Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): The real symbol of the United States is not the stars and stripes, nor the bald eagle, nor the Statue of Liberty, nor even the mighty McDonald’s logo. The real symbol of the United States is the Pentagon.
I would say that the United States biggest power is its soft power. It's narrative control.
It's the power to get people around the world tonbelieve and to want to believe that the institutions in the West in general and the US in particular are basically competent. It's the ability to get Europeans to slit their own throats and gut civil liberties rather than admit to themselves that the US might not be the good guy. It's ability to get Australia to offend their biggest trading partner at your say-so, with less self-respect than a whipped dog. And unlike the dog, not a single blow need be struck.
This was the real secret of why so many Ukrainians who ought to know better went in so wholeheartedly for Maidan - after years of corruption, brutality and incompetence, they would finally get to join the club, and if hating their brothers was the price of membership, then that was a price that they would pay. It is also why they continue to soldier on, even though it is obvious that they were played for fools. Whether these institutions really are competent or not is beside the point - the perception is the thing. And that is how they are perceived.
This is also my theory as to why Russia has dithered so far in this war. It's not some master plan. Everything indicates that the war didn't start as expected, and Russia has been reactive and not proactive since then. Rather, they don't want to make war on Ukrainian people that they still see as their kinsmen. They don't want to destroy the West, even though the West openly seeks to destroy them. This is what they want to be, the club that they want to be in, even if that club will never let them be members and treats them as subhumans. That's why the western awards matter so much, why the approval of western institutions counts for far more in Russia than Russian approval counts pretty much anywhere. It's why Putin seemed genuinely hurt and shocked to learn that Minsk-2 was a sham, entered into in bad faith, not just by Ukraine, but its western guarantors, from the outset. Should have been obvious.
Russia has tried at every stage to avoid escalation, in spite of red line after red line being ignored, while the West and its Ukrainian sockpuppets are absolutely spoiling for a fight. And no, they don't fight fair.
Now, the West is destroying a lot of that good will it built up by its arbitrary and power-hungry actions, but whether that will be enough remains to be seen. Enough to say that elite circles in the West remain highly optimistic, and any dissent from the narrative is ruthlessly punished.
I would say that in the past the US had a good deal of soft power from prestige. When US soldiers entered Germany and Japan they generally made a very good impression. They were ordinary kids off the farm, not the pro soldiers we've got now. Today's training of "I gave them a good boy and they sent me back a murderer" did not yet exist.
Japan in particular was glad to get rid of their military, who had ruled the place for millenia and now brought the nation to ruin. Douglas MacArthur did a great job of rebuilding the place, making sure the money went to Japan and not to foreign contractors. DC didn't like it but Mac was extremely popular in the USA so there was nothing they could do.
That's pretty much all gone, I think, starting with Vietnam (that's what the song MacArthur Park is about) and continuing to decline to this day. Should there be any doubt of this, in a recent poll Japan chose the USA as the number one threat to world peace. Recently Mexico(!) denounced the USA. Senators replied by threatening a strike on Mexico.(!!)
So if the real soft power is gone, what have they got today? Carrot and stick. Bribes and intimidation. That's softer than bombs. That's what the Australia deal is about. If you don't believe me, bigshot John Mearsheimer says the same : if Australia didn't make the deal they'd be considered the enemy of the United States, and everybody knows what that means.
Narrative control is important to keep the rubes in line, but I believe world leaders know the score at least as well as do I. It's important to remember that most republics have a Prime Minister chosen by the party as the chief executive. Surely they know what's happening.
In a republic, the members of the legislature only need to know how to get elected. Remember Sarah Palin, who did not know why Korea had been partitioned into North and South. You can't expect these people to know anything outside of their own district. And they don't, particularly anything about other nations. If someone knows nothing, they'll believe anything.
The USA is unusual is that all the chief executive also falls into this class. All they have to know is how to get votes. I think it is quite possible this sort of person believes these fairy tales. They have an endless series of impressive experts feeding them this stuff. And if they didn't believe then they would be kept well away from any office. You already know examples of this.
Jack Kennedy was a veteran, knew how fouled up the military was and is, and had a certain amount of disregard for "the brass hats." Every president from 1945 on was a veteran until Bill Clinton. Since 1993 none of them are (unless you want to count W.) I think they have too much regard for the military, not having seen the corruption from the inside. Compare Jack Kennedy to Joe Biden -- what does that tell you?
While Russia sought to become a respected member of the West -- they joined the WTO and tried to join NATO-- that's all over now. "Never again will we trust the West for anything essential" said Foreign Minister Lavrov. As to whether Russia should have been suspicious of Minsk 2, as far as I know the West had been trustworthy when agreements were solemnly signed by heads of state (as opposed to informal agreements like "not an inch eastward" for NATO.) Well that is the kind of trick that works only once. There will be no more trust any time soon, from Russia or any other nation.
The exasperation at Putin's "tolerance" or whatever the fuck the values he wants to project is big in Russia. His and the Foreign Ministry's ineptness in dealing with the problems as they surfaced, at nipping the escalations in the bud as they were being accumulated through decades of his being at power - Medvedev too - are a source of incredible anger among regular Russians. But - and that's the bottom line - what Putin was saying was right all along and anyone would subscribe to it. The fact that not much was behind those words, that the actions did not follow them, is hurtful but will not prevent Russia as a nation to prevail in the end.
The vanity of Putin and whoever has been at power all these years - at least that's how I explain it - the fucking vanity of their having some "values" that prevent them to respond in kind to blatant western assaults - will be his legacy.
But Russia will stand as it did through all her centuries old predicaments.
1. He had a lot of rebuilding, both militarily and economically, to oversee to get Russia to the point that it could confront a large, NATO-backed country, even located next door.
2. The depraved gusto with which the US threw in to the Ukraine War is shocking, even for a cynic.
3. The insane level of hatred of Russians imbued into many Ukrainians is also shocking. That they can therefore be driven into such utterly irrational disregard for their own best interests, much less a sense of what is right and wrong, is ... well ... shocking.
I think there is value to analysis and prediction, but these are far outweighed in importance in simply seeing the people in the Donbas safe and a lasting peace in the area.
Many of those things were obvious and voiced by many at appropriate times and in appropriate places. The responses were "we have everything under control". My ass you did.
(But you'd know more specifically who knew and said what and when than I do. Like most in the US, I wasn't paying sufficient attention to what evil people were doing in my name in the region until February 2022.)
I didn't either but by sheer chance saw some footage of the Maidan revolution back then. The police carried no weapons. The rebels set a policeman on fire with a Molotov cocktail. Needless to say, if a US crowd did that the police would retaliate with machine gun fire.
Russia is absolutely riddled with Western-sympathetic "Atlanticists" who have obstructed much of Putin's efforts to break free of the West - especially the Psychopathy centered in DC and London.
No argument here. He had little if any help from the corrupt element literally all over the place there. The problem is his posture suggested he had everything under control. Turned out quite otherwise.
In a speech he more or less said that those who'd placed their assets in the West got what they deserved when said assets were seized. "Don't bother trying to get them back," he said. It would seem to me that such seizure both weakened and alienated the Russian oligarchy.
From 2000, I think Putin was focused on rooting out vestiges of western economic ownership and criminal looting. He had been a committed communist as an FSB officer when Yeltsin took him in and prepped him to succeed him. Yeltsin was bitter at the American attempts to shock an economy as fragile as Russia’s was, and he told Putin to get the country back.
Meanwhile in the midst of Russia’s “missing” decade, Yeltsin, and then Putin, had to contend with a fierce Chechen attempt to overthrow the Kremlin.
To say that Putin was overly restrained when he didn’t immediately react to ominous western antagonisms, is to charge him with knowing that the Americans were going to pivot from the Middle East, and reignite an anti-Russian posture and initiate a second Cold War. It looked like as late as 2010, the expectation for normalized relations was still credible, despite the previous NATO creep through the Balkans.
I think from Putin’s perspective, the Cold War was over, communism was dead, and the Americans had no pretext to demonize him or his country. As late as 2014, I think Putin’s biggest failing was not seeing the lengths to which the Ukrainian Nazis would go on the offensive. Also, Russia was rebuilding its military, and the Americans knew that, which was why Maidan occurred when it did.
This war in Ukraine is being sold here as Putin’s foible, but history may well see it as the beginning of the end if the American Empire. The clever Americans suckered the dumb Russian. Or did the sly Russian lure his adversary into biting off more than it can chew?
For anyone who hasn’t seen the Oliver Stone documentary on the 2014 coup, here’s a link:
For “soft power” to work, it must be backed by hard power. Otherwise it merely incites and amuses the enemy.
If soft power is narrative control, then virtually every tribe, kingdom, nation, empire, religion and ideological movement has exercised it with some success. But to sustain a narrative over time the messaging has to correlate (mostly) with reality. America’s soft power in the 20th Century once aligned relatively closely with the facts and with timeless ideals rooted in the Bill of Rights. But those were fleeting halcyon days, and what used to be a generally palatable amount of patriotic bias in messaging by American government and media has morphed into an impenetrable edifice of lies and deceit. Worse, our “soft power” leaders now believe their own shit talk.
America’s total reliance on soft power to cover for its ineffectual quasi-behind-the-scenes performance in the proxy war in Ukraine is yet another clear sign of late-stage, rapid, imperial decline. The U.S. endlessly talks smack while its "most powerful military in the world” is daily proving second-rate, not just in weaponry but also in strategy. It is becoming obvious that the U.S. has a boutique military—absurdly expensive, built for the momentary photo op on the red carpet, not for the trenches. It looks good, which is all that soft power cares about. Soft power, no matter how perfect, will not win a war.
Unfortunately, this soft power phase of imperial decline is the most dangerous, because political endgames attract the worst among us—i.e., the purely evil and their psychopathic familiars. Add nuclear weapons to the mix, and, of course, the situation becomes existential on a planetary scale.
Absurdly, it now seems our best and most rational hope is that The System collapses so fast that Joe Biden’s finger will not be guided to the red button by such soft-power operators as Antony Blinken or Victoria Nuland. You know you live in strange times when system collapse would actually solve most of the world's worst problems.
"America’s soft power in the 20th Century once aligned relatively closely with the facts and with timeless ideals rooted in the Bill of Rights. "
It did seem that way. However I recently read a quotation from U Thant, head of the United Nations at that time. He said that they US used threats even when they didn't have to. So maybe it was the same then, just done behind closed doors.
"Worse, our “soft power” leaders now believe their own shit talk."
Senator Al Franken once related a conversation he had with a minister during in an airplane journey. "The trouble with liars," said the latter, "is that after a while they begin believing their own lies." Part of this is that there isn't a Lie Central Clearinghouse. Mr. A is lying about X. Ms. B is lying about Y. They're in different departments. Why shouldn't B believe A's lies and vice versa? They are presented as truths. People are supposed to believe them, especially those in the various Departments of Lies.
And isn't strange that someone internationally known for having said "Fuck the EU" occupies such a prominent position? Don't they care how that looks? Evidently not.
Switzerland is an interesting case. I have heard the story that Switzerland’s mountainous terrain allowed it to remain “neutral” during WWII. Surely, that must have been the reason the Nazis didn’t invade, and not because Switzerland had anything to do with funding the Third Reich. So, is a financial system built on secret bank accounts—including sovereign wealth accounts—soft power? Or is currency and banking hard power? Now, the power softies in Switzerland have joined the western sanctions against Russia. And did that Swiss law pass that allowed resale of armaments by Switzerland to Ukraine? Has Swiss neutrality been neutralized? And what discussion of Swiss soft power would be complete without at least mentioning the WEF or its annual meeting in Davos.
Regarding the soft power of CERN, does it bother you at all that there is only one machine in the world capable of discovering the Higg’s Boson (which was essential to supporting the Standard Model and thereby ensuring paradigmatic capture of all physics perhaps for decades to come)? Is it truly “the scientific method” when your experiment cannot be performed anywhere else in the known world? Is controlling technology (hence also science) a form of soft power? If so, CERN certainly exemplifies soft power.
If by “soft power” you mean ideologies like pacifism or existentialism, or the power of artistic expression, or by open discourse and free speech I can be on board that. It may even be that such soft power is the only option for the most moral and wise and good among us. Of course, like all expressions of power, Empire is the master player, so “soft power” is now—at this time in history, like in most times in history—dominated by the evil among us. OTH, it is within the realm of imagination that wise and good soft power will one day win out, and that future forms of human political and economic organization will be based on wise and good soft power. We can still dream about such things…at least we can until we all get Neuralinked, after which our manipulated collective dreams may become the perfect method of domination via soft power.
Eisenhower warned in 1960 the Pentagon was the new capitol building and nobody paid attention. Washington's capitol building is a mausoleum for a one time democracy; still nobody is paying attention.
Yes, even Eisenhower ignored it. While Ike was in the WH, the CIA, with the British, orchestrated a coup in Iran in 1953, that is largely responsible for the enmity between Iran and the U.S. to this day.
In 1954, Eisenhower presided over a CIA-staged
coup in Guatemala, an action that was at the behest of the United Fruit Company whose profits were negatively impacted under the reforms of the elected president Jacobo Arbenz. Like the coup in Iran, the coup in Guatemala resulted in regime change and windfalls for U.S. oil and agriculture.
If the U.S. was ever a democracy, the end of FDR’s administration marked the end of any semblance of democracy. Money got Truman on the 1944 VP ticket, in contravention of a wide majority of voters who supported Henry Wallace, a friend and acolyte of FDR. Truman became president upon FDR’s death, and immediately set about creating the CIA and the NSA. Then he nuked a country that was already defeated and no threat, to advertise American commitment to imperial global ambitions
So 1947 can be marked as the beginning of the end of American democracy. 2027 will be the 80th anniversary of the American Empire.
John Foster Dulles was Eisenhower's Secretary of State and the godfather of US foreign as it is today. He was a very sinister character. His brother, Allan Wallace, was the first head of the CIA and just as sinister. The two brothers served simultaneously and worked closely to undercut the presidents they worked for.
To read Stephen Kinzer's book the The Dulles Brothers is to understand how America came to be in the mess it is today.
Successive President's became the dupes of high powered lobbyists, bureaucrats and ideologues, just as Biden is today.
Kinzer and a whole of other eminent American journalists and historians have recorded America's true history, but nobody reads it. The gap between the historic record and the despotic agendas of politicians and ideologues is killing America. Decisions made by crazed ideologues and advanced with endless propaganda are a great recipe for ruin. Where there is no truth, there no reality, just chaos.
Gore Vidal used to tell of his being blackballed when his work wasn’t being grossly distorted by eminent guest reviewers in The NY Times, or other publications of note. There’s a reason that honest commentary is downplayed and kept obscure.
He also told of how he and Noam Chomsky knew each other and when they had speaking engagements posters were torn down and publicity sabotaged-- they still spoke to packed halls just by word of mouth.
"PEACEFUL Satanists." Now there's a funny for ya! Their daddy is behind all the evil in the world. ALL the sex trafficking, murder, child mutilation, stealing, lying, free sexual mores...
Pentagon/Pentagram? Maybe an EMPTY cross would be better....?
Jesus Christ, who beat the devil with a big, ugly stick, said of those who lied about Him, some of the religious leaders of His day--( lying about Jesus is an old 'tradition' still practiced today)
"You are of your father, the devil, and it is your will to practice the lusts and gratify the desires [which are characteristic] of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a falsehood, he speaks what is natural to him, for he is a liar [himself] and the father of lies and of all that is false."
The USA does have a big bag of problems & hypocrisies to deal with. That said---WHY DOES MOST EVERYONE ON THE PLANET WANT TO COME HERE???? To this big ol' mess?
just askin'...
Our problems are not because of our Constitutional system. Our conflicts come out of one of the lusts/desires Jesus alluded to; the lust for power & control.
THAT is the main issue disrupting life, peace & harmony in the USA today. And the rest of the nations.
As long as mankind is self-centric & 'me centered' no financial system or form of government will work. Some one or some (coven?) group will always think they should lord it over everyone else.That comes straight out of satan itself. The devil has many people infected with the lust for money, possessions & power. That is true of far too many in US government. Our Constitutional Republic isn't the problem. Forsaking our form of government for immorality is.
What communist, fascist or socialist nation has ever been as successful as the USA?
We are declining because like Alexis de Tocqueville said “America is great because America is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
If our leaders are corrupt, and FAR TOO MANY are,
...there you have it.
Odd-funny--The USA is this big ol' giant mess...YOU say. Somewhat accurately, true enough. But remember-- immorality, fascist ideals & the 'bash the USA' to push for total govt control causes most of our mess as the lust for power & control drive those who work to change us into a communist, fascist, whatever it is one wants to call an all powerful controlling government...
After reading this, I feel like any time I use the polygon tool in Photoshop, I should never enter 5 when it asks for number of sides, at the risk of being revealed as an American, something I normally have diverse approaches for disguising. Meeting someone new, I tend to open the conversation in Italian, for example. Anything to disguise my nationality. Thanks, America, I barely recall a minuscule glimmer of childhood patriotism, but that candle got extinguished by the sheer volume of your violence toward the entire planet.
And to consider that criminals-in-command of our government struck their own Pentagon, attacked it killing more than a hundred congressional accountants and investigators trying to find $2.3 trillion missing from Pentagon records. Thanks 911, you accomplished so many things.
Richard--I always thought (IMO) that 9-11 was at least in part an inside job. I understand a lot of records were 'lost'...probably for why what you said. A larger 'tell' was bush signing the 'patriot' Act. I understand it had been written for a while BEFORE the planes exploded into the buildings.
The recent fraudulent misuse of the 'Act' to obtain warrants via false info in my mind has highlighted the 'tell'.
Not long after GWB autographed the PatAct I quit the R 'party'. I became a libertarian, quit them & am now an Independent Constitutional Conservative.
Nothing wrong with our Republic that honest upright people following the US Constitution would not fix. You know, :-), a moral people! Like our system was designed for.
Yes, the Pentagon ,because never in the history of the world has a country contributed as much to death and destruction - and always on the unarmed. The eagle is a pretty good representation of US values as well, if you concentrate on the talons.
So how intelligent, Foxy Sam, moving , even were it possible, is the solution to problems? There is no taking a stand and fighting? Were more people of your mentality we'd be overrun by fascists.
Hi Doris--White Flag, OK? I took it from your post you didn't like the USA much. Maybe I was wrong. But I see that sentiment a lot here & other threads. Thus the 'moving' comment. ;-)
OK, what do you stand & seek to fight for? I am not a fascist. That's what we now have in the Out House & current administration.
I stand for honesty in government & lost ideals like equal protection & application of the law. Low govt spending, taxing & regulation. That, as the Founders intended, we go not about the earth looking for giants to destroy. The Founders were not for invading & bossing other nations. They were not isolationist, they were for commerce, trade & travel with other nations, but warned of political alliances.
If my mentality were more widespread we would have honest officials in government, lower spending, lower taxes, less regulation, equal opportunity, morality, free markets... Basically freedom & justice for all.
We would banish equity as prescribed by the 'the woke' & go back to equality.
All the woke gibberish is another cover, like climate change, for more government control. I fight against these sordid big govt take overs & the deceptions used o steal freedom & individual power from We The People.
Since the human race will never accomplish all that when there is greed driving power hungry politicos & criminals...Oh well. That's where we are now.
What I stand for is basically the US Constitution. And the sentiment Christ taught, that we love our neighbor as our self.
I Have never been racist. I never understood it. It never made sense to me. Whoever is the best should get the post.
That's me in a nutshell. I am lotta 'nut', not much shell. ;-)
OK, good enough, And I didn't accuse you of being racist. I like Americans, and have a lot of American relatives to whom I wish the best. But the US is not a democracy: to meet that definition you have to be informed, and Americans aren't, and you have to have access to what democracy is all about: the basic necessities for a dignified and rewarding life. I ask you, if autocrats can provide this, how are they inferior? Americans don't complain about the system, even when reduced to living in cars - with children. But then, maybe they're afraid to, on record. They have to be "nice" - or don't deserve the little they get. Former students owe $5trillion, have poor or no jobs and can't possible pay this life-long debt. - with interest! Even the ancients understood that unpayable debt must be cancelled - the system is unworkable otherwise. The changes must be systemic. It's merely a matter, every four years now, to move the deck chairs around on the sinking ship. Virtually all politicians are on the take by what we can refer to as the shadow government or deep state, and/or ruled by some nutty religious concept they get assbackwards if it purports to be "Christian". There is no evidence, BTW, the Christ ever wanted to found a "church". He was a social reformer, didn't particularly like rigid rules, and didn't care much for authority as it existed- the Sadducees and Pharisees, whom he considered hypocrites. Seems to me he would approve of democratic socialism, a system that doesn't dissolve all problems, but assures that the basics for everybody, food, shelter, health care, education. And thereby
obviates things like theft, envy, control of women, and more than anything else, base materialism and materialistic values. The people of East Berlin when it was divided, had fewer material goods, but shared what they had, and valued art and literature far more than those in the west sector. They were happier. Read about it. No one should be at the mercy, pro forma, of anyone else: that is base, ignoble, backward. We have rights, not mystically, but because we demand them. And we must demand them.
We really should update the US flag. And this could be the main symbol in the middle of a a black background--a vulture/eagle perched on top of the Pentagon, dripping with blood. Sort of reminiscent of the Mexican flag.
There are 574 Native American tribes alone. Add in the Hawaiian, Samoan and the rest of the Polynesians, Mexican (Texas) and the rest of the South and central Americans, Philippians,Tiawan and so on. The united nations would have to be rebuilt to give them all seats in the assembly.
I would say that the United States biggest power is its soft power. It's narrative control.
It's the power to get people around the world tonbelieve and to want to believe that the institutions in the West in general and the US in particular are basically competent. It's the ability to get Europeans to slit their own throats and gut civil liberties rather than admit to themselves that the US might not be the good guy. It's ability to get Australia to offend their biggest trading partner at your say-so, with less self-respect than a whipped dog. And unlike the dog, not a single blow need be struck.
This was the real secret of why so many Ukrainians who ought to know better went in so wholeheartedly for Maidan - after years of corruption, brutality and incompetence, they would finally get to join the club, and if hating their brothers was the price of membership, then that was a price that they would pay. It is also why they continue to soldier on, even though it is obvious that they were played for fools. Whether these institutions really are competent or not is beside the point - the perception is the thing. And that is how they are perceived.
This is also my theory as to why Russia has dithered so far in this war. It's not some master plan. Everything indicates that the war didn't start as expected, and Russia has been reactive and not proactive since then. Rather, they don't want to make war on Ukrainian people that they still see as their kinsmen. They don't want to destroy the West, even though the West openly seeks to destroy them. This is what they want to be, the club that they want to be in, even if that club will never let them be members and treats them as subhumans. That's why the western awards matter so much, why the approval of western institutions counts for far more in Russia than Russian approval counts pretty much anywhere. It's why Putin seemed genuinely hurt and shocked to learn that Minsk-2 was a sham, entered into in bad faith, not just by Ukraine, but its western guarantors, from the outset. Should have been obvious.
Russia has tried at every stage to avoid escalation, in spite of red line after red line being ignored, while the West and its Ukrainian sockpuppets are absolutely spoiling for a fight. And no, they don't fight fair.
Now, the West is destroying a lot of that good will it built up by its arbitrary and power-hungry actions, but whether that will be enough remains to be seen. Enough to say that elite circles in the West remain highly optimistic, and any dissent from the narrative is ruthlessly punished.
I would say that in the past the US had a good deal of soft power from prestige. When US soldiers entered Germany and Japan they generally made a very good impression. They were ordinary kids off the farm, not the pro soldiers we've got now. Today's training of "I gave them a good boy and they sent me back a murderer" did not yet exist.
Japan in particular was glad to get rid of their military, who had ruled the place for millenia and now brought the nation to ruin. Douglas MacArthur did a great job of rebuilding the place, making sure the money went to Japan and not to foreign contractors. DC didn't like it but Mac was extremely popular in the USA so there was nothing they could do.
That's pretty much all gone, I think, starting with Vietnam (that's what the song MacArthur Park is about) and continuing to decline to this day. Should there be any doubt of this, in a recent poll Japan chose the USA as the number one threat to world peace. Recently Mexico(!) denounced the USA. Senators replied by threatening a strike on Mexico.(!!)
So if the real soft power is gone, what have they got today? Carrot and stick. Bribes and intimidation. That's softer than bombs. That's what the Australia deal is about. If you don't believe me, bigshot John Mearsheimer says the same : if Australia didn't make the deal they'd be considered the enemy of the United States, and everybody knows what that means.
Narrative control is important to keep the rubes in line, but I believe world leaders know the score at least as well as do I. It's important to remember that most republics have a Prime Minister chosen by the party as the chief executive. Surely they know what's happening.
In a republic, the members of the legislature only need to know how to get elected. Remember Sarah Palin, who did not know why Korea had been partitioned into North and South. You can't expect these people to know anything outside of their own district. And they don't, particularly anything about other nations. If someone knows nothing, they'll believe anything.
The USA is unusual is that all the chief executive also falls into this class. All they have to know is how to get votes. I think it is quite possible this sort of person believes these fairy tales. They have an endless series of impressive experts feeding them this stuff. And if they didn't believe then they would be kept well away from any office. You already know examples of this.
Jack Kennedy was a veteran, knew how fouled up the military was and is, and had a certain amount of disregard for "the brass hats." Every president from 1945 on was a veteran until Bill Clinton. Since 1993 none of them are (unless you want to count W.) I think they have too much regard for the military, not having seen the corruption from the inside. Compare Jack Kennedy to Joe Biden -- what does that tell you?
While Russia sought to become a respected member of the West -- they joined the WTO and tried to join NATO-- that's all over now. "Never again will we trust the West for anything essential" said Foreign Minister Lavrov. As to whether Russia should have been suspicious of Minsk 2, as far as I know the West had been trustworthy when agreements were solemnly signed by heads of state (as opposed to informal agreements like "not an inch eastward" for NATO.) Well that is the kind of trick that works only once. There will be no more trust any time soon, from Russia or any other nation.
The exasperation at Putin's "tolerance" or whatever the fuck the values he wants to project is big in Russia. His and the Foreign Ministry's ineptness in dealing with the problems as they surfaced, at nipping the escalations in the bud as they were being accumulated through decades of his being at power - Medvedev too - are a source of incredible anger among regular Russians. But - and that's the bottom line - what Putin was saying was right all along and anyone would subscribe to it. The fact that not much was behind those words, that the actions did not follow them, is hurtful but will not prevent Russia as a nation to prevail in the end.
The vanity of Putin and whoever has been at power all these years - at least that's how I explain it - the fucking vanity of their having some "values" that prevent them to respond in kind to blatant western assaults - will be his legacy.
But Russia will stand as it did through all her centuries old predicaments.
In Putin's defense:
1. He had a lot of rebuilding, both militarily and economically, to oversee to get Russia to the point that it could confront a large, NATO-backed country, even located next door.
2. The depraved gusto with which the US threw in to the Ukraine War is shocking, even for a cynic.
3. The insane level of hatred of Russians imbued into many Ukrainians is also shocking. That they can therefore be driven into such utterly irrational disregard for their own best interests, much less a sense of what is right and wrong, is ... well ... shocking.
True, but it doesn't matter. Results matter.
I agree.
I think there is value to analysis and prediction, but these are far outweighed in importance in simply seeing the people in the Donbas safe and a lasting peace in the area.
Many of those things were obvious and voiced by many at appropriate times and in appropriate places. The responses were "we have everything under control". My ass you did.
I'm sure.
(But you'd know more specifically who knew and said what and when than I do. Like most in the US, I wasn't paying sufficient attention to what evil people were doing in my name in the region until February 2022.)
I didn't either but by sheer chance saw some footage of the Maidan revolution back then. The police carried no weapons. The rebels set a policeman on fire with a Molotov cocktail. Needless to say, if a US crowd did that the police would retaliate with machine gun fire.
Typo. SB "much LESS a sense of ".
Russia is absolutely riddled with Western-sympathetic "Atlanticists" who have obstructed much of Putin's efforts to break free of the West - especially the Psychopathy centered in DC and London.
No argument here. He had little if any help from the corrupt element literally all over the place there. The problem is his posture suggested he had everything under control. Turned out quite otherwise.
In a speech he more or less said that those who'd placed their assets in the West got what they deserved when said assets were seized. "Don't bother trying to get them back," he said. It would seem to me that such seizure both weakened and alienated the Russian oligarchy.
From 2000, I think Putin was focused on rooting out vestiges of western economic ownership and criminal looting. He had been a committed communist as an FSB officer when Yeltsin took him in and prepped him to succeed him. Yeltsin was bitter at the American attempts to shock an economy as fragile as Russia’s was, and he told Putin to get the country back.
Meanwhile in the midst of Russia’s “missing” decade, Yeltsin, and then Putin, had to contend with a fierce Chechen attempt to overthrow the Kremlin.
To say that Putin was overly restrained when he didn’t immediately react to ominous western antagonisms, is to charge him with knowing that the Americans were going to pivot from the Middle East, and reignite an anti-Russian posture and initiate a second Cold War. It looked like as late as 2010, the expectation for normalized relations was still credible, despite the previous NATO creep through the Balkans.
I think from Putin’s perspective, the Cold War was over, communism was dead, and the Americans had no pretext to demonize him or his country. As late as 2014, I think Putin’s biggest failing was not seeing the lengths to which the Ukrainian Nazis would go on the offensive. Also, Russia was rebuilding its military, and the Americans knew that, which was why Maidan occurred when it did.
This war in Ukraine is being sold here as Putin’s foible, but history may well see it as the beginning of the end if the American Empire. The clever Americans suckered the dumb Russian. Or did the sly Russian lure his adversary into biting off more than it can chew?
For anyone who hasn’t seen the Oliver Stone documentary on the 2014 coup, here’s a link:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9TjeW5pPHg0
For “soft power” to work, it must be backed by hard power. Otherwise it merely incites and amuses the enemy.
If soft power is narrative control, then virtually every tribe, kingdom, nation, empire, religion and ideological movement has exercised it with some success. But to sustain a narrative over time the messaging has to correlate (mostly) with reality. America’s soft power in the 20th Century once aligned relatively closely with the facts and with timeless ideals rooted in the Bill of Rights. But those were fleeting halcyon days, and what used to be a generally palatable amount of patriotic bias in messaging by American government and media has morphed into an impenetrable edifice of lies and deceit. Worse, our “soft power” leaders now believe their own shit talk.
America’s total reliance on soft power to cover for its ineffectual quasi-behind-the-scenes performance in the proxy war in Ukraine is yet another clear sign of late-stage, rapid, imperial decline. The U.S. endlessly talks smack while its "most powerful military in the world” is daily proving second-rate, not just in weaponry but also in strategy. It is becoming obvious that the U.S. has a boutique military—absurdly expensive, built for the momentary photo op on the red carpet, not for the trenches. It looks good, which is all that soft power cares about. Soft power, no matter how perfect, will not win a war.
Unfortunately, this soft power phase of imperial decline is the most dangerous, because political endgames attract the worst among us—i.e., the purely evil and their psychopathic familiars. Add nuclear weapons to the mix, and, of course, the situation becomes existential on a planetary scale.
Absurdly, it now seems our best and most rational hope is that The System collapses so fast that Joe Biden’s finger will not be guided to the red button by such soft-power operators as Antony Blinken or Victoria Nuland. You know you live in strange times when system collapse would actually solve most of the world's worst problems.
"America’s soft power in the 20th Century once aligned relatively closely with the facts and with timeless ideals rooted in the Bill of Rights. "
It did seem that way. However I recently read a quotation from U Thant, head of the United Nations at that time. He said that they US used threats even when they didn't have to. So maybe it was the same then, just done behind closed doors.
"Worse, our “soft power” leaders now believe their own shit talk."
Senator Al Franken once related a conversation he had with a minister during in an airplane journey. "The trouble with liars," said the latter, "is that after a while they begin believing their own lies." Part of this is that there isn't a Lie Central Clearinghouse. Mr. A is lying about X. Ms. B is lying about Y. They're in different departments. Why shouldn't B believe A's lies and vice versa? They are presented as truths. People are supposed to believe them, especially those in the various Departments of Lies.
And isn't strange that someone internationally known for having said "Fuck the EU" occupies such a prominent position? Don't they care how that looks? Evidently not.
Not really, or at most very indirectly. Switzerland has little in the way of hard power, but CERN has a lot of prestige.
Switzerland is an interesting case. I have heard the story that Switzerland’s mountainous terrain allowed it to remain “neutral” during WWII. Surely, that must have been the reason the Nazis didn’t invade, and not because Switzerland had anything to do with funding the Third Reich. So, is a financial system built on secret bank accounts—including sovereign wealth accounts—soft power? Or is currency and banking hard power? Now, the power softies in Switzerland have joined the western sanctions against Russia. And did that Swiss law pass that allowed resale of armaments by Switzerland to Ukraine? Has Swiss neutrality been neutralized? And what discussion of Swiss soft power would be complete without at least mentioning the WEF or its annual meeting in Davos.
Regarding the soft power of CERN, does it bother you at all that there is only one machine in the world capable of discovering the Higg’s Boson (which was essential to supporting the Standard Model and thereby ensuring paradigmatic capture of all physics perhaps for decades to come)? Is it truly “the scientific method” when your experiment cannot be performed anywhere else in the known world? Is controlling technology (hence also science) a form of soft power? If so, CERN certainly exemplifies soft power.
If by “soft power” you mean ideologies like pacifism or existentialism, or the power of artistic expression, or by open discourse and free speech I can be on board that. It may even be that such soft power is the only option for the most moral and wise and good among us. Of course, like all expressions of power, Empire is the master player, so “soft power” is now—at this time in history, like in most times in history—dominated by the evil among us. OTH, it is within the realm of imagination that wise and good soft power will one day win out, and that future forms of human political and economic organization will be based on wise and good soft power. We can still dream about such things…at least we can until we all get Neuralinked, after which our manipulated collective dreams may become the perfect method of domination via soft power.
I can think of plenty of other examples besides Switzerland and CERN.
The point of soft power is to get others on your side without fighting. Caity often writes about narrative control. That is soft power writ large.
Eisenhower warned in 1960 the Pentagon was the new capitol building and nobody paid attention. Washington's capitol building is a mausoleum for a one time democracy; still nobody is paying attention.
Yes, even Eisenhower ignored it. While Ike was in the WH, the CIA, with the British, orchestrated a coup in Iran in 1953, that is largely responsible for the enmity between Iran and the U.S. to this day.
In 1954, Eisenhower presided over a CIA-staged
coup in Guatemala, an action that was at the behest of the United Fruit Company whose profits were negatively impacted under the reforms of the elected president Jacobo Arbenz. Like the coup in Iran, the coup in Guatemala resulted in regime change and windfalls for U.S. oil and agriculture.
If the U.S. was ever a democracy, the end of FDR’s administration marked the end of any semblance of democracy. Money got Truman on the 1944 VP ticket, in contravention of a wide majority of voters who supported Henry Wallace, a friend and acolyte of FDR. Truman became president upon FDR’s death, and immediately set about creating the CIA and the NSA. Then he nuked a country that was already defeated and no threat, to advertise American commitment to imperial global ambitions
So 1947 can be marked as the beginning of the end of American democracy. 2027 will be the 80th anniversary of the American Empire.
John Foster Dulles was Eisenhower's Secretary of State and the godfather of US foreign as it is today. He was a very sinister character. His brother, Allan Wallace, was the first head of the CIA and just as sinister. The two brothers served simultaneously and worked closely to undercut the presidents they worked for.
To read Stephen Kinzer's book the The Dulles Brothers is to understand how America came to be in the mess it is today.
Successive President's became the dupes of high powered lobbyists, bureaucrats and ideologues, just as Biden is today.
Kinzer also penned Bitter Fruit which chronicled the 1954 Guatemala Coup.
Kinzer and a whole of other eminent American journalists and historians have recorded America's true history, but nobody reads it. The gap between the historic record and the despotic agendas of politicians and ideologues is killing America. Decisions made by crazed ideologues and advanced with endless propaganda are a great recipe for ruin. Where there is no truth, there no reality, just chaos.
Gore Vidal used to tell of his being blackballed when his work wasn’t being grossly distorted by eminent guest reviewers in The NY Times, or other publications of note. There’s a reason that honest commentary is downplayed and kept obscure.
He also told of how he and Noam Chomsky knew each other and when they had speaking engagements posters were torn down and publicity sabotaged-- they still spoke to packed halls just by word of mouth.
We could just start calling it The Pentagram, but that would be unjust to the infinitely more peaceful Satanists.
The Pentacle.
"PEACEFUL Satanists." Now there's a funny for ya! Their daddy is behind all the evil in the world. ALL the sex trafficking, murder, child mutilation, stealing, lying, free sexual mores...
Pentagon/Pentagram? Maybe an EMPTY cross would be better....?
Jesus Christ, who beat the devil with a big, ugly stick, said of those who lied about Him, some of the religious leaders of His day--( lying about Jesus is an old 'tradition' still practiced today)
"You are of your father, the devil, and it is your will to practice the lusts and gratify the desires [which are characteristic] of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a falsehood, he speaks what is natural to him, for he is a liar [himself] and the father of lies and of all that is false."
The USA does have a big bag of problems & hypocrisies to deal with. That said---WHY DOES MOST EVERYONE ON THE PLANET WANT TO COME HERE???? To this big ol' mess?
just askin'...
Our problems are not because of our Constitutional system. Our conflicts come out of one of the lusts/desires Jesus alluded to; the lust for power & control.
THAT is the main issue disrupting life, peace & harmony in the USA today. And the rest of the nations.
As long as mankind is self-centric & 'me centered' no financial system or form of government will work. Some one or some (coven?) group will always think they should lord it over everyone else.That comes straight out of satan itself. The devil has many people infected with the lust for money, possessions & power. That is true of far too many in US government. Our Constitutional Republic isn't the problem. Forsaking our form of government for immorality is.
What communist, fascist or socialist nation has ever been as successful as the USA?
We are declining because like Alexis de Tocqueville said “America is great because America is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
If our leaders are corrupt, and FAR TOO MANY are,
...there you have it.
Odd-funny--The USA is this big ol' giant mess...YOU say. Somewhat accurately, true enough. But remember-- immorality, fascist ideals & the 'bash the USA' to push for total govt control causes most of our mess as the lust for power & control drive those who work to change us into a communist, fascist, whatever it is one wants to call an all powerful controlling government...
SamFox
If I nad a platform, I would disseminate Caitlin's newsletter.
Share, Share, Share!
"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it." ~Oscar Wilde
After reading this, I feel like any time I use the polygon tool in Photoshop, I should never enter 5 when it asks for number of sides, at the risk of being revealed as an American, something I normally have diverse approaches for disguising. Meeting someone new, I tend to open the conversation in Italian, for example. Anything to disguise my nationality. Thanks, America, I barely recall a minuscule glimmer of childhood patriotism, but that candle got extinguished by the sheer volume of your violence toward the entire planet.
So Vin, MOVE! I am sue you can find a nation more to your liking some where.....maybe.....Try China. They MIGHT let you in...
SamFox
And to consider that criminals-in-command of our government struck their own Pentagon, attacked it killing more than a hundred congressional accountants and investigators trying to find $2.3 trillion missing from Pentagon records. Thanks 911, you accomplished so many things.
Richard--I always thought (IMO) that 9-11 was at least in part an inside job. I understand a lot of records were 'lost'...probably for why what you said. A larger 'tell' was bush signing the 'patriot' Act. I understand it had been written for a while BEFORE the planes exploded into the buildings.
The recent fraudulent misuse of the 'Act' to obtain warrants via false info in my mind has highlighted the 'tell'.
Not long after GWB autographed the PatAct I quit the R 'party'. I became a libertarian, quit them & am now an Independent Constitutional Conservative.
Nothing wrong with our Republic that honest upright people following the US Constitution would not fix. You know, :-), a moral people! Like our system was designed for.
SamFox
Yes, we agree. I admire you for having left the GOP to the LP.
911 was totally an inside job. All the known facts and evidence contradict the official narrative.
9/11 Interesting 🧐topic detour.
I was unconvinced passengers overtook the hijacker’s and crashed the plane. I suspected it may have been shot down before reaching its target.
Well, the Pentagon brought it up, couldn’t help it 👁️
Actually, no airliner crashed at Shanksville.
Every word Caitlin.
The propaganda on all news bulletin in Australia currently is about Talisman Sabre.
The US has garrisoned the world & Australia has allowed itself to be turned into a bulls eye.
The obscene amount Australia is spending on defence is horrifying.
There is so much that needs to be fixed here.
The Labor government did not take AUKUS to the election.
Most people just wanted to get rid of Scott Morrison & his corrupt government. & didn't think beyond that.
Labor could take us into war.
What a betrayal.
Lorraine--Have you started your Mandarin lessons yet? Sounds like you may need them...
;-)
SamFox
Yes, the Pentagon ,because never in the history of the world has a country contributed as much to death and destruction - and always on the unarmed. The eagle is a pretty good representation of US values as well, if you concentrate on the talons.
Well, even more fitting, the Eagle belongs to the Vulture family!
So true, a perfect fit!
Doris...So Dear, when do you plan to move? And where? Let us know so we can wish you well.
SamFox
So how intelligent, Foxy Sam, moving , even were it possible, is the solution to problems? There is no taking a stand and fighting? Were more people of your mentality we'd be overrun by fascists.
Hi Doris--White Flag, OK? I took it from your post you didn't like the USA much. Maybe I was wrong. But I see that sentiment a lot here & other threads. Thus the 'moving' comment. ;-)
OK, what do you stand & seek to fight for? I am not a fascist. That's what we now have in the Out House & current administration.
I stand for honesty in government & lost ideals like equal protection & application of the law. Low govt spending, taxing & regulation. That, as the Founders intended, we go not about the earth looking for giants to destroy. The Founders were not for invading & bossing other nations. They were not isolationist, they were for commerce, trade & travel with other nations, but warned of political alliances.
If my mentality were more widespread we would have honest officials in government, lower spending, lower taxes, less regulation, equal opportunity, morality, free markets... Basically freedom & justice for all.
We would banish equity as prescribed by the 'the woke' & go back to equality.
All the woke gibberish is another cover, like climate change, for more government control. I fight against these sordid big govt take overs & the deceptions used o steal freedom & individual power from We The People.
Since the human race will never accomplish all that when there is greed driving power hungry politicos & criminals...Oh well. That's where we are now.
What I stand for is basically the US Constitution. And the sentiment Christ taught, that we love our neighbor as our self.
I Have never been racist. I never understood it. It never made sense to me. Whoever is the best should get the post.
That's me in a nutshell. I am lotta 'nut', not much shell. ;-)
SamFox
OK, good enough, And I didn't accuse you of being racist. I like Americans, and have a lot of American relatives to whom I wish the best. But the US is not a democracy: to meet that definition you have to be informed, and Americans aren't, and you have to have access to what democracy is all about: the basic necessities for a dignified and rewarding life. I ask you, if autocrats can provide this, how are they inferior? Americans don't complain about the system, even when reduced to living in cars - with children. But then, maybe they're afraid to, on record. They have to be "nice" - or don't deserve the little they get. Former students owe $5trillion, have poor or no jobs and can't possible pay this life-long debt. - with interest! Even the ancients understood that unpayable debt must be cancelled - the system is unworkable otherwise. The changes must be systemic. It's merely a matter, every four years now, to move the deck chairs around on the sinking ship. Virtually all politicians are on the take by what we can refer to as the shadow government or deep state, and/or ruled by some nutty religious concept they get assbackwards if it purports to be "Christian". There is no evidence, BTW, the Christ ever wanted to found a "church". He was a social reformer, didn't particularly like rigid rules, and didn't care much for authority as it existed- the Sadducees and Pharisees, whom he considered hypocrites. Seems to me he would approve of democratic socialism, a system that doesn't dissolve all problems, but assures that the basics for everybody, food, shelter, health care, education. And thereby
obviates things like theft, envy, control of women, and more than anything else, base materialism and materialistic values. The people of East Berlin when it was divided, had fewer material goods, but shared what they had, and valued art and literature far more than those in the west sector. They were happier. Read about it. No one should be at the mercy, pro forma, of anyone else: that is base, ignoble, backward. We have rights, not mystically, but because we demand them. And we must demand them.
"The True Symbol Of The United States Is The Pentagon"
... with a Star on the inside, a circle around it, and a depiction of Molech in the middle.
In reality, the symbol of the United States is the Hexagram, blue on white background.
Same thing really.
In accordance with Caitlin's recent post, I give you this nugget that just dropped from Alex Rubenstein of Gray Zone:
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/07/20/resolutions-emergency-iraq-syria-libya-yemen/
The nation of Mozambique has an AK-47 assault rifle on their flag. They owe their freedom to it.
The U$ofA has brought pentagons into disrepute which is quite unforgivable given that pentagons are a vital part of many geodesic domes. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTpo-nYNN0wvuEI5NuH94-cqtAgViElIdGNtw&usqp=CAU
Caitlin should offer to be interviewed by Anderson Cooper.
My immediate response is that Andersons masters self preservation mode would kick in long before any meaningful exchange was allowed to occur.
We really should update the US flag. And this could be the main symbol in the middle of a a black background--a vulture/eagle perched on top of the Pentagon, dripping with blood. Sort of reminiscent of the Mexican flag.
And.....
We can replace all the stars with flags of countries we have bombed, overthrown, and taken over. Have to be a huge flag to fit them all though.
It's gotta be fewer than fifty. There are only 195 countries and about half are tiny islands.
There are 574 Native American tribes alone. Add in the Hawaiian, Samoan and the rest of the Polynesians, Mexican (Texas) and the rest of the South and central Americans, Philippians,Tiawan and so on. The united nations would have to be rebuilt to give them all seats in the assembly.
I whole heartedly agree!
Here is link to my art encountering into the Pentagon USA:
https://antoniocarty.substack.com/p/pentagon-garden-conspiracy
How interesting! Thanks for sharing Pentagon Garden Conspiracy.