam's nose, just during Joe Biden's years in the Senate and Whitehouse.
It is carefully hidden by a mustache of manufactured consent, but the odour is noticed by everyone in it's wake. A high degree of NAZI scented Bromhidrosis gets you to the front of the US immigration line and preferential employment with CIA or local police; parosmia is a minimum requirement for immigrants. Loss of the later can result in cancelation either social and/or permanent.
Actually, the government and ruling class of the US are morally consistent. They practice Realpolitik, which may be rendered as "Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing." In other words, morals and aesthetics and justice and good order and so forth are not relevant. I don't know how to defeat or even divert them, but we don't have to support them voluntarily.
....""we don't have to support them <strike>voluntarily"</strike> by default." Just by living in the USA people support them by default, just some do it full throttle by consuming everything stolen from other nations like there is no tomorrow.
Even just struggling to survive in one of many neo-colonial states one is supporting them, but that is much harder to fault. They smell that eczema and much, so much more rot but have less leeway, no matter how hard they try, to get out of downwind.
It's why from an early age I became an anti-imperialists not just in word, but by default: to proactively minimize every input to that system, by getting away as far as possible from Finance Capitalism, by minimizing and calculating my footprint to minimize my contribution and maximize resistance.
Ethical consistency is redundant; ethics is consistency. Thank you for pointing out that the US isn't hypocritical, it's consistent to its ethic of serving the oligarchy.
What are the ethics of the United States? I used to naively think they were more-or-less embodied in the Bill of Rights—free speech, free press, privacy, due process, etc. But of course those never applied to the entire population (slaves, Indians, immigrants, the poor), and they didn’t survive for anyone after 9/11 (and many would put that date far earlier).
Where these debates about ethics and hypocrisy get difficult is when we assume ethics are the same for individuals as they are for organizations. Governments, corporations, and churches have collective ethics that allow and even require commission of all the seven deadly sins and most of the class one felonies. We can’t kill, but governments can. We can’t steal, but corporations are built on stolen resources, labor and ideas. And churches would never lie, except perhaps about pedophilia (and the secret documents and treasures in their basement).
It seems to be a rule that the larger the organization, the less its ethics resemble those of ethical individuals. Corporate mission statements, government constitutions, and religious scriptures are for consumption by the rabble, but are tacitly understood not to apply to the organizations themselves, no matter how often we are told otherwise. But organizations do have ethics, it’s just that they don’t resemble anything that would be considered ethical for individuals.
The two endlessly stated U.S. ethics of “freedom” and “democracy” still have positive meanings for most individuals, so they are especially useful and deceptive when the U.S. uses them in its official propaganda and banal diplomacy. Of course, when used by The Empire, the words are drained of any meaning we individuals may give them, and they become empty rhetoric, obvious lies, or threats and war cries.
The only ethics of the U.S. are the fundamental unstated ethics shared by every other empire in history: domination and supreme sovereignty over every person, territory, and resource. So, from the imperial perspective, the U.S. Empire is not hypocritical; it is a beacon of consistent ethical behavior.
The real question now is what happens when the imperial ethics diverge too far from the ethics of its individual subjects? I think the answer is along the lines of what Victor Hugo wrote: “Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide.”
How so? Are there times when the US has betrayed its ethic of serving the oligarchy and inadvertently served the people? The US certainly says one thing and does another but its ethic is determined by what it does. I have a hard time thinking of an example of foreign policy in my lifetime (at 65) that hasn't consistently served the purpose of global domination, militarily and economically.
But only in retrospect. It took me years to finally understand what happened in Chile 9/11/73. My "go to" defense before that was "The USA would never do that." But once I finally recognized it, I saw the same crime popping up over and over and over again.
Many still don't recognize the Maidan Coup as a coup fomented by Victoria Nuland. They may watch the video, but they don't have any understanding of what it means. That is why so many are foolishly posting Ukraine flags. They have no idea what happened. They're still living in the "USA would never do that" dream.
"Woke" is so overused now as to being useless. Telling them to "wake up" is as useless as showing them the evil of the Empire. They just cannot see it. Not that they refuse to see it, but they CAN NOT see it.
It is a kind of "Stockholm Syndrome". I was afflicted with it. I had to cure myself. I think it was the movie "Missing" that was the trigger for me.
For sure, no one could yell loud enough to get through.
Yes, lots and lots of ideas ;-) Ask Jack, who was complaining I'm too prolific.
Missing was such a powerful movie. And I think you already saw my post on Victoria Nuland, but I'll link it at the bottom. The question you raise is one that keeps coming up, and I've been thinking a lot about. I completely agree with you that it's not that people are unwilling, they're unable. It means calling everything you think you know into question. And I'm still finding my own blind spots.
I'm going to make a new video on your question called We Need to Agree to Agree. I'll post a note when it's up.
"Biden will be courting a tyrannical war criminal whose country has no freedom or democracy." Geez, no need to generate CO2 with all that flying, Joe. Far simpler to look into a mirror while holding up a map of the US.
the Kasshoggi murder was done in the full knowledge that it would pass muster in the US and West generally, because their records don't bear close scrutiny either: Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Iraq, Julian Assange and Belmarsh, and so many more are all about torture and killing, some en masse. There are pictures of George Bush senior literally grovelling to the Saudis: it's called "honour among thieves". Or something.
As an American (or am I a USAian, man this ID stuff gets so complicated) I really want the USA to be the "good guys", but at the same time, I can't really point to any time in history that the USA really was the "good guys".
I have to go back to WWII and the US efforts to win against the Axis. But then it want until June of 1944 that the US finally landed on Normandy. It was Russia that won the war against Nazi Germany. (I have to ignore the war in the Pacific at the moment because that gets really complicated. Well, except for the fact that there was no reason to drop Nukes on Japan. None. Period.)
I want to think of myself as a good person. I want to think of myself as an American. It is becoming clearer every day that I can't be both.
Who remembers that old SteppinWolf song? "America where are you now don't you care about your sons and daughters. Don't you know we need you know we can't fight alone against the monster".
It seems that "America" never really existed. It was only a fantasy, like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.
Biden is like the Emperor with no clothes. He's surrounded by sycophants who tell him how amazing he is so they can go to the Kennedy center and watch remakes of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. But there is truly no "there, there"
Same thing with Obama, but he was a "magic man" who was able to spin the right tale and make us "believe". It is only in retrospect that we can see what a con-artist he really was. He was the "HOPE" dammit. The savior from the previous decades of Republican corruption, malfeasance, and war.
I'm an American. I was stupid and naive. It took me decades to finally realize who really controls our nation. Others have tried to tell me -- OWS comes to mind -- but while I wished them success, I had no understanding of the consequences of their failure.
Well, now I see that it is too late. The American Century is about to collapse. It isn't like i want Russia to win, but it does appear that it will be inevitable. I cannot in good conscience encourage anyone to fight for the "Empire".
Biden is just a face. He's not the Oligarchy. Kind of funny though, I can easily see the Oligarchy recognizing Biden's breakdown and scrambling to do "something" about it. Maybe like they did with JFK.
Mention of Steppenwolf's song brings back memories when I started to realize America--I use US for the government in my writings--was indeed a monster that needed slaying. The following year('71, at 17 years old) a fellow modeler was sent home in a flag draped coffin from the 'Nam. Monster indeed. I've been a staunch pacifist ever since. I quit flying model airplanes shortly after that as well. They just weren't fun any longer.
The EU is now certainly destined to collapse. See stories about EU getting Russian oil--via India's oil tankers which adds about 25% to its cost--just so they can be in compliance with the Russian oil embargo. Euro trash in explanation. Absurd.
It's not just the government. The press is equally complicit. Every day we see "journalists" talking to poor Ukrainian refugees and sometimes even visiting bombed out towns and villages. Why don't we see these same "journalists" visit a god forsaken Yemeni village with fly covered human skeleton babies? Is it just unalloyed racism that a dying Arab is not as important as a displaced Ukrainian? Is it because we are supporting the war in Yemen? The hypocrisy is sickening. You are correct, human rights, freedom and democracy have absolutely nothing to do with who we support and who we try and destroy.
Wow. So true. I have more respect for the person who admits they are selfish and greedy than the person who pretends they are selfless and generous while their actions totally speak otherwise. More and more countries are becoming all too aware of the US empire's hypocrisy (or rather complete alignment with its true values of domination, control, and power over).
The ironic hypocrisy of US "policy" still at certain times continues to astonish me....Astonishing in that normal citizens are so brainwashed by incomprehensible bleating by corporate(MSM) media that they fail to actually look, with their own two eyes, at the facts. Ukraine is a great example. I get the Washington Post whose demonization of Russian president Vladimir Putin has their readers seeing Putin as a monster. They fail to mention why he's de-Nazifying Ukraine as neutralizing their army. It's like 4th grade when the "bad guys" are easy to see. Ya know, the ones terrorizing the little tykes at the sandbox. Except here the "bad guy" Nazis are never mentioned in their control of Ukraine. Just that bully Putin is"bad" without further analysis.
They also fail to mention that peace could be has if Ukrainian president Zelensky would just get rid of the Nazis that the US installed as control at Russia's border. Of course that would mean throwing the US and EU goons out of his domain. The US "obviously" doesn't want peace. Making war materiel is its(US's) bread and butter and what better than to poke Russia with a big stick, nuclear armed Russia at that. It is amazing that we're here at all. May reason somehow blanket these morons, all the way around. Peace,--so simple a concept that a child intrinsically knows this at a very early age--The Ol' Hippy
Another insidious problem with the blatant US hypocrisy is not only the lack of morality - but the deteriorating US credibility and reliability, which will, and has eroded the US's capability of negotiating any kind of believable diplomatic negotiations now or in the future. Which then leads to an increasing reliance on brute force, lying, cheating and violence to get its way - like any typical abuser in life.
Even if every single allegation about Russia were true (it isn't, but whatever) it would be a pimple on the ass of the Saudi tyranny.
Now let's see where that ass could fit on the US' body.
The ass of the Saudi tyranny is a eczema on the philtrum under Uncle Sam's nose, just during Joe Biden's years in the Senate and Whitehouse.
It is carefully hidden by a mustache of manufactured consent, but the odour is noticed by everyone in it's wake. A high degree of NAZI scented Bromhidrosis gets you to the front of the US immigration line and preferential employment with CIA or local police; parosmia is a minimum requirement for immigrants. Loss of the later can result in cancelation either social and/or permanent.
Actually, the government and ruling class of the US are morally consistent. They practice Realpolitik, which may be rendered as "Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing." In other words, morals and aesthetics and justice and good order and so forth are not relevant. I don't know how to defeat or even divert them, but we don't have to support them voluntarily.
....""we don't have to support them <strike>voluntarily"</strike> by default." Just by living in the USA people support them by default, just some do it full throttle by consuming everything stolen from other nations like there is no tomorrow.
Even just struggling to survive in one of many neo-colonial states one is supporting them, but that is much harder to fault. They smell that eczema and much, so much more rot but have less leeway, no matter how hard they try, to get out of downwind.
It's why from an early age I became an anti-imperialists not just in word, but by default: to proactively minimize every input to that system, by getting away as far as possible from Finance Capitalism, by minimizing and calculating my footprint to minimize my contribution and maximize resistance.
You left the US? I did that for awhile, but basically found the Imperium active everywhere.
The problem is where that line of sociopathy leads to.
A lot of people seem to be strongly attracted to it. Hence the fame of the proverb I quoted.
The irony of Realpolitik is that its greatest advocate, Henry Kissinger, proved in the long run to be wrong about everything.
Ethical consistency is redundant; ethics is consistency. Thank you for pointing out that the US isn't hypocritical, it's consistent to its ethic of serving the oligarchy.
Actually, it's also hypocritical
What are the ethics of the United States? I used to naively think they were more-or-less embodied in the Bill of Rights—free speech, free press, privacy, due process, etc. But of course those never applied to the entire population (slaves, Indians, immigrants, the poor), and they didn’t survive for anyone after 9/11 (and many would put that date far earlier).
Where these debates about ethics and hypocrisy get difficult is when we assume ethics are the same for individuals as they are for organizations. Governments, corporations, and churches have collective ethics that allow and even require commission of all the seven deadly sins and most of the class one felonies. We can’t kill, but governments can. We can’t steal, but corporations are built on stolen resources, labor and ideas. And churches would never lie, except perhaps about pedophilia (and the secret documents and treasures in their basement).
It seems to be a rule that the larger the organization, the less its ethics resemble those of ethical individuals. Corporate mission statements, government constitutions, and religious scriptures are for consumption by the rabble, but are tacitly understood not to apply to the organizations themselves, no matter how often we are told otherwise. But organizations do have ethics, it’s just that they don’t resemble anything that would be considered ethical for individuals.
The two endlessly stated U.S. ethics of “freedom” and “democracy” still have positive meanings for most individuals, so they are especially useful and deceptive when the U.S. uses them in its official propaganda and banal diplomacy. Of course, when used by The Empire, the words are drained of any meaning we individuals may give them, and they become empty rhetoric, obvious lies, or threats and war cries.
The only ethics of the U.S. are the fundamental unstated ethics shared by every other empire in history: domination and supreme sovereignty over every person, territory, and resource. So, from the imperial perspective, the U.S. Empire is not hypocritical; it is a beacon of consistent ethical behavior.
The real question now is what happens when the imperial ethics diverge too far from the ethics of its individual subjects? I think the answer is along the lines of what Victor Hugo wrote: “Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide.”
How so? Are there times when the US has betrayed its ethic of serving the oligarchy and inadvertently served the people? The US certainly says one thing and does another but its ethic is determined by what it does. I have a hard time thinking of an example of foreign policy in my lifetime (at 65) that hasn't consistently served the purpose of global domination, militarily and economically.
But only in retrospect. It took me years to finally understand what happened in Chile 9/11/73. My "go to" defense before that was "The USA would never do that." But once I finally recognized it, I saw the same crime popping up over and over and over again.
Many still don't recognize the Maidan Coup as a coup fomented by Victoria Nuland. They may watch the video, but they don't have any understanding of what it means. That is why so many are foolishly posting Ukraine flags. They have no idea what happened. They're still living in the "USA would never do that" dream.
"Woke" is so overused now as to being useless. Telling them to "wake up" is as useless as showing them the evil of the Empire. They just cannot see it. Not that they refuse to see it, but they CAN NOT see it.
It is a kind of "Stockholm Syndrome". I was afflicted with it. I had to cure myself. I think it was the movie "Missing" that was the trigger for me.
For sure, no one could yell loud enough to get through.
So, any ideas?
Yes, lots and lots of ideas ;-) Ask Jack, who was complaining I'm too prolific.
Missing was such a powerful movie. And I think you already saw my post on Victoria Nuland, but I'll link it at the bottom. The question you raise is one that keeps coming up, and I've been thinking a lot about. I completely agree with you that it's not that people are unwilling, they're unable. It means calling everything you think you know into question. And I'm still finding my own blind spots.
I'm going to make a new video on your question called We Need to Agree to Agree. I'll post a note when it's up.
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/victoria-nuland-is-dolores-umbridge
Hypocritical means thinking something and saying another
"Biden will be courting a tyrannical war criminal whose country has no freedom or democracy." Geez, no need to generate CO2 with all that flying, Joe. Far simpler to look into a mirror while holding up a map of the US.
the Kasshoggi murder was done in the full knowledge that it would pass muster in the US and West generally, because their records don't bear close scrutiny either: Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Iraq, Julian Assange and Belmarsh, and so many more are all about torture and killing, some en masse. There are pictures of George Bush senior literally grovelling to the Saudis: it's called "honour among thieves". Or something.
As an American (or am I a USAian, man this ID stuff gets so complicated) I really want the USA to be the "good guys", but at the same time, I can't really point to any time in history that the USA really was the "good guys".
I have to go back to WWII and the US efforts to win against the Axis. But then it want until June of 1944 that the US finally landed on Normandy. It was Russia that won the war against Nazi Germany. (I have to ignore the war in the Pacific at the moment because that gets really complicated. Well, except for the fact that there was no reason to drop Nukes on Japan. None. Period.)
I want to think of myself as a good person. I want to think of myself as an American. It is becoming clearer every day that I can't be both.
Who remembers that old SteppinWolf song? "America where are you now don't you care about your sons and daughters. Don't you know we need you know we can't fight alone against the monster".
It seems that "America" never really existed. It was only a fantasy, like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.
Biden is like the Emperor with no clothes. He's surrounded by sycophants who tell him how amazing he is so they can go to the Kennedy center and watch remakes of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. But there is truly no "there, there"
Same thing with Obama, but he was a "magic man" who was able to spin the right tale and make us "believe". It is only in retrospect that we can see what a con-artist he really was. He was the "HOPE" dammit. The savior from the previous decades of Republican corruption, malfeasance, and war.
I'm an American. I was stupid and naive. It took me decades to finally realize who really controls our nation. Others have tried to tell me -- OWS comes to mind -- but while I wished them success, I had no understanding of the consequences of their failure.
Well, now I see that it is too late. The American Century is about to collapse. It isn't like i want Russia to win, but it does appear that it will be inevitable. I cannot in good conscience encourage anyone to fight for the "Empire".
Biden is just a face. He's not the Oligarchy. Kind of funny though, I can easily see the Oligarchy recognizing Biden's breakdown and scrambling to do "something" about it. Maybe like they did with JFK.
Mention of Steppenwolf's song brings back memories when I started to realize America--I use US for the government in my writings--was indeed a monster that needed slaying. The following year('71, at 17 years old) a fellow modeler was sent home in a flag draped coffin from the 'Nam. Monster indeed. I've been a staunch pacifist ever since. I quit flying model airplanes shortly after that as well. They just weren't fun any longer.
It's sad and disheartening to know what really happens once the curtain is lifted.
Outstanding piece!!! It amazes me that the Brzezinski-ites are still running D.C. The Eurasian strategy is completely untenable.
The EU is now certainly destined to collapse. See stories about EU getting Russian oil--via India's oil tankers which adds about 25% to its cost--just so they can be in compliance with the Russian oil embargo. Euro trash in explanation. Absurd.
Perhaps NATO as well.
The United States of America is ruled by Harkonens.
Yes, I saw that as I read Dune.
It's not just the government. The press is equally complicit. Every day we see "journalists" talking to poor Ukrainian refugees and sometimes even visiting bombed out towns and villages. Why don't we see these same "journalists" visit a god forsaken Yemeni village with fly covered human skeleton babies? Is it just unalloyed racism that a dying Arab is not as important as a displaced Ukrainian? Is it because we are supporting the war in Yemen? The hypocrisy is sickening. You are correct, human rights, freedom and democracy have absolutely nothing to do with who we support and who we try and destroy.
Amazing as always Caitlin 🤩🤩🤩🤩
Wow. So true. I have more respect for the person who admits they are selfish and greedy than the person who pretends they are selfless and generous while their actions totally speak otherwise. More and more countries are becoming all too aware of the US empire's hypocrisy (or rather complete alignment with its true values of domination, control, and power over).
The ironic hypocrisy of US "policy" still at certain times continues to astonish me....Astonishing in that normal citizens are so brainwashed by incomprehensible bleating by corporate(MSM) media that they fail to actually look, with their own two eyes, at the facts. Ukraine is a great example. I get the Washington Post whose demonization of Russian president Vladimir Putin has their readers seeing Putin as a monster. They fail to mention why he's de-Nazifying Ukraine as neutralizing their army. It's like 4th grade when the "bad guys" are easy to see. Ya know, the ones terrorizing the little tykes at the sandbox. Except here the "bad guy" Nazis are never mentioned in their control of Ukraine. Just that bully Putin is"bad" without further analysis.
They also fail to mention that peace could be has if Ukrainian president Zelensky would just get rid of the Nazis that the US installed as control at Russia's border. Of course that would mean throwing the US and EU goons out of his domain. The US "obviously" doesn't want peace. Making war materiel is its(US's) bread and butter and what better than to poke Russia with a big stick, nuclear armed Russia at that. It is amazing that we're here at all. May reason somehow blanket these morons, all the way around. Peace,--so simple a concept that a child intrinsically knows this at a very early age--The Ol' Hippy
My best friend calls me an authoritarian groupie-I must confess I find both VVP and MBS quite hot. I do hope MBS tells Biden to shove it.
Do you think he's into that? And is Biden up to it?
Seriously not - on both ends. Great question though.
I really like that @caitoz is writing shorter, tighter pieces. At least, they seem that way. Read everything you write.
"US government's intimacy with Saudi Arabia undermines American values"
I read that at first as "underlines", and it makes perfect sense that way.
The US is a festering boil on the world's bum. Biden and his gang are the pus in that boil.
Another insidious problem with the blatant US hypocrisy is not only the lack of morality - but the deteriorating US credibility and reliability, which will, and has eroded the US's capability of negotiating any kind of believable diplomatic negotiations now or in the future. Which then leads to an increasing reliance on brute force, lying, cheating and violence to get its way - like any typical abuser in life.