The news cycle smashes my New Years resolution to only blog once a week. But after posting a ten-parter Newer Deal for Democrats to promise to Americans, there’s much to catch-up on. That list of proposals covers a lot of ways to repair our nation structurally, so that this criminal madness won’t happen again.
But first… there’s so much sturm und drang over the Venezuela/Maduro raid. AND the Greenland mania. And so much of it misses important points! Sure, the core motive across-the-board remains distraction from the Epstein Files! But there is so much more. Let’s start with Venezuela:
- - While we all focus on the toddler brats who ordered the raid and followed it with fecal – “we’re running Venezuela for a profit!” declarations, few pay heed to what we actually saw. Which was a brilliant display of stunning competence by US military and intel agencies…
…the very same folks who Pete "Filthy Fingers" Hegseth* denounced - just 9 weeks ago - as "Too fat and too woke to fight!" Just… nine… weeks… ago. Riiiiight.
We've seen it before. Take another example: the incredibly skilled 2001 takedown of the Taliban - who deserved it - as did Saddam and Maduro. Only then idiotic politicians plunged us into costly quagmires - as both Bushes did in Afgh & Iraq, and as Trump will do in Venezuela (and Cuba?) as he bypasses their democracy movements and the world -recognized true winner of the 2024 Venezuelan elections, in order to make deals with Maduro's comrades to milk their country to fill his own cronies' pockets.
- Having said that, grow up about the damn oil! There will be no gushers of Venezuelan oil for years, maybe even a decade. They do have vast reserves, but collapsed infrastructure and very low exports. What our own petro companies are now angling after is lucrative no-bid contracts to rebuild Venezuelan infrastructure. Such contracts are exactly the cash cow that was milked in Iraq, by Cheney-linked logistics companies. And Iraq was not the cow. The US taxpayer was.
Again, show us what oil we ever got from Iraq, or likely will from Caracas! Only fools are saying “It’s about oil!” Including (alas) our jibbering fool at the top.
- Okay, removing Venezuelan oil from world markets will benefit both the Saudis and the current Russian regime. A little. Though with a potential side effect, when subsidized Venz-oil stops going to Cuba. If that regime then falls – perhaps nudged by US military action – it could enable Trump to shore up his MAGA support, even in the face of Epstein revelations. Keep your eye on Cuba.
- Putting all that aside, DO NOT fall for the trap of going all anti-military about this! They are the bright side of it. Such stunning competence daunts dark forces worldwide. Not one US death and most of the explosions in Caracas etc. appear to have been largely for show and distraction. (And to finish off any reputation of Russian-made air defense systems.) But that makes all the worse the juxtaposition, that such magnificent professionals are now at the beck and call of - at best! - cranky toddlers. And at worst our enemies.
- Trump & Hegs & company are now frantically trying to intimidate both the serving and retired officer corps. (e.g. threatening their pensions, if they speak.) And hence, officers are being forced to think thoughts that they swore never to think. And for that, I hate the toddler-maniacs, worse than for any other crime.
*(A creepy, alky boor who is unworthy to lead the men and women he berated. But why call him “Filthy Fingers”? Hegs repeatedly yammered on Fox that he doesn’t believe in germs and hasn’t washed his hands in a decade. Except perhaps in the alcohol that he spills.)
== Is there more? On to the icy frontier! ==
There’s more than I can possibly catch up on. Like MAGA screeds about Greenland/Canada etc.
Would a military seizure of Greenland tear apart NATO? Sure, and that’s a feature to Trump’s boss-blackmailer in the Kremlin. But there are so many aspects that few pundits or opponents mention:
- First, it would be disobeyed. Pure and simple. And this time, the generals and admirals must not resign! Rather, do a sit-down, until they are fired. And then demand a court martial! Watch how that, alone, would get Hegs to back down.
- It would shred the GOP – (it’s already started) - revealing with utter clarity which Republicans are blackmailed cowards and which have even a residuum of guts n’ balls. Residually Adult/Sane Republicans or RASRs, as I called them in Polemical Judo,
Sure they are rare! But even 1% of Republicans is about a million people. Picture just 200 such folks entering GOP Congressional primaries in March, flipping the ‘primary gambit’ on its head. (Luring many in GOP-gerried districts to register Republican!) Or maybe even 5000 who dare to primary MAGA dolts for state legislatures?
Are there that many?
Don’t bet on it. Anyway let’s get back to Greenland… where I set several scenes in my novel EARTH……
- The US (through NATO) already has bases in Greenland! And the once-vaunted Russian Navy has been revealed as a Potemkin paper babyshark. Just one US or British submarine could bottle them all in Polyani Inlet. So, what’s with all this ‘national security’ BS? And the moronic inability of any in media to point that out?
- There are just 50,000 Greenlanders.. Maybe 30,000 voters. Is Trump such a cheapskate that he can’t see the transactional way ahead? “I’ve escrowed thirty billion dollars that will pay out to all Greenlanders if a Join America! Plebiscite succeeds… except none of the escrowed rewards will go to those who campaigned against it!”
Hey Don, that’s as big a bargain as Alaska! Aren’t you sure you’ll get the money back from, say mineral rights?
- Oh, but wait a minute. Isn’t it likely Greenland would then become a blue state? Which brings us to…
I never heard or saw a pundit answer the Canada as 51st state malarky with the fact that Canada has ten provinces -- which would translate into eight new deep-blue states and a couple of purples. And two more ‘territories’ since the Inuit in Greenland get to be a state. So, bring it, dude. Bring it! Oh, and the Panama Canal Zone? Two more blues! (One on each side of the canal.) And in that case just try to leave out Puerto Rico. Where are we now, 66 states?
And hey MAGAs note this: travel from all of the above to any US city will be domestic, so no passport checks. Anyone arriving from any of those places will be assumed legal and get in. But then the "US" will have another maybe 5000 miles of lovely unguarded new borders. Have fun recruiting enough ex-cons to staff ICE, then.
But sure, there’s no ‘national security’ or ‘mineral wealth’ or climate change or such explanations. Nor even Putin ordering the Greenland thing, in order to break up NATO. (Dream-on, Vlad.)
No, there are just two real reasons for this insipidioty. The first one is widely known. Don wants immortality in the form of a huge, imperial expansion of USA territory, like the Louisiana Purchase. Especially since most map projections portray a flawed depiction of Greenland as having the same size of Africa!
As for the rest of the GOP? Even allowing for blackmailed cowardice in the upper ranks? Now I’ll explain it to you, as a pair of deeply insane syndromes.
== The maniacs who are ‘thinking’ longer term ==
Of course this is all rooted in fundamental craziness of two related kinds.
First… Thielism and the Dark Enlightenment, which I’ve dissected and scrutinized and eviscerated elsewhere. A neo-religion of ingrates who perceive themselves as Top Dogs in a New World Order, but never would be anything but kibble, in any other society than the gently permissive and spectacularly productive scientific and liberal one that gave them everything. Look up the latest sub-meme of this cult: “The Technate of North America,” illustrated in this dredged up map from a similarly fevered era, the 1920s and 30s. Part of a range of bizarre political ideas that have flourished in times of stress.
The Technocracy movement had its brief heyday in the 1930s, amid the Great Depression and disillusionment with apparently oligarch-suborned democracy. (And watch Things to Come for HG Wells’s more benign version.) The article about the Technate is fascinating (if in some places flawed). And the map creepily overlaps the vision of today's Donald Trump + Peter Thiel White House!
Plus it illustrates the openly-expressed fantasy of Putin for a globe that’s been divided into spheres of influence, giving him Eurasia (sorry, Europe!) and ceding to China everything southward (sorry India and the rest!) With the USA converted into comfy fascism run by CEO-kings aided by the technological elite, isolationist and minding its own business…
…or else following George Orwell’s nightmare pattern of endless simmer-war among Eastasia, Eurasia and our own Oceania, which – in a stunningly creepy pareidolia – would look an awful lot like the “Technate” map. Which perhaps inspired Orwell in the first place! I riff further on this here.
Oh, these guys are such ingrates, ignoring 6000 years of utter failure by their feudal model of governance. Though that, to them, is a matter of great pride. They won’t admit to being ignoramus dunces…
…but there’s another trait that I’ve seen no one else point out. Even though it’s flaming obvious.
== The Mania is Depressing! ==
Cast your memory back as far as it will go. All the way back to the Great Depression, Republican foreign policy has featured the same trait, over and over again.
No, I’m not talking about the childish, churlish way they name things, like U.S. Navy ships… or military operations like the recent ‘Absolute Resolve,’ when the whole idea of operation names was military pragmatism and information security, not advertising slogans.
No, I refer to Republican Bipolar Disease that I first diagnosed back in the last century, but wrote about here, in 2017. The way GOP administrations and indeed all of their political leaders tend to gyrate between two states…
…either manic imperialism or depressive isolationism.
The Bush era neocons manifested the former with openly raved “We are now an empire!”... a phrase that now blares from the Trump White House. Which just weeks earlier proclaimed an isolationist “America First!” policy and an end to wars of intervention or nation-building... and even our world network of alliances that kept the peace (mostly) for the last 80 years.
These bipolar and extreme mood swings are predictable, hypocritical and dangerous!
Are Democratic administrations guiltless, or more-sane? Well, yes, comparatively so. Certainly, less blatantly and compulsively cyclical between extremes. And in most cases – except Somalia – at least listening to professional advice.
== And finally… peacemaker? ==
Is it ‘bipolar’ that Trump brags about ‘ending wars,’ then veers to naming the “Department of War” and howling at our officers to ‘kill, kill, kill!’ and beating drums of imperialism?
Sure it is. And all we can do, for now, is challenge his idiot supporters… in order to peel away a couple of million crucial, residually sane Republican neighbors from his alliance of confederate twittery.
DEMAND your neighbors (physically or online) put up wager stakes whether Donald Trump ever actually ‘settled any wars,’ let along eight… no ten… no fifteen! I don’t care that he mistook Armenia for Albania. Bush Jr. would have done that. But for Don to claim that he settled the Armenia-Azerbaijan war is as crazy as the same claim for Burma-Thailand and all the others.
But it is the demand to NAME ONE that corners those potential RASR neighbors of yours, and may get a few of them to stop desperately suckling at the Fox teat. Like name one piece of verified, large scale evidence for an electoral ‘steal’ in 2020. And so many more, offered in my posting about the Wager Gambit.
And if you peel away from Murdochian madness even one voter, you will have done your bit for the Revolution.
But sure, it is too late for that. So… help get my Newer Deal before the eyes of Democratic pols and pundits. What will save us, maybe, is something a simple and pragmatic as better tactics.
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PS... Blogger is giving me way-problems - as in this posting's line spacing. I guess I'll be shifting over to SUBSTACK grandually... https://davidbrin.substack.com/
Come on over there! But I'll stay here too, for one of the best comment communities online. Even when they aggravate me... they use complete sentences and paragraphs and actually argue with (some) evidence! Where else does that happen?
31 comments:
Hasn’t China already implemented a type of technocracy? Seems to be working reasonably well for them. If technocracy is rule by technical experts, I don’t see what that has to do with monarchy or feudalism. Sounds like something a lot of people here would support. Why shouldn’t the experts rule? You want filthy-fingered commoners and populist imbeciles in charge?
Btw, is using childish, demeaning nicknames for people part of the program for bringing enlightenment to the world?
I read an Australian dossier once about Xi. Therein, he was depicted as a follower of Stalin and "of the perpetual revolution"; he was in the early days of his presidency. Perpetual revolution in that sense that the new generation of the CCP must every now and then throw out the old bums. Obviously, he saw himself as the steward of this revolution.
I believe he has very well-founded fears to be seen as one of the old bums now.
Btw #2: Is your problem with spheres of influence that they give great powers too much influence, or too little? I mean, if America is better than every nation in the history of the universe combined, why should it be content with dominating merely half the planet? How can the world's police, saviors and exemplars be so limited? Is this what bothers you?
I can't see how any Canadian province or territory would be allowed into full statehood. Not even Alberta and/or Saskatchewan. We'd all be relegated to the same status as Puerto Rico, and that's with a lot of good luck. Assuming that the whole process didn't break down into a shooting war that bled the US out for however many decades.
You're seriously boosting Trump at the same time as denigrating the use of childish, demeaning nicknames?
As for “Russification” of the US, check some of the votes in the UN sometime, where literally the *only* country voting with Israel is the US, and show me where Russia is ever isolated like that
I don't see Eastern Europe begging Putin to save them from Western imperialism.
I wasn't thinking about votes in the UN so much as the turning the country into a global pariah that attacks whoever and wherever it wants and doesn't GAF what the rest of the world thinks., like for instance invading Ukraine.
As for Israel, I am no fan of Netanyahu's government.
Why shouldn’t the experts rule? You want filthy-fingered commoners and populist imbeciles in charge?
Experts should advise, not rule. And no, I don't want you in charge.
I’m not really arguing with an informed person so much as a guy who lives in a media-created comic book world.
You're not really arguing at all. Just contradicting.
As for that Technate proposal, there was a segment of the CBC Radio series "Ideas" where the history of the idea was investigated at length. You might have already listened to it. In case not, here's the audio:
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/audio/1.6082914
Do I view the USA as a central locus of the effort to build that world, firmly enough so that despicably stoopid feudalism can never return? Sure and why not?
Now and then you should move outside of your bubble, Touch Grass and take a long and hard look at the US today. You are not the bulwark against feudalism, you have currently the primary tumor. Everyone else has just metastases.
NONE of you carpers has ever ever ever shown any reason not to accept that the 80 year American Pax has been - despite many very human idiocies and even crimes - by far the best to humanity ever had, compared to any... compared to ALL previous eras, combined.
We had that in the last post. Good for white people, for others, not so.I also would put one of the end points of the Pax Americana at 9/11.
Also, why do you believe we are producing some of the world's best and finest engineers?
We are carping all day until a process or product reaches perfection.
Add: "From the last post".
https://bsky.app/profile/rexhuppke.bsky.social
Kristi Noem: "People need to stop using their vehicles as weapons ... it's clear that it's being coordinated. People are being trained"
Says the party who makes it legal to run down protesters.
Just sayin'.
LarryHart I, too, am careless at times, but it was hard to follow who you were refuting, in some cases. Quotation mars and attribution. I too would like to see both Netanyahu and every leader of Hamas share a prison exercise yard.
Dwight, I was not seriously expecting the 'ten new states from Canada' to fly. Nescient MAGAs never ever ever think things out and that was my point. I do wish Canada would join up just so we could swamp this wave of imbecile confederates and fix things so that it is again "malice toward none" and then let the provinces go again.
Thing about technocracy is that most scientists etc have rejected it with derisive snorts. And what's the saying. Only trust with power those who refuse it?
Der Oger, you have not met my challenge one single bit. Just because I demanded it last time does not prevent my demanding it again and again. Your spite isn't just churlish ingratitude for the world that was made vastly better by the American pax. You are also spectacularly unhelpful to the cause that you espouse.
You think that raging against us, while we are in a serious state of civil war... the outcome of which WILL decide the fate of humanity... is helpful? You are in this for a masturbatory sense of righteousness instead of helping us determine a positive outcome to this struggle.
You could be helping us instead of jerking off to rage and sanctimony.
CBP agents shoot two people in their car in Portland tonight.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/08/portland-federal-agents-shooting
FBI is "investigating" after Customs and Border Patrol officers shoot two people in Portland, Oregon tonight. ICE statement is that the two "weaponized" their car attempting to flee a stop and officers opened fire.
So, our "protector caste" are shooting suspects who flee, in direct contradiction to the laws of the US (fleeing is not grounds for lethal action by police).
How long until someone leaks the memo from Miller saying that motor vehicle operation is automatically assault with a deadly weapon?
Regarding our ultra-competent military and the raid to snatch Maduro - it is highly likely that Maduro was sold out by his own VP and military officers due to the lack of a concerted military response to our helicopters flying over Caracas during the mission. Maduro's personal guard (mostly Cubans, since he feared his own troops' loyalties) took casualties, but not the large Venezuelan military, which was on high alert since they knew that the US was threatening invasion.
Tie this in with Trump recognizing the VP as the new President, and it looks a lot less like American military genius and a lot more like typical coup behavior.
Typically, matt ignores the fact that ALL Blue Americans despise ICE and do not consider them ANY part of the Protector Caste. In other words, as usual, you lie, sir. Tell me how much you do against that pack of rats, comparedf to what I do.
Though yes, if Maduro was sold out, then the competence nod goes to the CIA. So?
As I said, GOP presidents proceed to ruin every gift that competent people give them. Show me where we disagree, except whether you are a sad specimen.
The map graphic needs a bit of work -- the legend color patch for the Technate of America should be red, and you should add a yellow patch and name for the yellow countries that surround the red.
It absolutely will not decide the fate of humanity, what absurd hubris, grandiosity and myopia. It's a typical cult mentality though, thinking the fate of the world revolves around you. How about you work on that while the rest of us work on our "ingratitude"?
Of course trying to steal Venezuela's oil is a stupid idea. But this is Trump we're talking about. He managed to lose money while running casinos. So it could be about the oil, as stupid as that is.
But I think that the real motivation is getting away with it. Stupidly. The criminality is the point.
"Do I view the USA as a central locus of the effort to build that world, firmly enough so that despicably stoopid feudalism can never return? Sure and why not? NONE of you carpers has ever ever ever shown any reason not to accept that the 80 year American Pax has been - despite many very human idiocies and even crimes - by far the best to humanity ever had, compared to any... compared to ALL previous eras, combined.
I say BOLLOCKS!! - the USA has done some good things - possibly as much as HALF of the "good things" done by the British Empire
But no more than half
AND if you took a worldwide vote they would say the same
Got to admit that, for all its faults, its efforts to stamp out slavery reflects admirably on the British Empire.
Pappenheimer
However, a lot of Indians might tell you that the best thing the British ever did was Quit India.
Pappenheimer
The differences in the countries that were part of the British Empire and those that were part of every other empire (including the American one) (Philippines) are stark
Which is why most of them are still members of the commonwealth
I more and more feel reminded of Vance and Zelensky in the Oval Office.
The only person raging is you, yourself.
Omnibus response. A family member was just hospitalized, so not sure what my day will look like.
Dr Brin:
"LarryHart I, too, am careless at times, but it was hard to follow who you were refuting, in some cases"
I was responding under Treebeards's post. Sorry if that wasn't obvious.
matthew:
"So, our "protector caste" are shooting suspects who flee, in direct contradiction to the laws of the US (fleeing is not grounds for lethal action by police)."
The meme that fleeing from police is an equivalent offense to aiming at them with intent to kill because both use an automobile is driving me nuts. I think those who Der Oger described as "blind in the right eye" engage in deliberate doublethink with this. They get to claim that a moving vehicle is in itself a use of deadly force no matter which way the vehicle is pointed, and they know the logic is spurious, but don't care.
And remember DJT insisting that the agent who shot from the left side and was obviously walking away unharmed afterwards was recovering in the hospital and lucky to be alive. As Orwell knew, their final command really is not to believe the evidence of our senses.
"How long until someone leaks the memo from Miller saying that motor vehicle operation is automatically assault with a deadly weapon?"
Well, how long before someone argues before the supreme court that the Second Amendment allows any use of weaponry? The text says nothing specific about things with triggers and bullets.
duncan cairncross:
"the USA has done some good things - possibly as much as HALF of the "good things" done by the British Empire
But no more than half"
And yet, using similar logic, you still consider Elon Musk to be a net-positive in the world.
Thumbs pressed. Hope your family member is well soon.
Mercosur will be signed on Monday. It will create a Free Trade Zone encompassing the EU and Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Urugay, and eventually Bolivia.
Empire 2.1 is currently installed.
Good news: Treated and released from hospital.
Bad news: Elderly, dehydrated from a bad cold, miserable.
We'll see what comes next.
There won't be any oil from Venezuela ever due to the vulnerability of oil pipelines, refineries and other oil infrastructure to simple cheap drone attacks launched from hundreds of guerilla hideouts in the Venezuelan jungle.
As a follow up to the last thread, I'd like to remind Dr. Brin that American history did not begin with FDR. The approximate half century from the New Deal to the Fall of the Berlin Wall is unique in American history, almost an aberration.
Without the evil of communism to fight, America has reverted back to kind and become once again just another evil empire.
Not wanting to dominate others would be a hallmark of a better nation.
"Not wanting to dominate others would be a hallmark of a better nation."
There are more of us Americans who don't want that than who do. Unfortunately, we're concentrated in something like 15 states, and land votes.
Of course, Treebeard thinks that experts accurately describing reality is the same thing as "dominating". He wants to fight for his right to have babies even though he can't have babies.
IRC, the oil companies switched to Canadian oil sources for this particular brand of Black Gold, investing several billions there in infrastructure.
So, the announcements even make less sense
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