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? (see ADDENDUM below.)
- 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.
=========
ADDENDUM to the post. It occurs to me that OWNING Greenland truly is different than the US having NATO military bases there. It would improve the security situation... for Putin! The current NATO bases can easily bottle in the Russian fleet, if NATO gets into a physical tiff with Moscow. But an AMRICAN Greenland might just step aside and let the RN sail on by. Especially if Greenland were taken by force, shattering NATO. Jeepers, no lie! This IS for 'national security.' The national security of Russia.
==============================
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?
55 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
I'll tell you how much I do against ICE if you tell me how much money you take from tech oligarchs and three-letter intelligence agencies. How much you get from speaking fees. Years ago, you stated that it was *much* more than you make from books.
So much BS. But let me start with assent that expanding the EU has long been the obvious way (NOT the UN) that a form of world governance comes about. I said so in EARTH (1989) when the "E" stops being "Europe" and becomes "Earth."
And I approve! If the Earth Union truly has the heritage and ethose of today's EU (minus Hungarian Putinism) then great. Too bureaucratic for American tatses but there will be time for compromises.
But when it happens, it will be America's child! Starting with the shotgun marriage of the Coal and Steel trade compact in the late forties imposed by the US... and onward under protection from Stalin and spending levels on defense lower than in all of the history of the world. Funds thus freed for socialist beneficence.
So you are now stepping up to defend yourselves and resist Russian mania? Great! So you may have to carry the weight of Western Civilization, if America tumbles into hell? Great, do it! I may flee there along with millions... as Europe's smartest fled to America in the 1910s and 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s (and Hannah Arendt called the USA 'paradise.")
I wish you well... and all of this could have happened earlier, if European leaders had heeded Woodrow wilson, in 1919... AND YOU KNOW IT.
As for Duncan's British Empire, yes, it was less-bad than any empire before it. More inspired by Ruidyard Kipling's "White Man's Burden." And yes, less-hated in retrospect by many of the colonized. But do NOT dare me to speak of the dark side. The atrocities.
Take the incredibly clever way the empire spread! NOT by direct conquest but mostly by inciting younger brothers of local kings to rebel, in violent civil wars that then let the British efficiently help one side to win and become a dependency. A hugely clever pattern that took over nation after nation at very little cost in British blood.
Was the NET effect, over time, an improvement over endless centuries of petty wars among bickering feudal kingdoms? Sure it was. India owes its existence as a mostly-internally -cohesive and peaceful continental nation to that. But do NOT pretend it was some lovey-dovey process... or it was not enforced harshly.
You cite the Philippines. The initial Moro wars were harsh after the hated Spain was ejected. But the Moros were inherently and eagerly crazy. Only dig it, there was NEVER any intent to stay permanently. Cuba got independence immediately and every year Philippines moved along a progression toward intended independence, under growing institutional frameworks they never got from Spain. When MacArthur waded ashore in '44 it was alongside the Philippine president who had all domostic powers already, just like Greenland viz Denmark, today. Try knowing something.
Seriously? Look up Anson Burlingame. Our ambassador to China, who fought against every nasty power and land grab by European powers in China. Look... him... up... He's even featured in the move "55 Days in Peking," chiding David Niven and all the European and Japanese looters of China that the Boxer Rebellion was their fault.
Across 3000 years of glorious Chinese history, China only had one foreign friend. Not a satrapy or dependency or conquest. A friend who came to China's aid time and again and again and again... a history now ignored by ingrates. Care to guess who that friend was?
And yes, much of that was pre-FDR.
Look at a map of Africa. Thirty nations stuck with borders that make no sense that were imposed on them by impreial powers in order to please the Kaiser and other ego-drenched, foppish monarchs. Jesus.
Look, I respect the British Empire as having been a major step forward. But Seriuously, Duncan? Get a grip.
Oh, and Celt can go get bent, for all I care. Jerk off to your ingrate sanctimony, fool.
ADDENDUM to the post. It occurs to me that OWNING Greenland truly is different that the US having NATO military bases there. It would improve the security situation... for Putin!. The current NATO bases may bottle in the Russian fleet, if NATO gets into a physical tiff with Moscow. But an AMRICAN Greenland might just step aside and let the RN sail on by. Especially if Greenland were taken by force, shattering NATO..
Jeepers, No lie! This IS for 'national security.' The national security of Russia.
I'm a *bit* more charitable to Celt, because they've pulled up astute and relevant facts and done some sincere analysis. Their problem is one of assignment. They look at the actions of ELITES IN AMERICA and declare them to be AMERICA... just as those elites *wish* them to do. When nearly every positive accomplishment of America's not-quite-empire was achieved *in spite* of those elites!
Check it. The First America (1776-1860) was hamstrung and eventually corroded by the desire of mostly (but not entirely) Southern elites to build a new aristocracy that would eventually control the whole continent. They were defeated (but, alas, not destroyed) and the Second America (1865-1932) built by the victors. That America then had to face Northern elites' attempt to build an aristocracy founded on industry and commerce rather than land and agriculture. That's the America Celt references with his 'evil empire' rhetoric, the one GEN Smedley Butler exposed and condemned.
But if America-as-a-nation were the 'evil empire' Celt references, why would Butler speak out? When he testified to Congress about the Business Plot that would have reimposed elite control by force, he was hailed as a hero of the Republic far more widely than he was cursed as a traitor of the empire. (Though there certainly were circles where he was! As both Roosevelts were.)
The Third America is the place both Dr. Brin and Celt agree was the best version of America, and the only one that clears Celt's judgmental bars. Just as each version before, it was built in direct *reaction* to elite excesses of the prior cycle and with the express *intent* to avoid the failures therein. In this it was, for a time, fabulously successful compared to previous historical precedent.
It was also compromised, as the failure to thoroughly eviscerate the elite culture behind the Confederacy repeatedly came back to bite Third America in the backside. Eventually, the two defeated factions implacably hostile to "freedom and justice for all" made alliance and a measure of melding occurred. The patient multi-generation approach of the Confederates and the resources and organization of the Donor Class gave birth to a series of movements -- 'silent majority', 'moral majority', 'family values', 'neocon', 'tea party', and ultimately 'MAGA' -- all with the express intention to tear the Third America down and revert to a more traditional empire. Imperialist actions in Third America were all born of compromises to keep that alliance aligned with the rest of society.
That's over with now: they've declared once again, for a decade with actions and insinuations, that they're establishing an 'evil empire' in exactly the manner Celt opines against.
What Celt misses is that, in *every cycle*, most Americans are just as much to be ruled subject populations as anyone else. And in every cycle, most Americans fought back.... and WON.
Historical Irony:
As those powers who wish to turn back every social progress made after 1967 (the Shahs Visit) grow stronger every day, the Shah's son might return to the throne in the near future.
Wow. We missed you, Catfish! Your model is generally valid, if more simple than mine... where I see NINE phases of an ongoing anti-modernism/pro-modernity civil war, starting with 1770s rejection of the royal and privileged mercantilist British elites, spreading sovereignty from 0.0001% to to all white males with a house.... then 1820s Jacksonian expansion to all white males, then the tragically incomplete 1860s expansion giviing former slaves ownership over their bodies...
...then the first progressivism reforms... then suffrage for women... then civil rights... but all along the way, the MYTHOLOGY of the (partially lying) meme of 'liberty & justice for all" deeply affected the youth and the world. The Hollywood (partly lying) mythos. Making millions believe it COULD happen...
...which led to the disappointment of Celt and Der Oger and Duncan that the better world that was incrementally and grindingly happening was way too slow...
...and I agree! WAY too slow. Only way faster than any other civilization in the history of the world.
But it's their lack of perspective that disappoints me most. WHERE DID YOU GUYS GET YOUR BELIEF IT'S EVEN POSSIBLE? The prerequisite to be disappointed in the American Pax? Your refusal to refute the assertion that the last 80 years were humanity's best, by far?
Hollywood.
But all you can see is the disappointment. Because it is lusciously and masturbatorily sanctimonious! Oh what fun, all ingrates have!
But not pragmatic, if you actually want that better world. You COULD be helping Blue (true) America in our fight against Putinism and Confederacy and all that. You could help us to win this phase of our civil war, upon which the entire fate of humanity may depend. But you won't. Jerking off to smug disdain, you are of no help and we are going to have to do it without you. For which FU.
That shocked me... that Reza's name is chanted in the streets. But it will not be the same Shah-dom as before. He'll be a European-style monarch and need to watch his step. We can hope.
What interests me is the Ayatollah screeching at Trump> Maybe reflex and panic. Or else in order for Trump to claim credit if the mullahs fall, and thus salvage Putin's best asset?
Oh, Blue/modernist/liberal America did not win every phase of the civil war. We lost in the 1840s and 1870s and 1920s. Fortunately those losses were temporary.
We’re modeling slightly different things, sir. Your phase one cleared the way for the First America… but only by empowering the pro-independence slavers over the Tory ones. The other Founders were well aware, even at the time, that trouble would flow from the choice to include those brutal hypocrites… but needs must. Your phases two and three are the attacks by those slavers’ descendants, culminating in their crushing defeat in phase four…
and then the *renewal* of the poisoned pact for the Second America in phase five. That pact garnered dividends though phase six, as the Bourbons assisted in the progressive victories of the first half of the 20th century… exacting *endorsement of racist segregation* as the price.
But once Third America was secure— and millions saw the valiant fighting by all ‘races’ in her defense— the old arguments for racial castes rang increasingly hollow. The Armed Forces integration was the first move in the Third America cycle, with the phase seven of civil rights leading directly to the defection of the Confederates to the other autocratic faction in phase eight. And now here we are in phase nine.
Three phases per cycle: the first establishing the defeat of the prior elites; the second producing the new lines of competition, the third eliminating the stability of the old order.
Catfish 'n Cod:
What Celt misses is that, in *every cycle*, most Americans are just as much to be ruled subject populations as anyone else. And in every cycle, most Americans fought back.... and WON.
I come at this from a slightly different tangent. I hold in my mind an ideal America which aspires to Enlightenment. That's the America which is a force for good and inspiration in the world. That our government and our powerful often betray that ideal is a fair point. So is the fact that I'm engaging in the No True Scotsman fallacy when I insist that the Trumpublicans don't represent the true America, but are instead a corrupting tumor on the body politic.
The map is not the territory, and there are different ways of modeling what I'm saying. One is, "America isn't evil, but it occasionally is occupied by evil." Another is "America can be evil when it strays from what it is meant to be." I'm not insisting that everyone here buy into my sentiment--just explaining it.
Dr Brin:
"That shocked me... that Reza's name is chanted in the streets."
There's precedent for such. Der Oger recently mentioned a longing for the Warsaw Pact days in East Germany. In fiction, Dathon rallied half of the escaped Hebrews with a desire to return to Pharaoh and the brick pits.
When the revolution sours, sometimes the familiar doesn't look so bad in comparison.
The shah was a tyrant. Who built universities and protected women's rights. When such contradictions puzzle you, look ahead at the asymptote.
the fact that the air defense stood down should be a hint that this was done with alot of internal cooperation. In the entire episode, only a single MANPAD was used, and the SAMs were parked in revetments.
Oh gee, what a surprise, no oil company wants to invest in Venezuela.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/09/venezuela-is-uninvestible-for-now-exxon-ceo-tells-trump-in-white-house-meeting-00720198?utm_medium=bluesky&utm_source=dlvr.it
‘Uninvestable’: Trump pitch to oil execs yields no promises
Exxon CEO Darren Woods offered the starkest assessment, telling Trump in the live-streamed meeting in the East Room that Venezuela is “uninvestable” under current conditions. He said major changes were needed before his company would return to the country, and that big questions remain about what return Exxon could expect from any investments.
“If we look at the legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela today, it’s uninvestable,” Woods told Trump. “Significant changes have to be made to those commercial frameworks, the legal system. There has to be durable investment protections, and there has to be a change to the hydrocarbon laws in the country.”
What moron, besides Trump, ever thought invading Venezuela was a good business plan?
Sorry Larry, but electing Trump twice - knowing full well what kind of man he is and what he stood for - shows the majority of Americans to be very stupid and very evil people.
shows the majority of Americans to be very stupid and very evil people.
Not a majority. About 30-40%, which was indeed a crushing disappointment to see in 2016. But not a majority--a minority that is strategically placed within our presidential voting system, and perhaps aided by the likes of Elon Musk. I've read that DJT's showing in all seven swing states was a statistical impossibility.
I'd be more willing to concede the observation that today's America is full of complacent people who treat government as entertainment and whose motto could be a dismissive, "What's the worst that could happen?" Or maybe "Hold my beer and watch this!"
But in any case, the case you're making is that we're currently occupied by an evil cabal that has gotten ahold of the reins of power, using that power for evil when it was intended for good. What good? A refuge that, instead of being the fortress of a specific pool of genes, welcomes any who are willing to respect the rights of their neighbors to have their own rights respected, free of official coercion except when necessary to mediate disputes between conflicting interests. There's more to it than just that, but this isn't an issue of "Captain America".
The real America has never fully been what the ideal is supposed to be, but the potential is there, and it shows as often as it does not. The current state of affairs does not reflect on historical America any more than the election of Hitler reflects on Germans throughout all of history including today.
For myself, if the America of the Declaration had never existed, I would have had to make one up, if only in fanfic.
ICE supporters await apologies:
"Taken along with the other videos we've seen of this incident, there's nothing that accords the benefit of the doubt to the driver.
What you see in the video is the point of view of the officer. He has been assessing the scene, and with his cellphone, has been videoing this vehicle blocking traffic. The shooting victim and her wife have spent the day following ICE. The couple taunts the officers. The officer, who has been circling the vehicle, and who only comes into view on other videos right before being hit by the car, is squared up in the driver's windshield. While another ICE officer barks at the woman to open her door and get out of the car, her wife, trying to get inside the car, screams for her to "Drive! Drive!" She hits the ICE officer hard and he unholsters his gun and begins shooting her. [ https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2026/01/10/the-ice-video-is-out-and-now-feds-need-an-apology-from-frey-walz-kotek-and-the-crazy-philly-cop-please-n4948106 ]" (Had to clean up link)
Cory Doctorow doesn't worship tech oligarchs and he points out that *now* is the time to act against them, at least in the UK.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/10/trump-beginning-of-end-enshittification-make-tech-good-again
Celt redux:
shows the majority of Americans to be very stupid and very evil people.
Well, then are a majority of Brits also very stupid and very evil people because they voted for Brexit? That happened first, after all.
MC
"If my grandmother had two wheels she would have been a bicycle."
Given that even Alzheimer Patients can experience paradoxical lucidity. I will wave away all the easily-verifiable low hanging factual fruit and simplify encourage a brief moment be taken to ponder: "The shooting victim and her wife have spent the day following ICE." Sunrise that day was at approximately 7:50 am and the incident occurred at approximately 9:30 am.
Because emotions weigh heavier than factual recall, the brain of intended audience reads (victim is female and has a wife) and behaves like a overloaded computer with too many tabs open, low RAM encountering an error with corrupted data.
Anyone interested in ex FBI's take on incident through the lens of fire arms training. https://asharangappa.substack.com/p/friday-round-up-1926
What you see in the video is the point of view of the officer.
No doubt, in more ways than one.
As with most of the experts you cite, if Victor Davis Hanson told me it was raining outside, I'd go ahead and sell my umbrella.
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