America's entire prosperity is built on exploiting unipolar privilege. The real domestic economy - flattered by the unique circumstances after WW2 - has been systemically hollowed out by a rapacious financial elite. Its working class, brutalized by rentier capitalism, is an increasingly underskilled, unhealthy, unproductive parody of New Deal labor.
The natural realignment America should've begun in 1971 - when it came off the gold-standard in response to the shift from surplus to deficit economy - was sidestepped by the genius of Paul Volcker and his precocious system of dollarization - reserve currency surplus recycling - undergirded by an unparalleled militarized foreign policy forcing American business imperialism on the world.
Capitalism never knows when to moderate its greed. Rather than use the Volcker Doctrine to welcome and adjust naturally to the inevitable rise of near-peers on favorable terms, America chose to let itself become irrevocably addicted to decades of "free lunch" money provided by Volcker's post-gold dollar reserve currency hegemony: weaponizing reserve currency deficit, drawing in trillions of dollars from surplus countries, recycling them to Congress for profligate domestic spending on defense, bank liquidity, biotech, bailouts, social security, military industrial investment, mass media, think tanks, corporate nepotism, propaganda, etc. Who cares about the American worker when you have a license to profit from the entire world's labor?
Neocons and neoliberals - Democrat and Republican alike - know the economics. They know deindustrialized financialized America has been propped up by the decades of top-down spending. They know if the "free lunch" ends America will rapidly collapse in catastrophic Max Max style. The politicians and the deep state know it's too late to change course.
Dedollarization would equal disaster. Dedollarization is the existential threat to America's future regardless which countries make it happen. We're riding the "full spectrum dominance" runaway train to the end of the line. No politician is going to risk their life trying to pump the brakes. What else can you expect?
I would not categorize "Social Security" as free lunch. Working Americans pay into the fund their entire lives, and it was during the administration of Ronald Reagan, predicting the need for increased funding for future Americans the Social Security taxation rate was increased further to 12.4% - which was more than sufficient to cover the retirement of the Baby Boomer generation.
The "free lunch" by far is not "Social Security" - but the "free lunch" of the obscenely wealthy increasingly having their taxes, including corporate taxes reduced enormously (compared say to the Eisenhower era of progressive taxation). The "free lunch" is the absurd amount of US dollars diverted into the Military Industrial Complex while just recently, the actual free lunch school program for American children - started under Eisenhower because he saw the number of obvious malnutritioned Americans being conscripted into the armies for WWII (later institutionalized under Truman as the "National School Lunch Program".) - that "free lunch program" has been cancelled.
That the priorities of this country are now so much into the toilet -instead of the actual "free lunch" program which helped reduced American poverty for decades and kept American children from growing up with malnutrition - we have a murderous proxy war in Ukraine - a war the US military neurotic know-it-all assholes running this country obviously provoked - where we now are pouring billions of Americans dollars and free American weaponry into, resulting (in the end) simply in 10s of thousands if not 100s of thousands of dead or maimed for life human beings and huge amounts of destruction of the Ukranian land - and could literally escalate into a conflagration the likes none of us have ever seen before (I'm still waiting for the first radioactive reports from either a nuclear reactor targeted with missiles, or a dirty bomb set off) - you want to talk about "free lunch" ... Social Security is literally one of the few things that ordinary Americans have actually paid for directly through their own paychecks. Everything else is the grand robbery of our neurotic, filthy rich ruling class that have plundered the wealth of this country into oblivion.
Contrast that with the estimated $21 trillion pissed away on Iraq, Nam and Afghanistan, ~none of which was ever audited, ( Pentagon refuses to supply auditors with the data) , much less voted on by the public.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union it would have been fish in a barrel to lead on nuclear disarmament. But nooo.
People ask how to define a failed country,
Here’s a start.
Instead of eliminating world hunger, instead of leading nuclear disarmament, and instead of taking care of outrageous domestic inequities, a failed country places amoral unprincipled greed-based invasion of defenceless countries along with arms sales at the top of their agenda. The time will come when it will be asked how a putative democracy spent 60x more on engorging their own ticks and parasites instead of wiping out world hunger.
Damn straight! Just think how $60Billion sent to our Military Industrial Complex (via Ukrie Nazis) could have helped with some of our issues at home. The USG is the most criminal and corrupt on the planet at this time (indeed, throughout my lifetime). I am an Army vet, so I don't want to hear from all the lurking "patriotic" psychopaths. Yes, the Amerikan people have been looted continually by their own gummint.
Vote Democrat, vote Republican... The results are always the same. They will not stop until we are in a hot war with those who do not accept the yoke of Amerikan Empire.
I admire the Russians trying to take out their neighboring Nazis, but it will avail them nothing as long as our ruling fascists can continue to pursue world domination. Our Ruling Psychopathy cares nothing - NADA - Zippo - about its own citizens, much less those Humans in vassal states and the rest of the planet. Sad.
Your vet status conveys more cred than I could dream of but …My suggested term is the Kangaroo Kakistocracy of Korruptistan, and it even has a convenient acronym. Why not reuse it?
“Free lunch” is also a term economist Michael Hudson uses in his work on super-capitalism to illustrate the extremities of exploitation that the US goes to. It’s a phrase that “explains how American imperialism has created a global free lunch, where the US makes foreign countries pay for its wars, and even their own military occupation.” https://michael-hudson.com/2020/04/the-hard-fist-of-american-imperialism/
"Free Lunch" reminds me of how we're bringing "democracy" and "freedom" to the countries we invade and slaughter with drones and proxy funded terrorists. Or renaming our nuclear missiles as "peacemakers".
You got to hand it to the propagandists, they're good with the words. Such convenient words like "enhanced interrogation" ... "freedom fighters" ... "free lunch" ...
Thank you for zeroing in on this detail of Reese's comment.
Even without the excessive hikes of SS taxes during the Reagan administration (pushed through a Democratic Congress) to create a slush fund to fund imperialism, SS was merely the continuation of a million years of loving transfer of caring funds from younger, obviously "productive" cadres to elders no longer capable of physical labor but valued for their wisdom and previous investments in the young.
Originally, SS was the transformation of such human, familial relationships to more abstract capitalist concepts. But the wealthy corrupted that transformation, through those FICA increases and restrictions on where the Trust Fund could invest, to one that was apparently bankrupt in capitalist terms, ignoring the original humanistic reasons for the support of the elderly and infirm. Now that the Trust Fund needs to call in the debts to provide for the elderly through 2035 when it will be depleted, the financial elites don't wish to repay those debts; they prefer to default or avoid them through eldercide. Hence, the seeding of nursing homes with active Covid-19 patients in early in 2020 and the later priority on vaccinating the elderly.
But the machine doesn't know where to stop and pushed the vaccine for younger, productive workers and even children.
The corruption made Social Security into a slush fund. I believe originally SS maintained a financial lockbox on its fund? Correct??
Not sure about the seeding of Covid-19. Seems a stretch for me, to believe it was all a conspiracy- given just how widespread the disease spread worldwide. The bigger crime is how American leadership handled Covid-19 here in the states, (for me) clearly, how much the US values human life is descending quickly. Profits now are more important than human life - as ordinary American's standard of living plummets through gross corporate/wallstreet exploitation - such as what we're all experiencing at the oil pump.
SS was originally a pay-go system. Anything in the trust fund was very short term, almost accidental. FICA contributions from those currently working barely covered the payments to recipients. There was a lot of "worry" that when baby boomers started retiring, the burden would be too great for younger generations, so FICA was raised to build up the trust fund, creating a cushion that would allow the system to continue paying benefits without increasing FICA payments excessively. So the trust fund started growing, but by law it can only invest in government bonds, so it became the funding source for a large portion of the federal deficit.
Regarding "seeding" of nursing homes, several governors encouraged hospitals to discharge older patients in order to "save space" for younger patients deemed more important to treat due to their youth. Those same governors ordered nursing homes to accept those discharged patients. You may criticize me for attributing the motivation for this to a calculated program to save money for SS, but when a series of errors all lead in the same direction, including protocols dictated by CMS for the treatment of Medicare patients, it does tend to make one look in that direction. There were even accusations of DNRs placed on patients arbitrarily and not requested by the patient or family, and the misuse of sedatives.
Yes, Social Security was a type of trust fund, that directly was taken out of the paychecks of the majority of working Americans. It was a fund that was only to be used for the purpose of helping Americans not be homeless, poverty stricken seniors in their old age. And it worked and still works except as you say, the corruption in the US govt (both Republican and Democrat) led to the Social Security being used as a "slush fund". By the way, it is the Republicans whom whenever in office, have always created the most massive amounts of deficit spending - while at the same time cutting taxes on the most wealthy. The Democrats have played the same game with the American people. I believe there was some legal dickering with the Social Security fund - so that it could be raided as it has been now for the last few decades. But the big lie is that Social Security itself is the problem and can't pay for itself - when the problem is corruption and the use of the funds for other government bullshit - like more money to by weapons to fund the 2 trillion dollar Afghanistan war (which by the way, we didn't win.)
I'm not going to get into debating over Covid-19. At this point it's just beating a dead horse. Plenty of countries handled the awful virus in different ways, and came out with different results - far different from the estimated million Americans who died with Covid-19.
The United States government is a corrupt government. Both parties are corrupt. For every corrupt politician in Washington D.C., there are something like 16 lobbyists paid for by corporate America and the MIC and Big Pharma and Big Oil. I believe Princeton put out a study a few years ago, showing the evidence that the US is no longer a democracy - the study used data from over 1,800 policy initiatives, between 1981 to 2002 - demonstrating that whatever policies were enacted into law, the majority were not the will of the "American People" but that of corporate and oligarchic interests.
This corruption seems like a dead end road right now to me. And Americans are convinced by propaganda that the problem is "government" itself, when the actual problem is the corruption of government by out-of-control monied interests who have turned the experiment of democracy into an oligarchy run by rich sociopaths who want to privatize Social Security to make themselves richer.
If you want further clairvoyance and haven’t seen it, check out the American scores on OECD’s PISA assessments.
In these systematic measures of adolescent (15 yo) educational attainment of 100 countries, China whips the US like a rented mule, indeed by as much as the US outscores Kazakhstan in science and math Essential reading for those who dream the US will outcompete China.
It won't likely be educational competition that brings China down, but their unbridled acceptance of capitalist corruption. It's already starting (cf banking/real estate collapse currently playing out). Personally I think it's likely they'll recover soon, or not at all.
You can be sure it won’t be educational competition. They’ve been at the top for some time and show no signs of flagging. I agree about the threat of capitalism. But note how the government steps in, to whack companies that get out of control. And in a way inconceivable in the greedfesting jamboree that the US has become.
Anyone else find it odd that brownie points are to be had by the Biden administration over "NATO expansion" happening and they omit BRICS expansion altogether?
BRICS is backed by the most competent militaries in the world. Scott Ritter points out how Russia is defeating the most competent, best trained military in Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6T4yRa52Tg&t=6s. By implication, NATO can not defeat Russia by itself, let alone in combination with China and Iran. The Empire is finished. We're just waiting for Kate Smith to sing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmfeNq5x5aQ
I did not say BRICS is a military alliance, and I surely did not say Russia, China or Iran are aggressors much less other BRICS members. Don't insert words into my posts.
Your post was in response to mine, which only said that BRICS is not a military alliance, which post in turn was made to someone attempting to compare NATO to BRICS.
As you indicate, BRICS and NATO are entirely different things, both as to matters of forma and of function.
Thank you for the update on Henry. John Mearschiemer’s warnings about Ukraine were ignored and he was spot on that our involvement would cause Russia to strike back and he was right. His estimate of what’s next is terrible regardless of who wins Ukraine. I care about everyone but accept the fact that with 9 billion worrying about everyone would make life miserable. Ukrainians are fucked just line Iraqis, Afghans, Vietnamese who’s dead we couldn’t be bothered counting. The delusion created by power is absolute, just ask Baghdad Bob or Joe Biden.
Yes it’s the one I referred to. Prof Mearscheimer should be speaking to a stadium full of enlightened believers who are then asked to debate why his wisdom should be discounted. The size of his crowd was very small so the video is priceless.
I listened to Mearsheimer's famous lecture from several years ago. What did he recently say, though, about "what's next regardless of who wins Ukraine"?
Since the beginning of this mess I have been significantly more worried about the U.S. (specifically the Washington neo-con/neo-liberal foreign policy blob) starting WW3 than about Russia or China. My fears have only increased watching its increasingly irrational, incompetent and desperate performance. I'll even go so far as to say I'm much more worried with Biden and the establishment Democrats and Republicans now in charge than I was with Trump -- and I am no fan of Trump. Or of Kissinger. To the extent that Obama is the hidden hand behind Biden and the current Democratic establishment, my disillusionment with Obama is now complete.
It's not just the possibility of "all-out-war" of a nuclear missile exchange, but the continued local escalation as either side (Russia or Ukranians) become more desperate while thousands continue to die. Then what will the losing side do? Ukranians could easily target with missiles a nuclear reactor - or produce a dirty radioactive bomb. What will their European neighbors do then when the radioactivity drifts over their own countries?
The lunacy of the US and Western militarists is the belief they can control a modern war in Ukraine, and that this war cannot escalate further. :(
"Ukranians could easily target with missiles" - they are targeting it now. It's a question of when they make it through the defense which is not 100% bulletproof.
There is talk about shutting the station down. Which would be another win for the west in continuing to demonize Russia. Shutting down would still not make it safe as the power is required now to maintain it in such condition. If that power source is destroyed then it's another Fukushima.
The UN is in the pocket of the US and stalls the deployment of IAEA team which would make it unequivocal as to who's shelling it. The US doesn't care as most of the damage will be in Europe. It's the Europeans who have gone entirely mad in allowing the possibility. The US is just cynically destroying Europe for its own gain. Wouldn't be the first time to prove the Europe is stupid.
...psychiatrists, describe narcissist psychopaths and on the end conclusion : no cure, go away and don't come back!....here ''little'' problem, Washington does not leave anyone alone, especially friends!....
I don't believe majority nowadays feel they're helpless. More like they're mindless. Hence my previous flippant response - we are NOT legion. We're tiny.
You might be right. But I find it almost impossible to believe, and maybe I just don't want to -
that people will take the kind of shit being handed out today without murmur: impossible gas prices, very high food prices, impossible home prices that actually enslave you for 25, 30 years, and rent prices no one can afford in any big city because of buyers of multiple homes . And so much more. To be human is to protest what is inhuman.
An AWFUL lot of US bought into the various große Lüge: "it's OVER," Ukraine, Russia-Russia-Russia, WMD... US media might be by, for about & ONLY from a 0.01% perspective, but how many of your coworkers, families & friends question what they're told, we believe? We're all conditioned from birth to BUY commodified horseshit that has us ALL racing towards run-away AGW, thermonuclear war and an authoritarian oilgarchy; where "just LIVE with it!" covers for "Fuck you, PAY me" as offer, we can't refuse?
Everything is enabled by the Federal Reserve and their associated central banks. No government can do these insane things without being financed by the central banks. The fingers have to be pointed at the central banks particularly the Federal reserve.
Of course the "central" banks aren't controlled by our governments, they're controlled by the international mega-banks and insurance corporations like CitiCorp and SwissRE. I'm quite sure the head of the US Federal Reserve is much more interested in what Jamie Dimon had for lunch than whether the majority of US citizens can even afford to eat lunch.
Scaring Ol' Henry K., the biggest mass murderer in the last 50 years? What the fuck did I miss? It's remarkable that he's still alive let alone discussing world events. Maybe he's learned something. Who am I kidding? We are in a world of hurt and H.K. isn't helping, though he may have some insight on what's wrong in the world. May we all escape this dysphoria, really. Peace, All
Milosovic's crimes pale when compared to those of Henry Kissinger. And yes, any examination of the effects of a Kissinger let loose on such places as Cambodia, the example mentioned, show that his level of mental competence must have diminished greatly. Convenient too. Perhaps for those readers who are not too familiar on the treatment of a lovely little South East Asian country after Kissinger and his policies have had their way, unrestricted by any laws and covered up for decades by the corrupt news media.
Read up on the subject. You won't believe what an unrestrictive report on that crime will show you
But it doesn't stop there. The assassination of the President of Chile and the installing of a criminal in his pace. Pinochet. The list goes on. The best examples of US criminality in my lifetime.
Never examined, no prosecutions and the saddest thing is when he passes on it will be all big brass bands and accolades. An American hero.
As they wash his Jewish body and dress him in a tachrichim I hope someone in attendance reminds others of how easy it is to fool the American people for decades until in the end the lies become truths.
If you asked me in 2001 if I would believe that dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger would be voices of reason in 2022 I would of called you crazy. But here we are....
Blood soaked swamp monster indirectly admits the error of his mad dog phase. Like they all do, if they live long enough. Even the hideous Wolfowitz. Why is the US so uneducable?
Thank you very much for exposing, in such a clear way, this sinister and hypocritical character.
I usually don't like to use foul language in my comments and I'm not sure that in this case they are... but we are dealing with a real DOG of the US empire.
If we had to pay with one second of our life, for the damage we do to a person / community / country in this world, for this monster the result would have been not to have been born!
Regardless of how old they are, these scum, will never...ever, have the slightest awareness of the monumental evil they have done, throughout their lives.
Congratulations and greetings to all participants!
I seem to recall Kissinger, however nefarious, being a voice of caution long, long ago, his general theme being that the US could not expect to continue in the advantageous position it acquired by luck in 1945 by being the last man standing in the great shootouts of 1914-1945. His solution for the US was to retire from this position slowly and carefully so as to preserve its advantages for as long as possible. For example, a wise foreign policy would be to try to keep Russia and China separate from one another, but not too hostile to one another (because one might win and become a formidable adversary). This policy seemed to relate to the "China card", which was abandoned I believe during the Clinton-Obama presidencies because the US was supposed to have "won the Cold War." As I wrote elsewhere, there are smart sociopaths and dumb ones and really crazy ones, and our current great leaders seem to be in the third category.
I will always be grateful to Caitlin Johnstone for how clearly she articulates how propaganda works. Of course, there are problems with her work. I'll just mention a few:
* Non-falsifiable fallacy of reasoning: In Caitlin's mind, every major problem in the world has one source. The idea that another mass murdering regime, the CCP, might have included Mao (murderer of 70+ million) and 400 million sex-selected abortions, is irrelevant to her.
* She ignores the WEF.
* She doesn't exactly understand that Kissinger was part of the Nixon administration, which did a lot of bad things in the context of the Cold War, but the Nixon administration withdrew 95% of the American troops from Vietnam. Nixon wanted "peace with honor." We didn't get peace or honor, but after we left, the Vietnamese govt. set up death camps, and killed another 166,000 Vietnamese. So, no angels.
I am essentially positing a world where there are MANY mass murdering psychopaths who conflict with each other. Caitlin does not see this, or thinks the U.S. is so far worse than, say, Mao's China or the current Chinese band of criminals, who appear to have released a bioweapon into the world in tandem with parts of the U.S. (Mr. Fauci, etc.).
But that's mostly fine. I understand what she's aggravated by, and I share a lot of the same aggravations. I'd like to see the U.S. stop supporting Zelensky, and stoking that proxy war against Russia. And I got really sick of all of our censorship in this country. You can't discuss:
The legitimacy of the 2020 election:
The deadly vax;
The uselessness of almost all masks;
The garbage government schools;
BLM vs. ALM;
And many other topics where they'll tell us what to think, and all dissent gets crushed. People are losing their jobs for trying to have freedom of speech. This is evil.
Caitlin does a great service to humanity, but she leaves quite a bit out. The CCP is crushing the Chinese people. The WEF is evil. The U.S. shouldn't be giving Ukraine weapons. The world is complex.
I don't expect to change anyone's mind, and I will not respond to negative comments that imply contempt and potentially violence.
The thing about Caitlin is she allows a free discussion of her views on her own substack here (as long as it isn't egregiously trollish behavior I imagine.)
Which means comments like yours are allowed. Unlike what the US now has of state sponsored censorship/propaganda by proxy via twitter, youtube and corporate media. By the way, Caitlin is doing quite a service by pointing out the United States has become the very thing it claims it is fighting - which guys like you continue to play down.
At least here Tim WW: you actually have the freedom to speak your view. For how long, who knows. The DoD/CIA run US government may start using the "espionage act" to imprison anyone who doesn't align with the government/deep state official political lines. We've already seen the start of this with Assange, Snowden - and even Trump recently (I'm no fan of Trump, but can recognize an obvious political hit job.)
So enjoy your freedom to disagree as long as you can. Because the walls are closing in quickly. And it isn't because of "China" or "Russia" or "Al Qaeda" in Syria.
I think a few of you may misunderstand my POV. I think Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, and Biden--especially Biden--are puppets of truly evil people. I don't think 90% of America's wars, or more since 1990 are even remotely justifiable. But that's okay--I don't need everyone to understand what I am saying, and I also welcome attempts to refine my thinking.
The important thing is: I support peace, and I dislike lies and secrecy, and I especially dislike propaganda. I also dislike the fallacy of the non-falsifiable theory. Non-falsifiable theories got us to accept shutting down the world, the proxy war against Russia, the poisonous vaccine, masks, all the lies about something that happened in 2020 which I don't dare mention, and massive election frauds, probably in multiple nations.
I am no fan of monopolies, whether they come from Rockefeller, Bezos, the WEF, or any totalizing state like the Nazis or Stalinist Russia. I firmly believe we are all a lot less free than we think, and some of us don't think we are even a little bit free.
Johnstone gets people thinking, and that is why I like her. But if any of you are just going to buy into another rigid ideology, I think you are missing what's best about her writing. I can like Caitlin Johnstone without buying some acceptance of the CCP.
I think Caitlin is right to question the narrative regarding China. After all, the people who are telling you that the Chinese government is bad are the same people who are waging a proxy war with Russia.
I am quite sure that the Chinese government is not perfect. Far from it. And the same applies to the government of Russia.
But neither China nor Russia dominate the globe militarily in the same way the US does. Neither China nor Russia have military bases all over the globe. Neither China nor Russia spend anything like as much on the military and weapons as the US does.
What you say may have some merit but let's not forget that Mao's China was preceded by toxic, exploitative by European and American imperialist, colonialist powers and the Japanese Empire that emerged in response to European and American imperialism.
The Vietnam War and the issues that followed emerged out of a struggle of the Vietnamese people to get rid of the French imperial domination once it was "Liberated" from German/Japanese imperial competition following WWII.
Moreover there is little that Caitlin can do to influence any of the policies of Foreign countries that don't even pretend to be democratic. She and her readers have a much better chance of influencing the policies and practices of their own western governments that do purport to be democratic.
There may well be governments of regions in the world that behave heinously who have never been touched by western imperialism - though I can't think of any - but would it not be a good idea to first ensure that one's own country's policies and practices are serving the best interests of humanity before one sets out to do a major intervention somewhere else - even though these interventions are usually, primarily intended to advance the interests (corporate) of the nation (the U.S.) that intervenes.
I had a friend who was the child of Methodist missionaries in western China before WWII. He said that in their area 3 million people were allowed to starve to death in a single year, while China was still exporting rice to India, the US, and Japan. The problem was that it was more profitable to export it than to send it to feed starving peasants. Mao may have been a vile person but he was still an order of magnitude better than the warlords he replaced.
We ought to be far more worried about the US right now (the enemy from within) then Mao or China. Yes, China does bad things (and has done bad things) which Caitlin has stated she is aware of - several times in many of her essays.
Her point is, we need to be aware of what the United States is doing - that this isn't a good guy, bad guy story. And that neither the Republican or the Democratic party are the good guys.
She writes constantly about how we need to wake up to the lies we are being told by our own US government. And the insidious corporate sponsored propaganda propagated by the CIA/deep state on our media platforms.
It isn't Mao who we need to worry about right now.
it might be an anxiety that Russia wasn’t destroyed yet in his lifetime as he seriously wished for when he stated back in 2015 “we should kill Russia” . This psychopath so called “statesman” was behind every tragedy in the World from the seventies coming!! His fingerprints are in Cyprus division, most of the wars in the Middle East, south East Asia, central and South America and you name it! Now that he could only witness Russia’s determination, he started blaming his own making US foreign policy!! What a scumbag!!
The Western powers have forced Russia and China to cooperate with each other. What would happen now if they jointly start doing things like what US has done in Iraq?
When hawkishness endangers the hawk, in fact ensures the hawk's demise, it's a whole different game. Nuclear brinkmanship has brought us to the edge many times before this, especially accident-wise. But this new kind of cavalier, front-on insanity's a little different. It is comparable to the frog that doesn't realize it's headed inexorably towards the boiling point - until it's dead.
America's entire prosperity is built on exploiting unipolar privilege. The real domestic economy - flattered by the unique circumstances after WW2 - has been systemically hollowed out by a rapacious financial elite. Its working class, brutalized by rentier capitalism, is an increasingly underskilled, unhealthy, unproductive parody of New Deal labor.
The natural realignment America should've begun in 1971 - when it came off the gold-standard in response to the shift from surplus to deficit economy - was sidestepped by the genius of Paul Volcker and his precocious system of dollarization - reserve currency surplus recycling - undergirded by an unparalleled militarized foreign policy forcing American business imperialism on the world.
Capitalism never knows when to moderate its greed. Rather than use the Volcker Doctrine to welcome and adjust naturally to the inevitable rise of near-peers on favorable terms, America chose to let itself become irrevocably addicted to decades of "free lunch" money provided by Volcker's post-gold dollar reserve currency hegemony: weaponizing reserve currency deficit, drawing in trillions of dollars from surplus countries, recycling them to Congress for profligate domestic spending on defense, bank liquidity, biotech, bailouts, social security, military industrial investment, mass media, think tanks, corporate nepotism, propaganda, etc. Who cares about the American worker when you have a license to profit from the entire world's labor?
Neocons and neoliberals - Democrat and Republican alike - know the economics. They know deindustrialized financialized America has been propped up by the decades of top-down spending. They know if the "free lunch" ends America will rapidly collapse in catastrophic Max Max style. The politicians and the deep state know it's too late to change course.
Dedollarization would equal disaster. Dedollarization is the existential threat to America's future regardless which countries make it happen. We're riding the "full spectrum dominance" runaway train to the end of the line. No politician is going to risk their life trying to pump the brakes. What else can you expect?
I would not categorize "Social Security" as free lunch. Working Americans pay into the fund their entire lives, and it was during the administration of Ronald Reagan, predicting the need for increased funding for future Americans the Social Security taxation rate was increased further to 12.4% - which was more than sufficient to cover the retirement of the Baby Boomer generation.
The "free lunch" by far is not "Social Security" - but the "free lunch" of the obscenely wealthy increasingly having their taxes, including corporate taxes reduced enormously (compared say to the Eisenhower era of progressive taxation). The "free lunch" is the absurd amount of US dollars diverted into the Military Industrial Complex while just recently, the actual free lunch school program for American children - started under Eisenhower because he saw the number of obvious malnutritioned Americans being conscripted into the armies for WWII (later institutionalized under Truman as the "National School Lunch Program".) - that "free lunch program" has been cancelled.
That the priorities of this country are now so much into the toilet -instead of the actual "free lunch" program which helped reduced American poverty for decades and kept American children from growing up with malnutrition - we have a murderous proxy war in Ukraine - a war the US military neurotic know-it-all assholes running this country obviously provoked - where we now are pouring billions of Americans dollars and free American weaponry into, resulting (in the end) simply in 10s of thousands if not 100s of thousands of dead or maimed for life human beings and huge amounts of destruction of the Ukranian land - and could literally escalate into a conflagration the likes none of us have ever seen before (I'm still waiting for the first radioactive reports from either a nuclear reactor targeted with missiles, or a dirty bomb set off) - you want to talk about "free lunch" ... Social Security is literally one of the few things that ordinary Americans have actually paid for directly through their own paychecks. Everything else is the grand robbery of our neurotic, filthy rich ruling class that have plundered the wealth of this country into oblivion.
Well said! For a global perspective, it has been calculated that world hunger could be eliminated by 2030 with about $350 billion. (see Guardian article https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/oct/13/ending-world-hunger-by-2030-would-cost-330bn-study-finds?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other)
Contrast that with the estimated $21 trillion pissed away on Iraq, Nam and Afghanistan, ~none of which was ever audited, ( Pentagon refuses to supply auditors with the data) , much less voted on by the public.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union it would have been fish in a barrel to lead on nuclear disarmament. But nooo.
People ask how to define a failed country,
Here’s a start.
Instead of eliminating world hunger, instead of leading nuclear disarmament, and instead of taking care of outrageous domestic inequities, a failed country places amoral unprincipled greed-based invasion of defenceless countries along with arms sales at the top of their agenda. The time will come when it will be asked how a putative democracy spent 60x more on engorging their own ticks and parasites instead of wiping out world hunger.
Damn straight! Just think how $60Billion sent to our Military Industrial Complex (via Ukrie Nazis) could have helped with some of our issues at home. The USG is the most criminal and corrupt on the planet at this time (indeed, throughout my lifetime). I am an Army vet, so I don't want to hear from all the lurking "patriotic" psychopaths. Yes, the Amerikan people have been looted continually by their own gummint.
This just in:
https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-top-headlines/us-lawmakers-visiting-taiwan-12-days-after-pelosi-visit/
Vote Democrat, vote Republican... The results are always the same. They will not stop until we are in a hot war with those who do not accept the yoke of Amerikan Empire.
I admire the Russians trying to take out their neighboring Nazis, but it will avail them nothing as long as our ruling fascists can continue to pursue world domination. Our Ruling Psychopathy cares nothing - NADA - Zippo - about its own citizens, much less those Humans in vassal states and the rest of the planet. Sad.
Your vet status conveys more cred than I could dream of but …My suggested term is the Kangaroo Kakistocracy of Korruptistan, and it even has a convenient acronym. Why not reuse it?
Yes, if nothing is learned. That surely doesn’t apply to our friend and truthspeaker Dotson.
“Free lunch” is also a term economist Michael Hudson uses in his work on super-capitalism to illustrate the extremities of exploitation that the US goes to. It’s a phrase that “explains how American imperialism has created a global free lunch, where the US makes foreign countries pay for its wars, and even their own military occupation.” https://michael-hudson.com/2020/04/the-hard-fist-of-american-imperialism/
It’s how we afford to do this society, without the free lunch one should wonder what would be cut, social programs or military spending?
"Free Lunch" reminds me of how we're bringing "democracy" and "freedom" to the countries we invade and slaughter with drones and proxy funded terrorists. Or renaming our nuclear missiles as "peacemakers".
You got to hand it to the propagandists, they're good with the words. Such convenient words like "enhanced interrogation" ... "freedom fighters" ... "free lunch" ...
Thank you for zeroing in on this detail of Reese's comment.
Even without the excessive hikes of SS taxes during the Reagan administration (pushed through a Democratic Congress) to create a slush fund to fund imperialism, SS was merely the continuation of a million years of loving transfer of caring funds from younger, obviously "productive" cadres to elders no longer capable of physical labor but valued for their wisdom and previous investments in the young.
Originally, SS was the transformation of such human, familial relationships to more abstract capitalist concepts. But the wealthy corrupted that transformation, through those FICA increases and restrictions on where the Trust Fund could invest, to one that was apparently bankrupt in capitalist terms, ignoring the original humanistic reasons for the support of the elderly and infirm. Now that the Trust Fund needs to call in the debts to provide for the elderly through 2035 when it will be depleted, the financial elites don't wish to repay those debts; they prefer to default or avoid them through eldercide. Hence, the seeding of nursing homes with active Covid-19 patients in early in 2020 and the later priority on vaccinating the elderly.
But the machine doesn't know where to stop and pushed the vaccine for younger, productive workers and even children.
Excellent summary. Thanks for posting.
The corruption made Social Security into a slush fund. I believe originally SS maintained a financial lockbox on its fund? Correct??
Not sure about the seeding of Covid-19. Seems a stretch for me, to believe it was all a conspiracy- given just how widespread the disease spread worldwide. The bigger crime is how American leadership handled Covid-19 here in the states, (for me) clearly, how much the US values human life is descending quickly. Profits now are more important than human life - as ordinary American's standard of living plummets through gross corporate/wallstreet exploitation - such as what we're all experiencing at the oil pump.
Thanks for your comment on my comment!
SS was originally a pay-go system. Anything in the trust fund was very short term, almost accidental. FICA contributions from those currently working barely covered the payments to recipients. There was a lot of "worry" that when baby boomers started retiring, the burden would be too great for younger generations, so FICA was raised to build up the trust fund, creating a cushion that would allow the system to continue paying benefits without increasing FICA payments excessively. So the trust fund started growing, but by law it can only invest in government bonds, so it became the funding source for a large portion of the federal deficit.
Regarding "seeding" of nursing homes, several governors encouraged hospitals to discharge older patients in order to "save space" for younger patients deemed more important to treat due to their youth. Those same governors ordered nursing homes to accept those discharged patients. You may criticize me for attributing the motivation for this to a calculated program to save money for SS, but when a series of errors all lead in the same direction, including protocols dictated by CMS for the treatment of Medicare patients, it does tend to make one look in that direction. There were even accusations of DNRs placed on patients arbitrarily and not requested by the patient or family, and the misuse of sedatives.
Here's a well-researched article by Rosemary Frei: https://www.globalresearch.ca/were-conditions-high-death-rates-care-homes-created-purpose/5714251
And here's one a bit over the top with rhetoric but otherwise truthful about my own governor: https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/05/81-coronavirus-deaths-mn-nursing-homes-gov-walz-daniel-greenfield/
Yes, Social Security was a type of trust fund, that directly was taken out of the paychecks of the majority of working Americans. It was a fund that was only to be used for the purpose of helping Americans not be homeless, poverty stricken seniors in their old age. And it worked and still works except as you say, the corruption in the US govt (both Republican and Democrat) led to the Social Security being used as a "slush fund". By the way, it is the Republicans whom whenever in office, have always created the most massive amounts of deficit spending - while at the same time cutting taxes on the most wealthy. The Democrats have played the same game with the American people. I believe there was some legal dickering with the Social Security fund - so that it could be raided as it has been now for the last few decades. But the big lie is that Social Security itself is the problem and can't pay for itself - when the problem is corruption and the use of the funds for other government bullshit - like more money to by weapons to fund the 2 trillion dollar Afghanistan war (which by the way, we didn't win.)
I'm not going to get into debating over Covid-19. At this point it's just beating a dead horse. Plenty of countries handled the awful virus in different ways, and came out with different results - far different from the estimated million Americans who died with Covid-19.
The United States government is a corrupt government. Both parties are corrupt. For every corrupt politician in Washington D.C., there are something like 16 lobbyists paid for by corporate America and the MIC and Big Pharma and Big Oil. I believe Princeton put out a study a few years ago, showing the evidence that the US is no longer a democracy - the study used data from over 1,800 policy initiatives, between 1981 to 2002 - demonstrating that whatever policies were enacted into law, the majority were not the will of the "American People" but that of corporate and oligarchic interests.
This corruption seems like a dead end road right now to me. And Americans are convinced by propaganda that the problem is "government" itself, when the actual problem is the corruption of government by out-of-control monied interests who have turned the experiment of democracy into an oligarchy run by rich sociopaths who want to privatize Social Security to make themselves richer.
Wish I could give you 1000 likes!! (but it won't even let me like once)
thanks
Hmmm unable to like your post
If you want further clairvoyance and haven’t seen it, check out the American scores on OECD’s PISA assessments.
In these systematic measures of adolescent (15 yo) educational attainment of 100 countries, China whips the US like a rented mule, indeed by as much as the US outscores Kazakhstan in science and math Essential reading for those who dream the US will outcompete China.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment
It won't likely be educational competition that brings China down, but their unbridled acceptance of capitalist corruption. It's already starting (cf banking/real estate collapse currently playing out). Personally I think it's likely they'll recover soon, or not at all.
You can be sure it won’t be educational competition. They’ve been at the top for some time and show no signs of flagging. I agree about the threat of capitalism. But note how the government steps in, to whack companies that get out of control. And in a way inconceivable in the greedfesting jamboree that the US has become.
Brilliant and accurate. Thanks for posting.
Anyone else find it odd that brownie points are to be had by the Biden administration over "NATO expansion" happening and they omit BRICS expansion altogether?
Let us know when the BRICS becomes a military alliance.
BRICS is backed by the most competent militaries in the world. Scott Ritter points out how Russia is defeating the most competent, best trained military in Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6T4yRa52Tg&t=6s. By implication, NATO can not defeat Russia by itself, let alone in combination with China and Iran. The Empire is finished. We're just waiting for Kate Smith to sing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmfeNq5x5aQ
Nobody is disputing that certain BRICS members have powerful militaries, or that NATO is in a de facto proxy war with Russia.
That doesn't make the BRICS a military alliance, much less a global aggressor like NATO.
I did not say BRICS is a military alliance, and I surely did not say Russia, China or Iran are aggressors much less other BRICS members. Don't insert words into my posts.
Your post was in response to mine, which only said that BRICS is not a military alliance, which post in turn was made to someone attempting to compare NATO to BRICS.
As you indicate, BRICS and NATO are entirely different things, both as to matters of forma and of function.
Thank you for the update on Henry. John Mearschiemer’s warnings about Ukraine were ignored and he was spot on that our involvement would cause Russia to strike back and he was right. His estimate of what’s next is terrible regardless of who wins Ukraine. I care about everyone but accept the fact that with 9 billion worrying about everyone would make life miserable. Ukrainians are fucked just line Iraqis, Afghans, Vietnamese who’s dead we couldn’t be bothered counting. The delusion created by power is absolute, just ask Baghdad Bob or Joe Biden.
It might be here.
https://youtu.be/qciVozNtCDM
I have it cued up for when I'm off work (soon!).
Yes it’s the one I referred to. Prof Mearscheimer should be speaking to a stadium full of enlightened believers who are then asked to debate why his wisdom should be discounted. The size of his crowd was very small so the video is priceless.
I listened to Mearsheimer's famous lecture from several years ago. What did he recently say, though, about "what's next regardless of who wins Ukraine"?
I’ll look for the recent lecture and post it once I find it.
Since the beginning of this mess I have been significantly more worried about the U.S. (specifically the Washington neo-con/neo-liberal foreign policy blob) starting WW3 than about Russia or China. My fears have only increased watching its increasingly irrational, incompetent and desperate performance. I'll even go so far as to say I'm much more worried with Biden and the establishment Democrats and Republicans now in charge than I was with Trump -- and I am no fan of Trump. Or of Kissinger. To the extent that Obama is the hidden hand behind Biden and the current Democratic establishment, my disillusionment with Obama is now complete.
It's not just the possibility of "all-out-war" of a nuclear missile exchange, but the continued local escalation as either side (Russia or Ukranians) become more desperate while thousands continue to die. Then what will the losing side do? Ukranians could easily target with missiles a nuclear reactor - or produce a dirty radioactive bomb. What will their European neighbors do then when the radioactivity drifts over their own countries?
The lunacy of the US and Western militarists is the belief they can control a modern war in Ukraine, and that this war cannot escalate further. :(
"Ukranians could easily target with missiles" - they are targeting it now. It's a question of when they make it through the defense which is not 100% bulletproof.
There is talk about shutting the station down. Which would be another win for the west in continuing to demonize Russia. Shutting down would still not make it safe as the power is required now to maintain it in such condition. If that power source is destroyed then it's another Fukushima.
The UN is in the pocket of the US and stalls the deployment of IAEA team which would make it unequivocal as to who's shelling it. The US doesn't care as most of the damage will be in Europe. It's the Europeans who have gone entirely mad in allowing the possibility. The US is just cynically destroying Europe for its own gain. Wouldn't be the first time to prove the Europe is stupid.
Latest lame statements from IAEA: https://www.iaea.org/
...psychiatrists, describe narcissist psychopaths and on the end conclusion : no cure, go away and don't come back!....here ''little'' problem, Washington does not leave anyone alone, especially friends!....
The only problem is THEM! We are legion, they are few. Incredible!
Imagine if we were few!
Doesn't seem to make any difference, whatever. If you believe you're helpless -you are.
I don't believe majority nowadays feel they're helpless. More like they're mindless. Hence my previous flippant response - we are NOT legion. We're tiny.
You might be right. But I find it almost impossible to believe, and maybe I just don't want to -
that people will take the kind of shit being handed out today without murmur: impossible gas prices, very high food prices, impossible home prices that actually enslave you for 25, 30 years, and rent prices no one can afford in any big city because of buyers of multiple homes . And so much more. To be human is to protest what is inhuman.
I try not to operate in terms of whether I believe something or not. I simply observe.
I don’t want to imagine.
John Lennon would be hurt.
An AWFUL lot of US bought into the various große Lüge: "it's OVER," Ukraine, Russia-Russia-Russia, WMD... US media might be by, for about & ONLY from a 0.01% perspective, but how many of your coworkers, families & friends question what they're told, we believe? We're all conditioned from birth to BUY commodified horseshit that has us ALL racing towards run-away AGW, thermonuclear war and an authoritarian oilgarchy; where "just LIVE with it!" covers for "Fuck you, PAY me" as offer, we can't refuse?
Everything is enabled by the Federal Reserve and their associated central banks. No government can do these insane things without being financed by the central banks. The fingers have to be pointed at the central banks particularly the Federal reserve.
Of course the "central" banks aren't controlled by our governments, they're controlled by the international mega-banks and insurance corporations like CitiCorp and SwissRE. I'm quite sure the head of the US Federal Reserve is much more interested in what Jamie Dimon had for lunch than whether the majority of US citizens can even afford to eat lunch.
Scaring Ol' Henry K., the biggest mass murderer in the last 50 years? What the fuck did I miss? It's remarkable that he's still alive let alone discussing world events. Maybe he's learned something. Who am I kidding? We are in a world of hurt and H.K. isn't helping, though he may have some insight on what's wrong in the world. May we all escape this dysphoria, really. Peace, All
Madeline Albright was a close runner up
Milosovic's crimes pale when compared to those of Henry Kissinger. And yes, any examination of the effects of a Kissinger let loose on such places as Cambodia, the example mentioned, show that his level of mental competence must have diminished greatly. Convenient too. Perhaps for those readers who are not too familiar on the treatment of a lovely little South East Asian country after Kissinger and his policies have had their way, unrestricted by any laws and covered up for decades by the corrupt news media.
Read up on the subject. You won't believe what an unrestrictive report on that crime will show you
But it doesn't stop there. The assassination of the President of Chile and the installing of a criminal in his pace. Pinochet. The list goes on. The best examples of US criminality in my lifetime.
Never examined, no prosecutions and the saddest thing is when he passes on it will be all big brass bands and accolades. An American hero.
As they wash his Jewish body and dress him in a tachrichim I hope someone in attendance reminds others of how easy it is to fool the American people for decades until in the end the lies become truths.
Such is the nature of that country today.
If you asked me in 2001 if I would believe that dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger would be voices of reason in 2022 I would of called you crazy. But here we are....
And I would have called you crazy.
Blood soaked swamp monster indirectly admits the error of his mad dog phase. Like they all do, if they live long enough. Even the hideous Wolfowitz. Why is the US so uneducable?
Re: admitting error and "Why is the US so uneducable?"
Just watched Brando in "The Ugly American" (1963) - love the closing scene with the guy Turing off the TeeVee.
Well said Caitlin, and totally 'right on'. thank you, and god bless.
Will the US and western elites' rapaciousness, greed, hypocrisy, arrogance, war crimes and deceit never end?
Will they drag the whole world into oblivion with them, if they don't get their way?
Scary times.
Excellent Caitlin,
Thank you very much for exposing, in such a clear way, this sinister and hypocritical character.
I usually don't like to use foul language in my comments and I'm not sure that in this case they are... but we are dealing with a real DOG of the US empire.
If we had to pay with one second of our life, for the damage we do to a person / community / country in this world, for this monster the result would have been not to have been born!
Regardless of how old they are, these scum, will never...ever, have the slightest awareness of the monumental evil they have done, throughout their lives.
Congratulations and greetings to all participants!
I seem to recall Kissinger, however nefarious, being a voice of caution long, long ago, his general theme being that the US could not expect to continue in the advantageous position it acquired by luck in 1945 by being the last man standing in the great shootouts of 1914-1945. His solution for the US was to retire from this position slowly and carefully so as to preserve its advantages for as long as possible. For example, a wise foreign policy would be to try to keep Russia and China separate from one another, but not too hostile to one another (because one might win and become a formidable adversary). This policy seemed to relate to the "China card", which was abandoned I believe during the Clinton-Obama presidencies because the US was supposed to have "won the Cold War." As I wrote elsewhere, there are smart sociopaths and dumb ones and really crazy ones, and our current great leaders seem to be in the third category.
I will always be grateful to Caitlin Johnstone for how clearly she articulates how propaganda works. Of course, there are problems with her work. I'll just mention a few:
* Non-falsifiable fallacy of reasoning: In Caitlin's mind, every major problem in the world has one source. The idea that another mass murdering regime, the CCP, might have included Mao (murderer of 70+ million) and 400 million sex-selected abortions, is irrelevant to her.
* She ignores the WEF.
* She doesn't exactly understand that Kissinger was part of the Nixon administration, which did a lot of bad things in the context of the Cold War, but the Nixon administration withdrew 95% of the American troops from Vietnam. Nixon wanted "peace with honor." We didn't get peace or honor, but after we left, the Vietnamese govt. set up death camps, and killed another 166,000 Vietnamese. So, no angels.
I am essentially positing a world where there are MANY mass murdering psychopaths who conflict with each other. Caitlin does not see this, or thinks the U.S. is so far worse than, say, Mao's China or the current Chinese band of criminals, who appear to have released a bioweapon into the world in tandem with parts of the U.S. (Mr. Fauci, etc.).
But that's mostly fine. I understand what she's aggravated by, and I share a lot of the same aggravations. I'd like to see the U.S. stop supporting Zelensky, and stoking that proxy war against Russia. And I got really sick of all of our censorship in this country. You can't discuss:
The legitimacy of the 2020 election:
The deadly vax;
The uselessness of almost all masks;
The garbage government schools;
BLM vs. ALM;
And many other topics where they'll tell us what to think, and all dissent gets crushed. People are losing their jobs for trying to have freedom of speech. This is evil.
Caitlin does a great service to humanity, but she leaves quite a bit out. The CCP is crushing the Chinese people. The WEF is evil. The U.S. shouldn't be giving Ukraine weapons. The world is complex.
I don't expect to change anyone's mind, and I will not respond to negative comments that imply contempt and potentially violence.
Have a good day.
The thing about Caitlin is she allows a free discussion of her views on her own substack here (as long as it isn't egregiously trollish behavior I imagine.)
Which means comments like yours are allowed. Unlike what the US now has of state sponsored censorship/propaganda by proxy via twitter, youtube and corporate media. By the way, Caitlin is doing quite a service by pointing out the United States has become the very thing it claims it is fighting - which guys like you continue to play down.
At least here Tim WW: you actually have the freedom to speak your view. For how long, who knows. The DoD/CIA run US government may start using the "espionage act" to imprison anyone who doesn't align with the government/deep state official political lines. We've already seen the start of this with Assange, Snowden - and even Trump recently (I'm no fan of Trump, but can recognize an obvious political hit job.)
So enjoy your freedom to disagree as long as you can. Because the walls are closing in quickly. And it isn't because of "China" or "Russia" or "Al Qaeda" in Syria.
I think a few of you may misunderstand my POV. I think Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, and Biden--especially Biden--are puppets of truly evil people. I don't think 90% of America's wars, or more since 1990 are even remotely justifiable. But that's okay--I don't need everyone to understand what I am saying, and I also welcome attempts to refine my thinking.
The important thing is: I support peace, and I dislike lies and secrecy, and I especially dislike propaganda. I also dislike the fallacy of the non-falsifiable theory. Non-falsifiable theories got us to accept shutting down the world, the proxy war against Russia, the poisonous vaccine, masks, all the lies about something that happened in 2020 which I don't dare mention, and massive election frauds, probably in multiple nations.
I am no fan of monopolies, whether they come from Rockefeller, Bezos, the WEF, or any totalizing state like the Nazis or Stalinist Russia. I firmly believe we are all a lot less free than we think, and some of us don't think we are even a little bit free.
Johnstone gets people thinking, and that is why I like her. But if any of you are just going to buy into another rigid ideology, I think you are missing what's best about her writing. I can like Caitlin Johnstone without buying some acceptance of the CCP.
Fair enough.
I think Caitlin is right to question the narrative regarding China. After all, the people who are telling you that the Chinese government is bad are the same people who are waging a proxy war with Russia.
I am quite sure that the Chinese government is not perfect. Far from it. And the same applies to the government of Russia.
But neither China nor Russia dominate the globe militarily in the same way the US does. Neither China nor Russia have military bases all over the globe. Neither China nor Russia spend anything like as much on the military and weapons as the US does.
What you say may have some merit but let's not forget that Mao's China was preceded by toxic, exploitative by European and American imperialist, colonialist powers and the Japanese Empire that emerged in response to European and American imperialism.
The Vietnam War and the issues that followed emerged out of a struggle of the Vietnamese people to get rid of the French imperial domination once it was "Liberated" from German/Japanese imperial competition following WWII.
Moreover there is little that Caitlin can do to influence any of the policies of Foreign countries that don't even pretend to be democratic. She and her readers have a much better chance of influencing the policies and practices of their own western governments that do purport to be democratic.
There may well be governments of regions in the world that behave heinously who have never been touched by western imperialism - though I can't think of any - but would it not be a good idea to first ensure that one's own country's policies and practices are serving the best interests of humanity before one sets out to do a major intervention somewhere else - even though these interventions are usually, primarily intended to advance the interests (corporate) of the nation (the U.S.) that intervenes.
I had a friend who was the child of Methodist missionaries in western China before WWII. He said that in their area 3 million people were allowed to starve to death in a single year, while China was still exporting rice to India, the US, and Japan. The problem was that it was more profitable to export it than to send it to feed starving peasants. Mao may have been a vile person but he was still an order of magnitude better than the warlords he replaced.
Didn't Mao starve tens of million of people?
I don't like mass murderers simply because they save 3 million people in one place so that they can kill 6+ million someplace else.
I can like Caitlin and not Mao at the same time.
We ought to be far more worried about the US right now (the enemy from within) then Mao or China. Yes, China does bad things (and has done bad things) which Caitlin has stated she is aware of - several times in many of her essays.
Her point is, we need to be aware of what the United States is doing - that this isn't a good guy, bad guy story. And that neither the Republican or the Democratic party are the good guys.
She writes constantly about how we need to wake up to the lies we are being told by our own US government. And the insidious corporate sponsored propaganda propagated by the CIA/deep state on our media platforms.
It isn't Mao who we need to worry about right now.
Mao is history.
"History would be an excellent thing, if only it were true." ~Leo Tolstoy
Well there is that.
it might be an anxiety that Russia wasn’t destroyed yet in his lifetime as he seriously wished for when he stated back in 2015 “we should kill Russia” . This psychopath so called “statesman” was behind every tragedy in the World from the seventies coming!! His fingerprints are in Cyprus division, most of the wars in the Middle East, south East Asia, central and South America and you name it! Now that he could only witness Russia’s determination, he started blaming his own making US foreign policy!! What a scumbag!!
The Western powers have forced Russia and China to cooperate with each other. What would happen now if they jointly start doing things like what US has done in Iraq?
When hawkishness endangers the hawk, in fact ensures the hawk's demise, it's a whole different game. Nuclear brinkmanship has brought us to the edge many times before this, especially accident-wise. But this new kind of cavalier, front-on insanity's a little different. It is comparable to the frog that doesn't realize it's headed inexorably towards the boiling point - until it's dead.